So finally, now that the demo has arrived and we get to play actual gameplay after 4 years of waiting, my demo preview is here.

Sam Fisher always was a nice guy with a chip on his shoulder, and this demo makes it clear, he’s the same guy.
He’s quick, agile and knows where to apply pressure, either in a gun fight, a fist fight or a particularly rough conversation.
And now he finally feels quick and agile when the player takes control, as his movements are smoother and more fluid. Replacing Sam’s, previously, creaky movements with quick delivery of action.
The Light and dark stealth concentration is still there, but has been relaxed to greatly increase the speed of the game. 
Feeling like a badass-spy when executing actions, is what this game is all about…

Marking enemies for execution is only viable if you manage to take out someone via a hand-to-hand confrontation/stealth kill. The demo makes it look like an easy function, so I’m unaware of if it’ll remain an easy function when the game gets more difficult, so consequentially, at a guess I’d say it does.
Although I’m excited by what has been presented so far.

Leaning against a wall for cover right next to a door can lead to Sam shooting through the wall and still killing the opposition as if the wall wasn’t even there.
And being near an object can lead to a few options becoming visibly available at the press of a button.
Selecting what to do with an object can range from anywhere between crouching against a low road block to hide from an enemies view, to jumping over it or watching a short animation where you kill someone and go back behind cover in a matter of seconds.
This leads to the odd mistake when you get into a situation where you have to get away or are just trying to do something really quickly and end up doing something else of an entirely different nature.
The whole time I could just imagine people grinding their teeth with frustration whilst playing a 7-9 hour campaign, because Sam crouched against a wall instead of leaping over it and gets shot to death whilst attempting to correct the error…
Having to constantly to be aware of what you’re pressing within this small timeframe could ruin the experience.

In order to crouch, you have to click the LB button , and since crouching was such a big component of previous games in this series, there’s no longer a speed difference when crouched… its now just one speed.
And normally you won’t make much noise, regardless of how much or how little you’re pushing the right stick to move faster or slower. This again, holding true to keeping this game one part stealth and one part action, as it adds to the whole run, gun and then hide feel, that the developers have gone for since they first started working on this game.
Be assured though that once you get comfortable with the controls, a lot of the clunkiness will fall away... it’s not entirely gone but it has been significantly reduced.

The gun fights feel visceral, reminding me of a couple of scenes from the Bourne Identity, etc, movie series.
And I assume that at some point there’ll be a silencer for your guns in the full campaign.
But for this demo the guards will know you’re there if you shoot even once and miss just one target in a room.
So, depending on your preferences in games, this can be a good or bad thing.

And finally, the Demo gives away some issues that the Splinter Cell series has always had, because while I was testing how they reacted to me and found that all the guards, due to the amount of noise I’d made, knew I was there but still didn’t change their positions much... Instead of bunching together and searching for me like a real group of trained bad guys would; they generally just stayed where they were and shouted things like “where is he?!” and “I’m going to kill him when I see him!”
Leading me to assume that the enemy AI’s are either dense or their feet have been cemented to the ground.

In summary though, once the difficulty goes up in later parts of the full game, I predict the enemy AI will improve and I’ll hopefully be incorrect about some of my criticisms.
But for now though, I’ll say that if you loved the original series, you’ll love this one as well.
On the other hand, if you hated the trial and error of previous games, based on what I’ve seen in the demo, I still suggest that you try this game as most of the trial and error is gone. So if you do screw up, it's on you to kill everyone, have a blast doing it, and then move on…
A lot has been changed in Conviction and I think it’s for the better.
No more corridor crouch-fests! (Thank goodness!)
I give the demo 4 stars out of 5. 

With the great execution and delivery that I've seen in this demo, if the full game is like this then it still needs some fine tuning over the next few weeks, but generally, it’s good to go and alot of fun.