Difficulty:

Very Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Rip-off"

Question: Define Splinter Cell. Answer: A stealth action video game that features Sam Fisher (an agent of Third Echelon who gets the job done without anyone knowing), his multi-vision tri-lamped goggles, his jack-of-all-trades SC-20K and awful music.

According to this definition, Conviction is no longer Splinter Cell because none the features mentioned above except the horrible music are in this game. The new Sam Fisher dresses like Jason Borne and imitates Jason Borne. No more strict stealth, whistling or soft means of causing attention, knocking out guards, hiding corpses, lock-picking or hacking anything. Instead, there are intense fight scenes which you find in Borne movies: Fisher drops a flash bang, enters, breaks one's neck, shoots four others and vanishes. Enemies are either fully healthy or brutally dead. Any bang that Fisher makes is always a world-rocking one.

All of these aren't bad at all, if they were well implemented. They are not. Take user interface for instance. Action button (Space key in PC) has a lot of responsibility. So, the player runs towards a light switch and presses the action button, expecting the lights to go off with no consequences; but the game interprets the button differently and so Fisher jumps through a nearby window, shattering it in process and alerting every single enemy in existence, which are always armed to teeth. Cover button (Right-click in PC) on the other hand, has another quirk: Stealth games demand the player to stay in cover and be patient. That means Cover button must be held down for a long time. Apparently, the developers have by mistake made Sprint button a toggle button. When tapped once, Fisher always runs. Another tap causes Fisher to always walk. But there is no on-screen indicator; so, when Fisher stands up from a crouching position, there is no telling whether the pressure of a directional button will cause him to run (and so alert everyone) or walk softly.

The game has almost no graphic splendor. If you are a good player, then you will likely spend 95% of your time with the whole screen turned black and white. In addition, the game now shows mission objectives and various black-and-white in-game cutscenes on walls or such surfaces; a very bad idea.

Fisher himself has lost both IQ and experience. Being a man who once told his boss that being a CIA agent and being a terrorist aren't exactly mutually exclusive roles (see Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow) now expresses deep surprise to see Anna Grimsdotir playing double agent.