Splinter Cell: The Uncharted edition
Splinter Cell Conviction continues the Tom Clancy series pushing the stealth action into a new direction. Its a risky move but its the right direction. Unfortunately it doesn't follow this direction all the time and you can tell the developers are trying to keep up with other action games when it starts to throw the player in more action sequences than stealth sequences.
Like other games in the series, the game follows Sam Fisher who gets back into working ex-echelon people who need help disarming EMP threat. Along the way he finds this connects closely with the killing of his daughter which makes things more personal for him. As you can tell in my attempt to explain the story, i didn't care much about the story. There was nothing of interest in terms of the terrorist stuff. All i knew was there was something to keep the plot going and i had to take down these terrorist. Other parts of the plot were more interesting and kept me going but i won't explain what those plots are cause it will be full of spoilers.
But the story isn't the big focus, its the gameplay and Sam Fisher is a much different man. You would think that him getting older would make him more thoughtful in his action but nope, he is a very agile old man. Conviction feels great, the controls take some time getting used to but when you get to know them its good. The new stealth mechanics are great and i found myself really enjoying all the stealth options. Mark and Execute is a great feature that sounds like a overpowering tool but is countered by the fact that you only have one once you melee a person. The mark and execute feature a great gameplay addition really giving the player a way to think situation through and executing in a awesome spy like way. There are a lot of guns in the game and all of them are useless except your pistols. The pistols are very powerful and i ended up using it throughout the game.
One of the biggest faults of the game is level design. Some levels should not have been there. Towards the end, it felt like an action game with stealth like gameplay which i didn't use in those levels. I ended up playing this like uncharted or gears of war 3rd person cover shooter. It felt like towards the end there were too many enemies and not enough options to take them down stealthily i ended up throwing grenades everywhere and shooting the rest. I felt they should have taken more time to design the levels more thoroughly (much like the first game).
The co-op missions are fun to play with a friend. Although i agree with Jeff in the fact that the co-op missions can be played alone and there is no need to have another person, but it's still fun. Co-op is pretty much fun when the two of you are messing around or do some awesome double execute features.
Considering this game is a heavily modded Unreal 2.5 engine, it looks pretty good. Sure its a little jaggy but it does the job well. The whole projected text is a cool concept but it gets a little annoying when they try to show video, at times i didn't know what i was watching. I feel Ubisoft didn't need to advertise this feature soo much. Its cool, but not game changing.
The sound is fine nothing great and nothing bad. Ironside does sound drunk but its what you have come to expect in the splinter cell series. The effects sound fine too. My only quarrel is when the guards start taunting you. They just keep talking and won't shut up. I guess this was how ubisoft forced you into shooting these people fast.
Splinter Cell is a good game that had the right direction but was not executed correctly. When the game is at its best, its great really giving the player the feel of a very agile and aggressive spy. But it soon falters from its stealth form and begins to be a action game and there are too many other games that does action games right. Overall its a pretty good game and i would really like to see them correct this great formula.
