Video Game Vintage Title: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction is a 2010 action-adventure stealth video game, developed by Ubisoft Montreal as part of the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series. Key members of the Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas team, such as creative director Maxime B�land worked on the game. Gameloft released a handheld version for Apple's iOS on May 27, 2010. There are also versions available for the Android, Windows Phone and Bada. This was Michael Ironside's final voice performance for Sam Fisher.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction Plot

The game's story is divided into two portions. The main portion is the game's single-player campaign, which puts the player in control of Sam Fisher. The "Prologue" portion of the game, however, is accessed through the multiplayer co-op mode, which puts two players in control of agents Archer and Kestrel.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction Gameplay

Conviction introduces a number of new gameplay features to the Splinter Cell series, one of which is the "Mark & Execute" feature, which allows the player to mark specific targets, such as enemies or objects, and shoot them in rapid succession without manually targeting each one. The player can choose to prioritize these targets, so that, for example, he can distract one guard by shooting out a light in his vicinity and then take out another guard. Another new feature is the "Last Known Position", which occurs when the player breaks the line of sight of an alerted guard. This creates a visual silhouette where the guard thinks Sam is, allowing the player to flank his enemies.

Other new features include the ability to interrogate characters in real-time, and use objects in the surrounding environment against them. Mission objectives and key plot points are projected onto walls within the in-game world, in order to keep the player immersed in the gameplay. Several other features, such as blending into crowds, improvising gadgets, and interaction with the environment, were announced, and according to creative director Maxime B�land would have given the game "a lot of Bourne Identity influence," but were scrapped after the development team decided that going in this direction would be taking too much of a risk.

Some of the features that were part of the last four games in the series do not appear in this game. Sam's hybrid night/heat vision goggles and his multipurpose SC-20K assault rifle, which were the mainstay of the last four games, no longer appear. His light sensor is also absent, although change in the screen saturation now shows whether Sam is hidden from view. Sam can no longer move or hide dead bodies, nor can he knock enemies unconscious, as all equipment that helped doing the latter are absent. Lock picking and hacking minigames are also not included in the game.

One of Ubisoft's stated goals for Conviction was to make the game more accessible. According to B�land, Chaos Theory is "very hardcore", which turned off many players and disconnected people from the fantasy of being Sam Fisher. B�land contrasted the earlier games in the series with works containing James Bond or Jason Bourne, who "run fast, they don't make noise, they kill one, two, three or four guys super quickly," and he stated that Conviction delivers a similarly dynamic experience with more of an emphasis on action than previous Splinter Cell games.

Reception
Conviction has received mostly positive feedback from critics on Xbox 360 and PC.

IGN's Alec Meer awarded it a score of 9.3 out of 10 and gave it an "Editor's Choice Award." Edge magazine's Tim Ingham awarded Conviction 8/10 in a lead review, claiming that the title is "in reach of greatness." He was particularly impressed with Sam Fisher's ability to turn any environment into "torture chambers" at the press of a button. The main points of criticism were its short length and that too much of the title is played in monochrome. GameSpot's Kevin Van Ord awarded the game a score of 8 out of 10, praising its cooperative mode and storytelling, but criticizing its short length and slimmed-down stealth elements, as well as most of the interrogation sections, stating that interrogations were a "missed opportunity" and "more predictable than provocative." GameTrailers gave it an 8.9 out of 10 praising the "top-notch voice acting" and the game as a whole, saying "Conviction is a gripping new chapter in the Splinter Cell saga." Game Informer gave the game a 9 out of 10 and GamePro gave it a 5 out of 5.

Conviction had a less welcome reception with some PC reviewers. GameSpot's Kevin Van Ord scored it 6.5/10, citing bugs, missing features, connection issues and a higher price than a typical PC game. PC Gamer UK gave a score of 87/100, but wrote "we can't recommend you buy this game with the current DRM."