Splinter Cell: Conviction, Or When Giant Dice Attack

You've no doubt heard the announcement last week that the next installment of the perennial Splinter Cell series of stealth games will largely be set during the light of day. IGN covered this ground-breaking news last week with an in-depth look at the new game mechanics and how the series has evolved to this next stage of evolution.

I'm always cautiously optimistic when a company decides to tamper with a proven formula and strike out towards more innovative game design. Having the inspiration and intention to do something different is great, but we as consumers know all too well the importance of solid execution.

More ramblings after the jump...

The feature on IGN is pretty good and I'll boil down the essential for you. Splinter Cell: Conviction will feature many daylight missions and implement a completely different stealth model. Instead of the light/dark concealment paradigm we've seen in the previous 4 titles, Ubisoft Montreal will allow players to blend in with crowds of people and "improvise" ways to evade his enemies. In case the title didn't tip you off, Conviction sees our Third Echelon hero, Sam Fisher on the wrong side of the law. Stripped of his high-tech gadgetry and intel support, Fisher must now rely on his pure instincts more than ever.

If you're a long-time Splinter Cell fan, you've probably already absorbed this and either exclaimed, "It's about time" or threw your hands up in the air with, "OMGZ THEY CHANGED EVERTYHING THAT IS SPLINTER CELL!!". Or something to that effect. Me, I'm just slightly puzzled. This whole daylight, crowd dynamics business... isn't that the proof of concept for Ubisoft's upcoming Assassin's Creed? The protagonist
for that one is remarkably similar to Sam Fisher, with a drastic difference in time periods to set them apart.

While it does sound like Conviction will push the concept of hiding without shadows even further than Assassin's Creed, I have to wonder why they wouldn't want to make sure it works on one A-list game first before injecting it into a best-selling franchise.

Don't get me wrong. To be able to simulate the feeling of movies like The Bourne Identity and dodge cops through busy streets sounds like a wonderful idea and is very "next gen". Just judging from the tone of the comments made by Ubisoft producers, however, they make it sound like the old concepts of waiting in the shadows is a dead horse. Nothing could be further from the truth. With advances in AI and dynamic lighting technology, the classic style of play seen in Splinter Cell can be made so much more immersive and realistic. And let's face it, although the previous games made nods to realism, they are anything but.

It's still too early to say how the next Splinter Cell will turn out. Credit can be given to Ubisoft for attempting to shake things up a little and after 4 games, it's probably time for Sam Fisher to ditch the black bodysuit in favour of looking like a street bum. Every series, be it games or movies, has that blip, that one sequel that seems oddly out of place alongside all the other episodes. Conviction could be that blip that makes people scratch their heads and take notice. And even if it fails, they can go back to the tried-and-true formula and take that even further into parts unknown. I for one would love that.

Source: IGN

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Stealth... Or Trial & Error?

It's a glorious start to another glorious week here at PMB. Nothing like some sunshine to take the sting off the innate shitty-ness that is a Monday morning...

What did you all play over the weekend? My games du jour were Castlevania: SOTN (yes, I'm finally warming up to it) and last week's bargain highlight, Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

SCDA is a stealth-shooter game and one tough mofo. It represents a slight departure in the prolific Splinter Cell series, improving in some ways but also staying rigidly true to the series formula... much to their detriment, I should add. It got me thinking about the qualities that make a great stealth game. SCDA captures some of these things and really drops the ball on the others. Read on for my psuedo-intellectual spiel...

It's been a few years since I played the original Splinter Cell and even longer since I experienced the masters of modern "sneakers", Thief (1 & 2). As different in tone and style as the Thief games are from Splinter Cell, I couldn't help but feel that Ubisoft, with now 4 games into their SC franchise, has NOT played enough Thief. They need to seriously study that game to learn what a true stealth action game is all about.

My #1 complaint with the original Splinter Cell was that it was too linear and forced players to "solve" the missions like a puzzle, instead of as a dynamic, espionage situation. You had to go one way, do a certain sequence of things and do it within a certain amount of time. None of that is bad in of itself, but Splinter Cell made you feel like you were being forced down a magic solution-path and did not reward creative approaches to mission objectives. Roughly 4 years later, I'd expected the SC developers to have brought in some "next-gen" game mechanics for Double Agent for the 360. Let's just say I was very disappointed.

Let's forget for a moment the few new wrinkles that have been added to SCDA. Spying for both the NSA and the terrorists is a very cool idea, as you need to balance your objectives and retain enough trust from both factions. What isn't cool with the game so far are the smaller levels and an even stricter adherence to linearity than ever before. It sometimes feels like a classic adventure game making the awkward transition into the stealth genre, what with the inclusion of mini-games for everything (lockpicking, safe-cracking, hacking...even pulling a goddamn parachute string) and the very contained nature of the maps. The game has been feeling like a string of "stealth vignettes". I'm following that "one right path" again and after progressing through each locked door, I'm presented with yet another puzzle that needs to be solved in a prescribed manner before I can move on. One wrong move, and half your secondary objectives could be blown. The missions become a grind of trial & error, saving and reloading.

Granted, the game is still fun and compelling to play. The artificial challenge makes me want to complete the missions almost in spite. This is simply the wrong way to make a stealth game. The more I play Double Agent the more I realize how well Looking Glass Studios nailed (and defined) the stealth genre back in 1998 with their Thief games. Those classics rewarded exploration, good reconnaissance, timely and skillful use of your tools and allowed you to approach you objectives from various angles. You can give Sam Fisher all the do-hickeys and fancy moves you like: he still can't touch Garrett in terms of pure elegance and efficiency.

The Splinter Cell games are still top quality despite all of my complaints. The graphics are excellent, the moves are cool and it really does make me feel like a super spy. The series just needs to evolve and utilize better AI and level design, or it could easily devolve into a thinly disguised puzzle-adventure game rather than the nail-biting stealth thriller it was meant to be.

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