Splinter Cell Conviction

Tom Clancy Renowned author in recent years has been tapping into the video game industry, this time with his game Splinter Cell Conviction. The game has been out for a while now and can be purchased at GameStop for a mere $19.99 new.

In this game Sam Fisher (main character) is back and he is not in a good mood. Every line spoken is a representation of how he feels down to the very word. The way Sam walks could be described as determined, and aggressive, not only does this play into the way you feel about what your doing but how sam progressively wants to kill everything in sight. Tom Clancy took a big step into the unknown by changing the mechanics of the game but in the end and my opinion it was a huge risk that was for the better.

The story itself starts after his previous game "Double Agent" in which Sams daughter was kidnapped and supposedly murdered. also during this time Sam turned rogue and killed his best friend and split apart from a branch of the government in which he has considered home for many years. Sam shell shocked has gotten quite a few leads on those who killed his daughter and later on finds out are planning an attack on the white house, something sounds a bit cliche, anyways like 90% of games it's your job to save the day and stop the terrorists.

What I love about the game play in Splinter Cell most importantly this one is that it's continuous you have non stop action and it's not repetitive partly due to the vast environment changes, and different guns and customization's. Another praise that I will give the game is that there are absolutely no loading screens. that is unless you die, but other than that there is nothing that is holding you back from playing a level that could be an hour long without instant gratification because you don't have to wait to play part 2 of the mission. Ubisoft was genius in this game integrating your objectives on things like flags, sides of buildings and placing them in the direction your next objected is located. Unless previous Splintercells and having to keep glancing at your stealth meter they revamped everything, when you are stealthed all the color bleeds off the screen and everything turns black and white. This concept really helps sell the agent concept that you're shadowing your enemies and waiting for the right time to strike and really helps the gameplay when it's very obvious to tell if you need to find cover quickly and when you're hidden. Convictions took everything they learned from the previous games and added more, Splintercell included a cover system which is very easy by just bumping the left trigger you silde jump dash into immediate cover. Switching between barrier to barrier is also a very simple system and I feel as though it's so flawless no other game compares to their technique used in the game. While in most stealth games once you're found it's incredibly hard to continue the game because you have a little pistol and you have to blast through waves of enemies. Splintercell on the otherhand took a completely different approach to this tactic. They figured you should run away, doing this in the game creates a shadow of where your character was last seen and that causes guards to scramble over to that position, unload their guns, and even through grenades at your last known position. Playing the game after a while I came up with a couple of my own tactics you can decide to flank the enemies and attack them or just avoid them totally. The last outstanding part of this game is the mark and execute feature, what it does is when you decide to get up close and personal and perform a hand to hand combat takedown by pressing B when in range of an enemy, you gain a 'Mark' with a mark you can point your gun on an enemy and press the right bumper. This causes a red arrow on their head and when you decide to shoot your gun it's almost like an automatic kill, with this feature each gun has it's set amount of marks which can be upgraded to 4 marks or 4 easy kills and when you're trying to sneak around it's very handy.

Closing Comments:

While single player even on the hardest difficulty will only last you around 7 hours, it's only a part of the bigger package. There is a Co-op mode that you are allowed to play alone or with a friend and I can safely say it never gets old. Playing with a friend is obviously more fun and requires a bit more communication and percision but when it's all said and done Tom Clancy did a great job with this game doing everything and more that was expected from the gaming community.