Sam Fisher has returned to wreak angry vengeance upon 3rd Echelon for the death of his daughter. Ubisoft’s latest story spares no expense at dragging you into the epic chaos created by 3rd Echelon and other terrorist groups. While allowing you to tear through soldiers using your honed stealth skills, Conviction does a good job on showing you through Sam’s past , his reasons for leaving 3rd Echelon, and a web of betrayal that keeps you interested in the current goings on.

The single player story does become.. well predictable is the word I’d have to use, grinding through the same patchy situations in area after area, began to felt very wash, rinse, repeat for me. There’s the guy who’s away from the pack, stealth kill him. Mark and execute the other 3, and pick off the last guy left standing. When they’re scared the soldiers yelled the same 6 taunting phrases at me for most of the single player, and when the 3rd Echelon troops came into the picture they had the same few phrases as well. I’m willing to concede that I’m a boring player of the game, not utilizing the myriad of gadgets given to you to dig out of situations, but I simply didn’t find the need to use anything besides the starting pistol and a shotgun, and for the most part the shotgun didn’t get too much use. As far as the story is concerned, the epic twists become quickly predictable after about the 3rd person betrays you. You quickly catch a theme of don’t trust anybody, and expect the worst. This attitude handed me major clues through-out the rest of the story, it was still enjoyable, just not as shocking as I expected.

The active cover system worked very well for the most part, and the control scheme reminiscent of Ghost Recon was enjoyable. Sam’s clever quips after a tough fight mocking either the Black Arrow soldiers, or the player(I got mocked a lot for my sloppy tactics) were also quite enjoyable. I also found myself really digging the last known position system, being able to see where the enemies were looking and sneak away made it easier to plan tactics to attack the enemy, and for the most part their AI was smart enough to find me. Occasionally they walked into a wall, or their hand stuck through the wall giving away their position, hooray for collision glitches! From start 2 finish I only had 2 instances of hands through walls, which for the amount of chaos ensuing at any given moment is completely ok with me, even Call of Duty had people getting stuck to stuff during single player.

If I must complain a little more, the interrogations though awesome, also became repetitive. Sam had the same animations for each interrogation, and you utilized the same tactics against everyone you interrogate.  Squeeze throat, bang head into wall, break nose, kill…  It was fun for the first two, but I would have loved to see more creativity with the savage beatings Sam was dishing out.

Moving to the positive the soundtrack was  a noticeably strong part of the game. Solid orchestration changing with the situation you may have Sam stuck in. Loud trumpet filled pieces for combat, soft violin pieces during exploration, and an epic lovers-style theme for your breaching of the White House, that’s right, THE WHITE HOUSE.

I will also say that there was a lot of detail for the separate cooperative missions provided with Conviction, and a separate list of achievements as well for playing through them. This in my eyes in Splinter Cell’s saving grace. Those of us that game alone, or refuse to make friends on xbox live will burn the single player and not be very excited about what’s to come next, but with cooperative added in, the game takes on a whole new life. The stealth set-ups capable using the active cover, mark and execute, and creative kills with two players is exciting, and a blast. We found ourselves laughing, yelling, and setting up creative stealth kills of the organized crime jerks found pesky by 3rd Echelon. THIS GAME IS GREAT FOR COOP FANS! In some ways it felt that they built it more for the coop than for the single player, the story was likeable, well written and although predictable still solid in the single player, and after finishing it the cooperative was refreshing and fun.

After the last six months of blockbusters Splinter Cell isn’t perfect, but it’s a game that should not be overlooked either.

Liked:

• Solid cooperative play giving me a reason to bring the friends over again.
• Good orchestration on the soundtrack.
• Mark and execute system worked flawlessly

Disliked:

• Repetetive voice overs from vilains. It felt like they had six total phrases.
• Predictable placement of enemies during single player.
• Sam Fisher bitching about his daughter constantly

Score:

• Visuals – 8
• Audio – 8
• Replay – 8
• Gameplay – 7
• Overall -7.75