• Format: Xbox 360 (version reviewed), PC
• Unleashed: Out Now (PC version out 30/04/10)
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Developer: Ubisoft
• Players: 1 – 2
• Site: http://splintercell.us.ubi.com/conviction/

Brutality is something that a lot of games characters can be quite keen to show off in cut scenes, but when it comes down to gameplay the end result is often just a simple case of point and click shooting adventures. This is definitely not the case with Splinter Cell Conviction, with the mysteriously un-aged Sam Fisher being the very definition of brutal.

Conviction has gutted a lot of what made the landmark series what it is and very bravely refined it to create a different kind of Splinter Cell. You still have the shadows; but instead of being a thin veil to mask your presence, they are now a deadly tool for taking down a room full of thugs. Whilst you can try to sneak by undetected, the game seems to have been designed for you to remove all witnesses if possible. This is reinforced further as Sam can no longer hide bodies, meaning that unless you take a guy out in a secluded area, it is very easy to spook the nasty men with guns.

This is where the heightened brutality comes into play with the genius mark and execute system. Simply put, first you need to take somebody down in hand to hand combat, which rather surprisingly still seems to result in them eating a bullet. This will earn you a mark and execute token, which means you can mark a limited number of enemies patrolling around a room and with the tap of a button, insta-headshot them all.

Mark and Execute - shooting guys in the head on autopilot

Now, this may sound like room clearing on easy mode, but it really doesn’t feel like it in the game. You need to earn each mark and execute with a close quarter take down, and you can only store one at a time meaning you have to think very tactically when you want to use one or save it for what might be around the corner. It becomes very handy for planning your assault or even as a valid escape tactic should you get busted whilst trying to sneak by. It not only serves as an excellent way to even the odds, but also looks unbelievably cool, letting you do things that you see in the movies which would be far too tricky to pull off without a slightly autonomous system.

With these tools in place it means that should your stealthing backfire, you can get out of most situations and execute your plan B fairly fluently and not need to reload an earlier checkpoint. This doesn’t mean that when you are spotted you can outgun enemies as the game still keeps the tradition of Sam Fisher being fairly squishy in the face of gunfire, but it is clearer how to outsmart the enemies with another new tool, Last Known Position.

If you are spotted not being the most subtle person in the world, it is a good idea to disappear into the shadows, round the corner or behind a wall. When you have eluded a guard’s field of vision, your last known position will be projected as a ghostly apparition, and the AI will plan an assault on this area, usually with a mix of suppressing fire and flanking manoeuvres.

Takedowns can also be used with the environment, such as windows and railings

The clever bit in this is that it actually lets you visualise to some extent what the enemy is thinking, allowing for you to come up with your own scheme to out-flank the flankers. At times it feels like Tom and Jerry, with Sam being the mouse that outwits the cat every single time, just with more neck snapping and bullet lobotomies than the lovable children’s cartoon.

The singleplayer campaign sees a bitter and twisted Sam Fisher on a path of revenge for his daughter’s murder, which provides a substantial reason for his new levels of rage and violence. The predator like gameplay is interspersed with some clever plot twists which are often beaten out of people in the new interrogation scenes. Certain characters are singled out as wells of information, allowing them to be grappled and then pummelled off of various surfaces during questioning sessions that make Jack Bauer look like a sugar coated kitten from Santa’s workshop. Locations can be turned into instant torture rooms which allow for heads to be slammed in doors, faces punched through urinals and faces burned on stoves. The only slight disappointment in these scenes are the invisible walls within the interrogation zone, which often feel like a limitation on your sadistic ingenuity when it comes to information extraction.

Co-op deserves a special mention as it might as well be its own game, featuring an entire prequel campaign for you and a mate to play through over Xbox Live or via splitscreen, which is really nice in a world dominated by online gaming. You play as agents Archer and Kestrel wearing more traditional looking Splinter Cell garb, chasing after stolen warheads that sets the background for the main adventure nicely. The controls and new abilities from the singleplayer carry over exactly the same to give another three to four hours of excellent stealth action gameplay.

Objectives are projected onto easy to read places, just to keep you in the loop

Other multiplayer modes include Hunter, seeing the both of you hunting down guards through different environments, Last Stand where both players must fight off waves of enemies as you defend a target, and Face-Off, a battle to kill more henchmen than your fellow player whilst also trying to take them out for extra points.

Splinter Cell Conviction is definitely a new direction for the series, which you need to be prepared for if you intend to slink about like you would in previous titles. The stealth elements are definitely in there, but now focus more on sneaky combat rather than complete evasion. As such, the controls are tighter giving you much more freedom and the new gameplay features really shine through. Criticisms are mainly petty, and a couple more hours of gameplay (you get 6 – 8 in singleplayer, depending on difficulty and your own skill) would have been nice; but make no mistake about it, Splinter Cell is back, more gripping and explosive than ever.

9/10

With the UK release of Splinter Cell Conviction almost ready to leap out of the shadows and stun us all on April 16, Ubisoft has released a final trailer for the game featuring Third Echelon boss, Tom Reed.

In the trailer, Reed gives us a nice monologue justifying what he does and why he isn’t so fond of Fisher, describing that agents on the job should be “foreign policy in action”, no matter what.

The game is looking extremely impressive and the wait for its release, which has seemed like an eternity, will finally end on Friday. Look for our review of the game coming soon.

