"Aww, getting all sneaky, sneaky." Splinter Cell Conviction, One Less in the Backlog Review

I am the shadow.

I am not one for these Splinter Cell games, I told myself long ago when these were all the rage on the OGXbox. At the time sneaking around in the darkness just seemed counter to the fun that video games were about. Blowing sh*t up and running in like a tank. Bethesda has has had a lot to do with my thoughts about stealth games. Fallout and Elder Scrolls were always to your advantage when you could hide in the shadows and pick off your opposition one by one. It feels good to inflict silent death. Splinter Cell is a spy stealth action game, a little of everything.

Splinter Cell was a new direction in a game I have never played before; stealth game play with some proper AI. You could a shoot a dude in Skyrim and the guy next to him would be, "Hey where'd Chuck go?" In Splinter Cell they look for you, when and where they see dead bodies. I know this game isn't like previous entries, where you had to hide bodies, which gives it the always moving forward action vibe. Like a ninja in the shadows, you strike and retreat, strike and retreat, one by one.

I didn't follow the story all that well, as I hadn't played previous titles and how Sam Fisher came to be who he is. Fisher is super spy, deceived, deceived and then deceived again is how it goes. Lied to about his missing daughter, supposedly dead, and now alive; Fisher must find her. Kill his betrayers, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The game play in this game is really quite satisfying in a way I didn't think I would like. First, is a nice feature of marking targets. Each gun has a number of targets it can mark for instant head shot kill. First you must melee an enemy, then you just hit Y, and slo-mo kills of each marked target. Makes it real easy to clear a room when you only have to find that one straggler away from the pack and hit a button to get the rest. You also get a lovely assortment of toys in your cute little backpack sling. Frags, EMP, flash bangs, sticky cameras, remote mines and a straight up EMP pulse, when you absolutely need to stop everybody in the room, in their tracks. The cameras have little sound effects to draw enemies near, then detonate. You get a snake cam to look under doors and scan a room. Sonar glasses to see everything on the other side of the wall. So much fun.

Most of the time you feel like Spider-man crawling up pipes and ledges, because the enemies rarely look up. Taking out whole rooms of patrolling goons while hanging from a pipe. Some levels do offer some challenge and a little strategy to maneuver. Motion activated lights were my downfall on one level, "F*ck who turned on the lights!" You get to do a little spying, a nice chase sequence, but mostly you are a man on a mission. I kept trying to get all sneaky, sneaky and clear rooms as cleanly as possible; but in this game it isn't all that important to stealth kill everyone.

There is a nice challenge system that gives you the funds to upgrade your weapons and gadgets, having mostly to do with stealth kills and doing it efficiently. The game also has a very in-depth CO-OP missions multi-player, but alas, no partner. I guess you can still do them solo.

Overall this a very solid and short campaign. It was a nice change of pace, from what I have always played in the past. The target and mark feature, the simple and useful gadgets to make you feel like a realistic 007. It had really cool feature where the objectives were projected on the walls. It was like someone had set up a micro projector down the halls leading to your next objective. Really didn't get the story, but would give this a GOOD INU. I've seen that a new installment in the series is coming out, would be interesting to see if they keep the same formula.

SWS out.