Well, finished Conviction yesterday. It was good fun, even if the stealth mechanics feel very watered-down. Everytime I thought to myself that I would try to ghost my way through the next segment the game just seemed to say "NO!" and instead forced to take at least one guard out. During the last missions I basically thought "Oh, well... fuck it" and marked and killed almost everyone. While the new mechanics work well, I don't think this was the best direction to take the series in. There is undoubtedly another sequel coming and I hope Ubisoft will let me be a modern-day ninja again. One can always dream.
 
Immediately afterwards I popped Chaos Theory in and realised how much I'd missed the old Sam Fisher. Some cheesy lines (especially from the guards) aside, that game has some pretty good writing. Michael Ironside really delivers. The banter between Fisher and Grim makes me laugh all the time. It gets even funnier when Lambert decides to join in and lightens the tone of the game up a bit. Having one meter for visibility and one for noise (much like the Thief games) was a brilliant design decision. Keeping an eye on them while stalking a blissfully oblivious mercenary keeps you on your toes. You know you're playing a great sneak-em-up when you're constantly whispering to yourself to avoid getting detected. Like Arkham Asylum, CT has some great opportunities to mess with the AI. Whistling, throwing stuff at them and scaring the crap out of them before finally grabbing them from the shadows is always fun. Or you could just grab them and throw them into the ocean.