Short and sweet. Not words that gamers like to associate with demos, but to be fair, they can’t all be like Darksiders and Just Cause 2. However short as it is though, the Splinter Cell: Conviction demo, just released on Xbox Live, makes up for it by being sweeter than 12 sugar packets liberally sprinkled over a slab of milk chocolate.

We’ve seen the videos and heard all of this talk about marking and executing, fisticuffs and rage fuelled trips to the loo, but is it anywhere near as smooth as Ubisoft want us to believe?

The first thing that will strike Splinter Cell veterans is how much the interface has changed. It seems that when Sam left Third Echelon, he also seemed to leave behind the scroll through action menus that laid out all of his options when interacting with items. There are still context sensitive actions, but they are now mapped to face buttons and considerably less fiddly.

Forget shooting from the hip, Sam shoots from the elbow

It all seems to be part of this new streamlined edition of Splinter Cell which has made everything a lot simpler, but still manages to hold on to important stealth mechanics. The slightly simplified control scheme is essential because, as we’re sure you can assess from the trailers, Sam Fisher is pissed off. He is angry and likes to react fast to take people down, something that the clunkier control schemes from the rest of the series would have severely hindered. Whereas previous outings have been punishing unless you avoided conflict, Conviction encourages violence and often forces you to make some split second decisions. You don’t always have the luxury of lurking in the shadows to make the perfect plan.

Mark and execute was something that we were originally quite sceptical of. In a blood stained nut shell, it basically lets you mark out up to three enemies, before a single button press lets Fisher take them all out in an instant flurry of suppressed gunshots. It sounds like super auto-aim and a really dumbed down way to skilfully take down guards. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

"Why can't I ever do hugging right!?"

It actually works brilliantly and allows for some interesting ways to silently take down an entire room. In one section of the demo we were unsure how to clear such an area of three guards from our elevated vantage point. Using mark and execute, each unfortunate enemy was tagged for death before we leapt over the railing into the middle of them and watched as Fisher dropped the room in three taps. The system is brilliant, allowing for Jack Bauer like super reflexes, which would be impossible inputting manually with the thumb sticks.

Last known position is another useful tool in Sam’s inventory of stalking and ambush techniques. Should you get spotted it’s no longer a case of insta-fail, game over, bullet sodomy that the series is semi-famous for. Instead a rather ghostly projection of yourself is plonked down where the enemy last saw you, and they will suppress the area with gunfire and attempt to move in on you there. This gives you the opportunity to slip out and counter ambush their ambush attempt, allowing for some nice distraction and deception gameplay that really helps open up your options in a pinch.

The cover system is nice and reactive as Sam will hurl himself in to cover when the left trigger is held down, giving you even more freedom as you don’t need to fumble any other buttons to detach yourself from a surface. A Gears of War style tap of the A button lets Sam move fast between bits of cover too, making it easier to close in on and escape from guards without being detected.

We thought Sam went too far when he made this guy sniff the puddle of wee

Aside from the expected sleuthing and killing that the main game will consist of; at the very start of the demo we also get a taste of the interrogation scenes. You’ve probably already watched a video of the brutal interrogation in the gents where some poor sod gets his head punched through a urinal, but here you get to play it out, moving between different objects to break the guy against. Really it’s just an interactive cut scene, but it’s satisfying in the same way the God of War quick time events are; just a bit more realistic.

The total play time may only come to 15 minutes, but can you really expect more from a demo? It perfectly showcases all of Mr Fisher’s new tricks and makes it very easy for you to look totally awesome pulling them off. There’s just slightly under a month until we get it here in the UK on April 16, but we can guarantee you will want to run through the demo at least twice, just to build your anticipation to trouser soiling levels.

More sexy Sam Fisher shenanigans, this time involving a shotgun that rather curiously does have some stealth properties to it, rather than just being a loud and proud death bringer.

The suppressed Spas-12 shotgun demonstrated in the trailer above comes as a bonus if you decide to pre-order the brilliant looking Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Nothing new seems to be shown off in the video, other than a bit of formerly abandoned, and now bullet bait hostile filled warehouse that we can only assume Mr Fisher will have to traverse on his magical adventure about bloody revenge and improvised espionage.

Whether you pre-order or not, you should be able to pick the game up on Xbox 360 and PC when it is finally released on April 16.

Sneaking and rubber suit enthusiasts rejoice, Splinter Cell Conviction’s co-op mode seems to have a lot of both and looks to pull them off very well.

The co op mode will act as the prologue to Sam Fisher’s main revenge fuelled adventure, where the players control an American and Russian agent on the trail of four ‘advanced warheads’.

The trailer shows two spies wearing more conventional Splinter Cell gear and generally working together to accomplish their mission. It’s looking a lot closer to Chaos Theory’s co op than Double Agent’s.

There are several interesting looking gameplay mechanics in the co op mode that can be pulled off as a team, such as a player with a good vantage point marking out the targets for the other player to shoot, with the brand new mark and execute move shown off in previous trailers.

The game will use a matchmaking system to organise who you fight alongside, but PC users will be disappointed to hear that this is another game that will not be giving us dedicated server support.

Every aspect of the game we have seen so far has impressed us, and as we edge forward to the February 23 release date, we continue to get more and more excited. This looks to be a great game for the first quarter of next year when it will be available on Xbox 360 and PC.