Splinter Cell Conviction

Splinter Cell: Conviction … much more fun than any of its predecessors

Despite starring one of the modern video game world's most memorable characters – the fearsome, gadget-wielding stealth-killing machine Sam Fisher – Splinter Cell has recently resembled a franchise in need of euthanasia. Cannily, though, Ubisoft has pinched one of Hollywood's 21st-century obsessions, and treated that franchise to a reboot. Splinter Cell: Conviction is the result, and it marks a massive return to form.


PCXBox 360Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: ConvictionUbisoft
Fisher's fifth outing sees him pursuing his own agenda, free from the shackles of his previous employer, Third Echelon, and obsessed with finding out the truth about his daughter's death in an apparent hit-and-run. The first level, in which Fisher hunts the man responsible in Malta, introduces you to a number of new game mechanics. The most impressive of these is Mark and Execute – which, once you have charged it up by taking an enemy down with a hand-to-hand kill, lets you mark up to four enemies (the number is determined by your gun, and how extensively you have upgraded it), then take them all out at the touch of a button. Fisher also benefits from Last Known Position, a ghost image of him that appears when he is detected, which draws enemy fire. Instructional text and back-story-filling videos sometimes appear projected onto surfaces in the game, which looks a bit messy at first, but you soon get used to it.

Conviction also has a gloriously well-sorted cover system, which lets Sam cycle between hiding places and, of course, the usual plethora of pipes and so on for him to climb, plus chandeliers and the like to shoot so that they come crashing down on enemies. The idea of the new mechanisms is to make the game more fluid and dynamic, eliminating the need to spend ages cowering in dark corners waiting for guards to walk past, and it certainly achieves that aim. Whereas previous Splinter Cells were extremely hard to negotiate and required enormous reserves of patience, Conviction is much more forgiving – the satisfaction you derive from it comes from executing stylish takedowns, rather than merely making it to a checkpoint without dying too many times. The franchise's more hardcore following may find that a disappointment (although you can crank up the difficulty level), but it does open up Splinter Cell to a less obviously masochistic audience.

Conviction looks great – colour bleeds out to black and white when Sam is hidden – and the best gadgets are present and correct, along with a great choice of weaponry. The action quickly shifts to the US (the denouement taking place in an immaculately constructed virtual White House), and the story is studded with the usual twists and conspiracies. There are a few quibbles: the single-player campaign, following the current trend, isn't particularly long and includes a war-flashback level every bit as pointless as Modern Warfare 2's Moscow Airport level (although not as controversial).

But, like Modern Warfare 2, you get bonuses over and above the single-player campaign, with an entire prequel that must be played co-operatively by two people, and Deniable Ops, which can be played by one or two people, and let you choose to clear levels of enemies, defend electromagnetic pulse weapons from waves of enemies or face off against each other. Splinter Cell purists may protest that Conviction is wrong to do away with the legendarily unforgiving nature of the franchise. But the rest of us will find that it's much more fun to play than any of its predecessors.