Let me start off with a warning: This blog will contain spoilers about the storyline of SC Conviction. If you don't want the game spoiled for you, don't read on.

I'm not sure what I expected going into SC: Conviction. On one hand, as a huge fan of the old series, the new action spin that was put into this new game made me apprehensive. But, on the other, I understand why the developers may have wanted to change things up a bit. I never grew tired of the old stealth-reliant formula, its small issues aside, but others seemed to think it was time for a change, so I can accept that.

The problem I have with Conviction, after playing it, is that at times, the game seemed more like a third person shooter than it did a stealth game. I realize they were trying to change the gameplay away from pure stealth to an action-stealth hybrid, but I think in the end, the game ended up having much more action that stealth. By the end, I found myself playing the game more like a shooter than a traditional splinter cell game, even on realistic difficulty, where you are supposed to be punished for breaking stealth, but that never seemed to happen. I went into most situations guns blazing, and outside of a few rough parts (like after you interrogate the vice president) I usually came out just fine. Regenerating health makes you pay for your mistakes far less than you did in previous games and truly enables it to be played as a shooter. In the old games, if you played it as a shooter (on the higher difficulties anyway), you'd die, and even if you survived, you'd have no health left to continue to play it as a shooter. The thought and planning that had to go into playing the old games is now completely unnecessary, so to me, the game feels a bit dumbed down.

There are a few other gameplay mechanics I want to comment on. The one, singular most broken aspect of that game is the last known position feature. In theory, I suppose it is supposed to be realistic in that if the guards see you jump into the shadows at a certain point, they'll go look in those shadows for you. The thing is, in this game, they seem so locked into that position, that it is a simple matter to simply move around some cover and shoot them all in the back. The guards I came across would sometimes spend 30 seconds shooting at my last known position, screaming that I was over there, etc., while all I had to do is move to a different peice of cover and they'd be completely befuddled. That aspect of the game alone makes the enemy AI terrible at best. And while I'm mentioning it, why do the guards scream at you all the time? You're facing seemingly the most deadly man on the planet, so as a guard, you scream at him, taunt him, and in doing so, piss him off and reveal your position to him? What? I don't know why the designers thought it would be a good idea to make the guards scream endlessly, but I don't get it.

As far as the story goes, it was entertaining, but unspectacular. Sam's daughter ending up alive was a bit much, as was the massive, ridiculous conspiracy that drove the game's plot. I'm still not sure what Tom Reed's ultimate goal was, I know he wanted the current President out, and the VP in, but outside of some mention of Third Echelon's funding being cut, I'm still not too sure exactly why, except for that he's the bad guy, and that anything he wants is, therefore, bad. Whatever his goal was, it was satisfying to shoot him in the face at the end of the game, because he was kind of an ass. I think Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation) made a good point in his review of the game's start: Sam Fisher is over in Europe, completely out of the loop in regards to what is going on, and for some reason, Reed decides it is a good idea to send armed men after him? Why not leave him alone and out of the loop, with no leads to act on, rather than try to kill him when he poses little risk to you? I suppose in the end I enjoyed the plot (except for the fact that Lambert was dead, I saved him in my game!) but it did have its head-scratching moments that I had a hard time getting past.

I've also played through most of the co-op modes with my friend (except infiltration mode, which was only available to Amazon pre-orders, which is really stupid). We played the co-op campaign first, which I found a bit disappointing. The storyline for it was totally unclear, and until we read it online, we had no idea it was supposed to act as a precursor to the single player storyline. There was something going on with EMP's and terrorists, but the game just could not make us care, or help us follow along. We had some fun playing it, but without a coherent story, it was less fun than I thought it would be. We had a good time playing hunter mode, but much less fun playing the last stand and faceoff modes. Faceoff mode is simply terrible, and last stand mode, is frustrating and nonsensical (why do the terrorists bring machine guns to destroy the objective? Why can't whoever is giving the spies their orders come and pick the EMP up? Wouldn't the terrorists rather steal the EMP than destroy it? And what is it with this game and EMP's anyway?) Perhaps we overthought things a bit. I also am terribly disappointed that there is no spies vs. mercenaries multiplayer mode, as that is what gave previous entries in the series such lasting value.

In the end, I suppose I can say I had fun playing it. I am a it disappointed in the changes they made to the series's formula, as in the end, the game turns into a shooter with a few stealth elements than a stealth based action game. Some things, like the mark and execute feature can be good fun, but other things, like the last known position feature, are broken at best. I did have fun with the game, but I don't know if the game was $60 good or not. I guess my final opinion of the game is that it seems a casualty a developer that wanted it to make the game more mainstream. The older games weren't niche titles or anything, but they were a bit different and unique. Conviction just feels like an attempt to draw in a larger audience by making it more of a shooter than stealth game, but dumbing it down somewhat to appeal to the masses. Maybe I'm just too hung up on the fact that the game has "Splinter Cell" in the title.