Sam Fisher walks into a vast marble clad lobby occupied by a single receptionist sitting behind a desk capable of seating a dozen more. Rain beats on the windows, and a transport helicopter sits on the helipad outside. A brief conversation ensues, the secretary informs Sam politely but firmly that they are closed for the day. Sam tells her he’s there to see Reed.
“I’m sorry sir, Mr Reed is unavailable. Can I ask who you are?”
“My names Sam Fisher,” he growls, “I used to work here.” So saying Sam pulls out two triggers and detonates the C4 he planted on the generators earlier, sending the lobby into deep orange emergency lighting mode.
Control is given to the player. At this point I was thinking what a good badass scene this was, then I realised I wasn’t sure where I was meant to be taking my gruff secret agent friend, and it was only as the security door rolled shut I realised I was meant to get through it before it closed. Restart checkpoint
Sam Fisher walks into a vast marble clad lobby occupied by a single receptionist sitting behind a desk capable of seating a dozen more...
“My names Sam Fisher,” he growls, “I used to work here.” So saying Sam pulls out two triggers and detonates the C4 he planted on the generators earlier, sending the lobby into deep orange emergency lighting mode.
This time I knew what to do, vaulted the desk and slid under the door, at which point a guard shot poor Sam’s face clean off. Restart checkpoint.
Sam Fisher walks into a vast marble clad lobby occupied by a single receptionist sitting behind a desk capable of seating a dozen more...
“My names Sam Fisher,” he growls, “I used to work here.” So saying Sam pulls out two triggers and detonates the C4 he planted on the generators earlier, sending the lobby into deep orange emergency lighting mode.
Vault desk, slide under door, EMP pulse to stun guard, break his neck. Wait, there’s another door I need to get to in time? Oh for the love of… Restart checkpoint.
Sam Fisher walks into a vast marble clad lobby occupied by a single receptionist sitting behind a desk capable of seating a dozen more...
“My names Sam Fisher,” he growls, “I used to work here.” So saying Sam pulls out two triggers and detonates the C4 he planted on the generators earlier, sending the lobby into deep orange emergency lighting mode.
Three more times I watched this scene. The first time it was an excellent introduction to the level, the second time it was passable, by the fifth it lacked impact. It’s a simple fix: put a checkpoint after the cutscene so that if the player fails the section, it goes straight into gameplay when the checkpoint restarts. It is bizarre oversights like this one that pepper Splinter Cell: Conviction, and left just enough of a bad taste in my mouth that it marred my enjoyment of what is for the most part a very good game.
The fifth game in the now venerable stealth series, Conviction picks up the story of all around American badass Sam Fisher more or less where Double Agent left off. Sam gets dragged into doing some work, discovers his dead daughter may well have been retconned back to life and agrees to help out his old Third Echelon friends dealing with a conspiracy which, of course, goes all the way to the top. One of the things I found strange about the story of Conviction was just how ready people seemed to be to provoke, wind up, and use a man who has repeatedly proven himself one of the most cold-blooded and efficient sneaky murderers in the world. That he doesn’t shoot at least two or three of his ‘friends’ in the first act, at least just in the knee or something, is a miracle.
Ubisoft have added a few narrative tricks in the game, which were touted heavily in the lead up to its release. Objectives are projected, bat signal style, onto nearby walls and buildings so as not to take the player out of the level. When targets are interrogated, the information they give up are projected in lo-fi cinema reels onto the walls of wherever the interrogation is taking place. For the first couple of levels this results in an experience where there is a seamless transition between scenes and information is presented in a clean, integrated fashion. From the third level or so onwards either the developers ran out of time or found it too difficult to do their exposition this way and for most of the game voice overs and cut scenes between levels are used to tell the story. They’re well done, but after the slick presentation of the start it is a let down.
Having objectives displayed in-game is a surprisingly slick addition
One of the hallmarks of Splinter Cell games has always been its stealth components, and although these are still present in Conviction, there are only one or two very small sections in which being detected will fail a mission. Being detected mostly results in all the guards being alert, which is no impediment to finishing the mission and allows Sam to use some of his new tricks. Whether this reduced focus on being a ghost during missions is a positive or a negative depends on your attachment to previous games in the series, but overall it does a good job punishing a lack of stealth without forcing the issue. Sam’s stealth abilities are standard fare for the series: he can crouch to walk quietly, hide in shadows, shimmy up and down drainpipes and hide behind cover. He can also silently break necks, pull guys out of windows to their deaths and drop like Batman from places of concealment in a move the game refers to as ‘Death From Above’.
That guy's probably okay. It's only two levels up.
The game renders in black and white when Sam is in shadow to indicate his invisibility, and a giant red circle appears in the middle of the screen when an enemy detects him, so it is simple enough to track stealth. It is a lot more difficult to tell when a certain action will cause a guard to sense something is amiss. For the most part the various guards, mercenaries and assorted villains behave as you would expect or perhaps a little more stupid, which is fine. However every so often shooting out a light directly above a guard’s head will go unnoticed, other times flicking a light switch will cause five guards three rooms away to start cursing like pirates.
Because of their focus on stealth, the early Splinter Cell games in particular implied that Sam Fisher was a genuine badass, but when he was forced into a gunfight it became clear he wasn’t sure which end of the gun to use. The third person action shooting is still very poor, but it has to be to make stealth a better option than running and gunning. Conviction addresses this discrepancy by adding two very nice new gameplay mechanics: last known position and mark and execute. Last known position works by displaying an outline of Sam where the bad guys believe him to be. They then flank and shoot until either they re-spot Sam or a quite long period of time passes. Mark and execute allows you to mark targets by tapping the right bumper, up to five depending on the weapon in use. Performing a melee kill charges the execute bar, which is drained by tapping Y. Tapping Y causes Sam to one shot kill every bad guy marked, making it an excellent way to clear rooms quickly.
See dude. Kill dude. It's the Sam Fisher way.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the Michael Bay-esque escalation of the plot or because of the inevitable higher polish on the earlier levels, but in the last third of the game feel more as though it belongs in something like F.E.A.R, and not just because the levels take place in a series of abandoned office complexes. Conviction is a stealth action game, not an action stealth game, and these corridor shooter sections are an exercise in frustration because the aiming is not accurate enough and the responsiveness not high enough for high paced shooting. Often it boils down to killing a wave of enemies, waiting to die when the next wave show up to see where they come from, and repeating.
Unlike Double Agent before it, Conviction is a game with no moral grey areas, or at least Sam is happy working in the grey areas and redecorating them red. The sole exception to this is a binary choice made at the very end of the game. I won’t spoil it except to say it involves killing somebody. Considering the number of people Sam Fisher has killed to that point in the game, the suggestion that he would have some personal struggle over killing the person in question is laughable. As a result it only has the impact of determining which 10 point achievement gets unlocked. I recommend choosing one, restarting the checkpoint that starts close to the choice, choosing the other one and get both the achievements for a few moments work.
Splinter Cell: Conviction was never going to be a bad game. It is a long running series that started with one of the most important games to come out for the original XBox, and has been skillfully managed by the team at Ubisoft Montreal over its various iterations. The question was always whether it was going to be a good game or a great game. In the end it is a good game with some great ideas that missed the critical final level of polish.
Addendum: There is also a co-op multiplayer mode which Jason tells me is very good. I haven’t played it so I can’t comment.
