By Sam Coles:
The Splinter Cell series has been up and down with
the fantastic first entry to the average sequel Pandora Tomorrow and then it
went up in quality again with the excellent Chaos Theory. Conviction was a bit
of a downgrade from the superb Double Agent and here me out it’s not a
completely terrible game but it misses the point the of the series and throws
stealth out the window in some parts.
Splinter Cell Conviction takes place a few years
after Double Agent and Sam Fisher has gone into hiding after the stuff he did
as an undercover agent in the last game as he killed his best friend and
commanding officer. He then found by terrorist and his old agency where then
finds out there was more to his daughter’s death and goes on the run with
support from his old co-worker Grimm. The game’s story feels like a video game adaptation
of the film Taken as Sam is a retired government agent who is looking for his
daughter and he’ll do anything to get his way whether it be torturing people
who good or bad. That is my biggest problem with this game Sam Fisher comes
across as a complete psychopath compared to the usual calm and charismatic
persona from prior games.
Gameplay is what you expect from any Splinter Cell
game you sneak around with your silenced pistol and gun down enemies without
others noticing, however the stealth seems to take a backseat in this game and
relies on action set pieces to excite the player but it misses the point of the
series. We don’t need action set pieces to excite us sneaking around and having
a guard brush past as you hold your breath and hope he doesn’t see you is
exciting enough.
You have various weapons you can use but there is no
point as your starting silenced pistol is accurate enough and it has infinite ammo,
which sucks all tension and planning out of a mission as you can run around
like a mad man and gun down everything that moves. There is none of the unique
gadgets from the other games and I know what people are going to say that he is
no longer working for NSA, but it would have been cool if he had access to some
sort of black market. This game has been stripped back in terms of features.
There is a new feature and to be honest it is a bit
pointless they should have made them cutscenes and this is the interrogations
scenes where you can get information in many creative ways by slamming their
head into a toilet etc. Again this is pointless this should have been a
cinematic and you do get the option to kill them or not but this has no impact
on the story, it gives you the illusion of choice.
The controls are very clunky it took me a while to
get use to them as I have been playing Blacklist which has a standard third
person control scheme. Instead of pressing the left trigger you have to press
forward on the left analogue stick to peek out of cover and shoot, this feels
incredibly stiff and it is very annoying. Fisher’s movement in generally feels
a bit stilted and stiff he doesn’t feel natural to control when he is moving
around and it’s bizarre a game that came out a generation before has better
controls compared to this game.
Graphically the game looks good character models
have great animation when it comes to facial animation with decent details on
clothing. The environments look great with decent lighting. What I don’t like
about the visuals is the black in white effect when you’re in the shadows as
they wanted to make the HUD minimalistic, but I would have rather had a bar to
show how visible I am.
Splinter Cell Conviction is not a very good game and
is probably the worst game in the series; it’s available on Xbox 360 and PC. It’s
really cheap for a reason, pick it up if you’re curious but I do not recommend
it.
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