Review: Splinter Cell: Conviction

Sam Fisher is back and he is not in a good mood. Of all the smart decisions made in crafting a new Splinter Cell title, this might be the best one developer Ubisoft Montreal made. Sam's angry and you hear it in every grunted line of dialogue, can see it in the brutal takedowns and interrogation moves and feel it pulsating through Sam with every step. That anger, that aggressiveness is built not only into the story, but the gameplay changes as well. It was a huge risk deviating from the trial-and-error style that made the series famous, but it paid off. Splinter Cell Conviction is awesome.

Splinter Cell: Conviction introduces a number of new gameplay features to the series, one of which is the "Mark & Execute" feature, which allows the player to mark specific targets, such as enemies or objects, and shoot them when they burst through a door or window. The player can choose to prioritize these targets, so that, for example, he could distract one guard by shooting out a light in his vicinity and then take out another guard. Another new feature is the "Last Known Position", which occurs when the player breaks the line of sight of an alerted guard. This creates a visual silhouette of where the guard thinks Sam is, allowing the player to strategically flank his enemies. Main target subjects can use the player's abilities against them. The player can be taken hostage by the subject in co-op mode; the hostage's partner can neutralize the subject by shooting them or grabbing them off his teammate.

Other new features include the ability to interrogate characters in real-time and use objects in the surrounding environment against them. Several other features, such as blending into crowds, improvising gadgets, and interaction with the environment, were announced, which according to creative director Maxime Béland would have given the game "a lot of Bourne Identity influence", but were scrapped after the development team decided that going in this direction would be taking too much of a risk The environment is also used to project mission objectives and key plot points onto walls in order to keep the player immersed in the gameplay during the narrative.