Splinter Cell: Conviction (PC, 2010)

Written by JC DuBois | 07 May 2010

Overview

Let me start this off by admitting that all in all, major stealth games are generally not my cup of tea.  It's not that I can't play through a game stealthily – quite the opposite, I usually take every chance I can to avoid/eliminate an opponent from as far away as possible, and there's a reason that nine times out of ten, the sniper rifle is my preferred weapon.  There's a difference, though, between that, and a 'major' stealth game, that being that in a 'major' stealth game the goal isn't so much to eliminate your enemies as it is to complete your objectives without alerting the entire world to your presence.  That's something difficult to do when you bang down the door and start spraying the enemy contingent with pulse rifle fire.  So, with that in mind, I decided to take a look at Splinter Cell: Conviction after playing through the demo and being pleasantly surprised by it.

Review

So, where to really start with this one?  See, like I said earlier, I'm not usually a fan of games where the primary focus is on stealth over eliminating the enemy in a more permanent fashion.  I've also never actually played a Splinter Cell game before, either, so I came into this game with a purely blank slate.  With that said, Conviction picks up three years after Sam's daughter Sarah was killed in a car accident.  Sam's gone rogue and is following up a lead in Malta when he's contacted by Grim and tipped off that some local heavies are coming for him.  I don't want to cover too much of even the prelude of the story here, so suffice to say that the events following serve just to break the ice on the main storyline.

Sam Fischer, for those not familiar with the series, was a 'Splinter Cell' agent, was, in fact, the very first such agent fielded by Third Echelon.  Highly trained as a solo covert operative working deep behind enemy lines with no real external support, his purpose is not to mass obliterate an enemy force, but to execute surgical espionage strikes and intelligence gathering, to get in, get his job done, and get back out without the enemy ever knowing he's been there.  After the death of his daughter, and the events that followed, he left Third Echelon and went rogue, searching for those who'd killed her.

So, how did this game do, story wise?  Well, like I said, I'm not familiar with the established Splinter Cell canon, so I have to admit that I was expecting to be somewhat confused by the overall premise.  Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the writers did a good job of bundling up the information and backstory that we needed to know right into the first couple chapters of the plot.  Splinter Cell was originally conceived by Tom Clancy, and though he's long since sold the main story on to Ubisoft Montreal, his name still appears on the game and you still get a good feel of the world framework that he originally built for the game universe.  With the backstory out of the way, the writers got down to a good, solid, concise plotline that probably should have felt too short, but instead came off as compact, but well paced.  It probably would have helped had I played through the Co-Op missions as well, which I understand serve as a sort of prelude to the main game storyline, but the single player story stands well on its own, and while the ending was perhaps a little flat and abrupt, overall I thought that it was pretty damn good.

Of course, a big part of the draw of Conviction's story was the excellent voice acting, the least of which was the big reason I decided to give the game a shot, even though I'd never played the others: Michael Ironsides.  I admit it, the guy's one of my favorite actors, both live and voice acting, and he does a damned good job of it.  The rest of the voice cast is no slouch either, featuring Claudia Besso returning as Anna Grimsdottir, as well as Michelle Boback, Robert Crooks, and Holly G. Frankel among others.  On the soundtrack side of things I was somewhat less impressed.  There really wasn't a lot of music to be found in Splinter Cell: Conviction, with the most prominently featured themes the ones used to represent various stages of enemy alertness and knowledge of your current location.  There were a couple other pieces that caught my ear, and what music there was is generally pretty good sounding, it's just that the soundtrack wasn't a particularly prominent feature.

Graphically speaking I thought Conviction was great.  Visuals are sharp and clean, and nicely detailed, especially on a rig that can handle that sort of detail like mine.  They also made nice use of black and white to indicate when you're properly hidden in the shadows, dulling the world around you but making targetable NPCs and objects pop because they remain in full color.  Overall I was happy with the graphics, and didn't really notice any major glitches beyond a couple strange shadows here and there that could probably be written up to driver issues.  I was also happy to see the very solid handling of lighting and realistic response to shooting out a light to create some extra shadows.  In a game where stealth and working in the shadows is so important, especially when you get yourself into trouble, it's always nice to see the designers at least making sure that when you shoot out a light, it actually gets dark and the shadows change.

The gameplay itself I found to be – for the most part – nice and tight.  You have a pretty good array of weaponry to chose from as it becomes unlocked, and a nice variety of grenades and gadgets too.  I will admit to not being too happy about how the grenades reacted to being tossed – precision placement of frags, flashbang and EMP grenades was nearly impossible, because all too often they'd bounce strangely or slide far beyond where they actually landed.  I'm not asking for them to act like bullets, mind you, but Conviction could have used some additional tuning of the grenade physics.  Fortunately, sticky cams and remote mines work nearly as well and are infinitely more controllable, tending to actually land in the vicinity of where they're aimed.

Sam himself is nicely responsive to the controls.  When you're holding down the cover button, prompts appear that will help you move quickly and effectively from cover point to cover point, instead of trying to scramble unnoticed on your own from spot to spot.  Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation actually took offense to this, complaining that it felt more like the game was doing everything for you, but honestly I found this to be a pretty standard gameplay mechanic that helped to avoid some of the really annoying deaths that you tend to run into in games like this.  It's also important to note that the cover prompts only appear when you're holding the cover button – when moving normally you don't get them.  I did find turning to be a little bit sluggish – not horribly so, and I probably could have boosted the mouse sensitivity a bit to fix it, but that would have effected aiming.

The Big New Mechanic of Conviction is the 'Last Known Position' system, in which when an enemy has fully detected you, a shadowy outline of your position appears where you were when you were detected.  Any enemies in the area will advance and fire upon this point until they've confirmed you're no longer there with a visual inspection, so it's possible to – for instance – intentionally let yourself be seen to draw enemies in, while you yourself move to a new position, ready to spring a trap on them – say a remote mine, or perhaps just slipping through a newly unguarded doorway unnoticed.

There's also the Mark and Execute system, which allows you to tag a certain number of targets – depending on your gun – and rapidly eliminate them.  The catch is, while you can mark targets at any time, you have to perform a melee kill to activate the actual execute order.  On the other hand, there's also a visual indicator of a marked target that you can see at all times indicating position, which proves handy when you're moving around and don't necessarily have a line of sight on the NPC.  You can also mark things like explosive barrels and hanging objects to be destroyed, allowing for quite elaborate, quick-kill scenarios.

Overall

So, for never having actually played a Splinter Cell game before, I found myself pleasantly surprised by Conviction, enjoying it a fair bit more thoroughly than I'd really have expected to.  I'm always happy to find a good solid story, and it's no surprise that a series built on a Tom Clancy framework has a good story, but Conviction just plain played well, too.  The stealth wasn't cumbersome, like I'd expected, but instead felt comfortable and intuitive.  The Mark & Execute system made it much easier to deal with a game that depends on headshots if you want to reliably take down an enemy, but also served to help you maintain stealth when you wanted to go that route too.  The graphics are great, and the voice acting is excellent, even if the soundtrack left something to be desired.  Overall, I'd call this game recommended for stealth fans, and a good bet for fans of action or a good, solid conspiracy story.