Conviction is a great blend of lite stealth-action with the arcade-like pacing of R6: Vegas. A fun albeit casual game.
With this in mind, I am shocked that gamespot rated Conviction so low! The meta-score seems to have my back on this.
The single player campaign is around 8 hours in length, and is divided into about 10 levels with a functional checkpoint save system. There's normally only one or two rooms of baddies in between the saves, which makes reloading pretty fun, instead of being an annoying death 'penalty'. The game seems to lean on the casual side for other aspects as well.
The game is remarkably easy with the 'gadgets' you are given. In truth, the gadgets are mostly weapons, or cheap triggers to get out of sticky situations. Remote mines and frag grenades can remove the stealth aspect from the game completely, with how overpowered they are. The personal EMP field as well as the EMP nades and flashbangs take away any possible penalty from being detected, because after you stun the enemies with those gadgets, you have a few seconds to run for cover.
If AI were not so stupid when looking for you, maybe these gadgets would not be as cheap as they are. But the way the game works, getting spotted can work to your advantage, as the enemies funnel to that location, making them an easy target for spraying with your secondary automatic weapon, or a well placed remote mine.
If you are not already a hardcore Splinter Cell fan that gets all his thrills from unforgiving stealth based ops, I think you will really enjoy this game! I had a blast playing through the campaign, and it really made me crave for more.