Review: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

I’ve always been a fan of the Splinter Cell series. While it doesn’t offer the best pure-stealth gameplay around, its mix of stealth and action combined with extremely fluid movement make it an all-around winner.



With many third-person protagonists jumping around with the grace of a newborn lamb, Splinter Cell’s Sam Fisher has always moved as stealthily – and realistically – as one would expect of an international spy/assassin.

His ties with the agency that trained him severed, Splinter Cell: Conviction’s story follows Fisher on a personal quest to locate the driver that killed his daughter in a hit-and-run accident. This quest lands him amongst national intrigue, the international variety apparently exhausted by the previous games.

Groundbreaking it ain’t, but the story could easily form the basis of a decent Tom Clancy novel. (In case you’re wondering, the game’s story is not, in fact, his invention.)

Unlike the previous games in the series which featured a variety of less-than-lethal weaponry, Conviction is a brutal and uncompromising affair. There’s no option to knock anyone unconscious: you either shoot an enemy, or break their neck. I think I might have stabbed some folk along the way, but it’s all a blur in my slightly traumatised memory.

There are numerous times you have to capture and “interrogate” a suspect. The “interrogate” feature is just a euphemism for “torture”, as I don’t think a polite interrogation involves throwing people face-first into public-bathroom mirrors.

Like television sensation 24, Splinter Cell: Conviction is a either a blatant piece of far-right propaganda advocating torture and brutality, or an extremely clever satire designed to do exactly the opposite. Either way, for the first time it makes me wonder whether a game should have received an R18 rating instead of R16. Torture is not light entertainment, especially when you have to do it to progress the storyline.

On the other hand, it’s no more sadistic than sending your Sims into the pool and deleting the ladder, condemning them to a slow death by drowning. While I’m far kinder to my virtual human-shaped pets, casual Sim-torture is a common pastime among fifteen-year-olds everywhere. Whether that’s an excuse for Conviction or just a sad commentary on humanity I’ll leave up to you.

Politics aside, Conviction is still an incredibly captivating game. It’s fast-paced and can be challenging, especially if you try to go the stealth route. While stealth isn’t necessary to complete the game, you are awarded achievement points for it – these can be used to purchase weapon upgrades.

The user interface is particularly intuitive. Instead of displaying objectives onscreen in the traditional manner, they’re projected onto surfaces such as walls and buildings. This includes curved and irregular surfaces – it’s not just a series of flat billboards throughout the environment. Once you’re heading in the right direction, the objective disappears. This keeps you looking around the game world, not focussing on the minimalist Heads-Up-Display.

Also removed from the HUD are the light and sound meters common among stealth games. Instead, the screen fades to greyscale whenever you’re hidden from your enemies by darkness or cover. Enemies remain in colour, so they’re easy to spot. As soon as you venture out into the light, the screen snaps back to full-colour: immediately illustrating that you’re risking detection.

Despite its questionable content, Splinter Cell: Conviction is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Sadly, over-zealous copy protection ruins the whole experience.

I’m a keen Steam user – I have no problem having to be online to launch my games. This made me indifferent to the warning on Conviction’s box: “A permanent internet connection is required to play the game.” Fine – I have one of those.

Well, not quite.

Ubisoft’s DRM implementation requires an internet connection that is literally permanent. With Steam, you can start a game and then play as long as you want, even if your connection cuts out mid-game. Splinter Cell: Conviction, on the other hand, will pause whenever your connection is interrupted. The game cannot be resumed until the connection is restored.

I use a wireless network at home, which occasionally drops out for a few seconds – you don’t notice it while web browsing, and it never cuts off downloads. However, it left Conviction pausing frequently in the middle of exciting and stealth-critical situations. As captivating as the game is, this totally kills the immersion.

Unless you have a solid wired connection to your ADSL router, Splinter Cell: Conviction is not worth buying. You’ll be missing out on something great, but that’s not your fault: that one is all on Ubisoft.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal; Publisher: Ubisoft
Classification: R16
BETTER THAN: Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
WORSE THAN: Nothing I’ve played

A brilliant game ruined by over-zealous copy protection.

6/10