Splinters of War: A Review of Splinter Cell: Conviction

About a week ago Matt and I decided to pick up a copy of the newest Splinter Cell (we're still not quite sure which one of us paid for it, it was quite confusing) since we needed a new co-op game to run through.   I wouldn't say that SC is one of my favorite series, per se, but the two games I have played I enjoyed quite a bit, and for whatever reason it's one of the few stealth series I enjoy (in comparison to, say, Metal Gear Solid). This being the 5th game, I have now played every other SC game: 1, Chaos Theory, and Conviction. If I had heard much about the game, I didn't really remember anything about it, other than it was supposed to be better than the 4th iteration was, and that Matt told me they had "streamlined" things. What that meant I was about to find out.
First of all, a run-down compared to Chaos Theory. The story is pretty much the same as all Tom Clancy novels/games--some evil group wants to do something evil to the US, main hero investigates to discover--SURPRISE--someone high up and personally known to the protagonist is involved. It's nothing special, but I don't think anyone plays any of the Clancy games for the story anyway (I still have no idea what was going on in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, despite having played it through in its entirety). The big shift is that Sam Fisher no longer is technically a "Splinter Cell," and rather a free agent who gets drawn back into "the game." The Penny Arcade guys made a comic that's quite honestly almost an accurate summary.

The tag line for this was "hey so this game is different because Sam no longer has fancy gadgets and has to use normal stuff!" Like many games that try and change from their formula, though... this one doesn't. The only thing even close to being like that is when Sam uses a broken car mirror instead of a fiber optic cable to look under doors. After that he slowly accumulates more gadgets, including a fiber optic cable the level afterwards and even eventually a sonar visor (instead of the usual thermal and night vision ones). However, this didn't really hinder the gameplay, it was just kind of silly. Oh and Sam wears normal clothing and has an EMP generating backpack. Go figure.

The actual gameplay shifts are as follows

• A brand new cover system, kind of like if Gears were more flexible and could dive
• A new "mark and execute" system, where you earn "executions" by doing melee takedowns that let you shoot multiple people in the head within split-seconds on one another
• A variety of guns and weapons to choose from and points in the game to restock your ammo
• Your pistol now has unlimited ammo
• The game has an outline after you get detected and escape showing where the enemies still think you are
• Instead of a clunky "light meter" on Sam's back, the screen adjusts based on how hidden you are: if you're in the open, normal lightning, if you're in pitch-black shadows, everything gets monotone.

If you're paying attention, you'll notice almost all of those shifts are combat based.

What's that, you say? Combat in my stealth-action game?

Unfortunately, yes. I can only assume based on the success of the Rainbow Six franchise as well as Gears, Modern Warfare, Halo, etc. that Ubisoft finally decided to make SC much more combat focused, and gave the player the chance to do so. This became very clear to me very quickly, when in the training level you had to shoot and kill everyone on the map (I'm not kidding) and the only "stealth" you were allowed to do was hop from cover to cover. 

Similarly, a lot of other levels feature sections like holding out against attacking enemies, groups of enemies who you can only get past by killing, etc. Because you're an outlaw and being hunted, there are actually groups of soldiers on most of the levels who know who you are, what you are, and are actively hunting for you (they also talk a lot, as again Penny Arcade mentioned... when I first read that I thought it was an exaggeration, but it's really not). This is a huge shift compared to CT, especially since I feel (this is just an estimate) that an average conviction level has 3-4x the number of enemies on it than the average CT map did.

The other big shift is that in order to "streamline" the game, they got rid of a lot of things, like being able to hide bodies and some of the acrobatic abilities (like split jumping). And often, combat makes things easier. There is no penalty for getting caught (except sometimes extra guards show up) and this was most apparent when doing a co-op level with Matt earlier. We kept doing a section over and over again, trying to be stealthy but kept getting caught, until at one point I got caught and just opened fire... and kept firing. We went into "kill everything" mode because we figured we had already lost, but it actually ended up winning us the section. The other big shift that seems minor is no more score screen: no more telling you how many alarms you set off, how many guards you killed, etc. I'm not sure how I feel about all this.

In its favor, the game has a persistent weapons and items upgrade system, a nice co-op campaign (where you play traditional Splinter Cells, although oddly enough there aren't any co-op actions like in CT, it's more like playing a harder single player campaign with a friend), and some extra fun modes. Hunter & Last Stand just have you clear out or hold out against enemies, while Infiltration actually addresses the stealth complaint and has you do maps, kill enemies and not be allowed to be detected (all of the previous can also be played with a teammate). There's a lot of content and customization here, which is nice.

The other big complaint I have though is, strangely enough, the difficulty. I played it on Realistic after seeing how combat heavy it is, but it was surprisingly easy. You get detected a lot easier, but as I said that's often not a downside, and you're still often hard to kill. Another striking example was one mission where I got detected right after a checkpoint, so I started running forwards blindly hoping to get killed so I'd restart.... and I managed to run all the way to the next checkpoint without dying. It was rather bizarre, and this was an exception rather than a rule, but it was a big shift compared to the CT guards who'd kill you almost instantly if you screwed up. If you do play Conviction, play it on Realistic, otherwise it's laughably easy (to test it out, I tried on Rookie, where I was able to run directly in front of a guard while in semi-shadow, he went "huh?" then kept going about his business).

Despite all my problems stated, I actually did enjoy the game quite a lot. It's an enjoyable experience if you're willing to try something new, and I actually applaud Ubisoft for trying to experiment with a franchise (see my review of Reach). It actually works quite well if you alter your expectations. If you're a die-hard stealth fan you'll likely be disappointed (although Infiltration mode with pistols-only and no gadgets is still worth a go) but if you're like me and enjoy both third-person shooters and stealth games, it's definitely worth a look since it's quite cheap now. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the franchise more closely in the future to see where Sam Fisher ends up next, and what he'll be doing there*.

-HTMC

*Probably assassinating Locust Queens.