STORY
Sam Fisher is back and he is mad as hell. Pissed on by his former agency "Third Echelon", pissed off in return. Over the course his gruesome and dark story, Sam is told by the agency he once trusted that his daughter was murdered. You later realize that this was all a set-up by Third Echelon to stop an incoming EMP assault on the US, just as you are already occupied with interrogating terrorists seemingly involved in your daughter's death. Did I say "interrogating"? I really meant running, gunning, sneaking, executing, AND interrogating. LOTS of gruesome interrogation.

GAMEPLAY
Interrogation aside for a bit, when not beating the answers out of people, a strong stealth, gunning and cover mechanic takes place. When detected, an opaque white silhouette appears, indicating your last known position. This makes for a great way to avoid further detection as Fisher hops from cover to cover towards a super-satisfying flank before the guards know you're not at that silhouette. This wouldn't be possible if the cover system sucks, which luckily is not the case. While in cover, the player can point the reticle on another piece of cover allowing for a swift transfer to your next desired cover, usually remaining undetected. This is how all games should do cover, in my opinion.

Aside from all this sneaking around, few missions demand Sam to avoid detection. Without these missions, It could be another Gears of War. There is a catch, as many would've guessed. Hand to hand kills, stealth or not, gain you the ability to use the game's most interesting mechanics. "Mark and Execute" boasts the ability to mark enemies at any time for a satisfying stream of instant kills. It gets more exciting when you drop from a ledge to execute someone with the suspecting guards marked and when they see you killing the guard, hit the button to instantly kill those suspecting guards. Once you get your hands dirtier with interrogation sequences, you realize they could've done a lot more with these scenes. They are just interactive cutscenes and little more. Fisher will hit the bad guy against the nearest object in reach when you press the interrogate button. They can be toilets, doors, or even an American flag stab.

There was a level I didn't enjoy, however. Critics say "forget what you know about Splinter Cell when you play this game". I say "forget what you know about Conviction when you play this level". The level is a flashback in Iraq. No, nothing that was controversial or upset people. It's just a shooter level. Absolutely no way to sneak around and feel good about yourself. It's just an aggravating shooting game until you finally progress.

PRESENTATION/VISUALS
You may notice that no matter what kind of game you play, it displays text on the screen, or an arrow prompting you what to do or where to go. This is simplified with the objective text literally "projected" onto objects and walls in the world. It's sort-of like something ripped off of Heavy Rain, except it looks fantastic on the world. The graphics are your standard Unreal Engine-type deal. It just looks great and I'm not sure how I can go into detail. Graphical flaws have been sanded clean, yada-yada.


This game gets a Pyle-O-Meter Score of...

A | An
GREAT | OK | Good | Awesome
BUY | Rent

There you have it! Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction is...
A GREAT BUY!
94%

With around 10 hours of gameplay and a so and so online mode, I don't see how this game would be anything but a rent.

There actually is. It was hard to go too deep into the online play because nobody plays the online on the PC version.

I loved that game, I put about 10 hours into it, played few rounds online, played through co-op campaign, etc.

500 Viz for review.

i love that game but it is a little on the easy side as far as splinter cell goes

I just got the game last month, and love it.It is my first Splinter Cell game however so can't compare. Put in over 20 hours already.

Wow, it sounds really fun..

But its a PS3 game, right?

Omniterran : This one was actually only for PC and xbxo360. I have it for xbox360.