Splinter Cell: Conviction

The demo is out and it is highly entertaining. I haven't played one of these since the first one. The mark and execute is so fun.

The trailer is out, and it's awesome, even if it's riffing off the MW2 launch trailer. I haven't heard much about this at all. Is anyone from the CHUD crew going to be doing a review?

I haven't been intrigued by a Splinter Cell game in a long time. This might change that.

The commercials using Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down don't hurt either.

You can preorder on amazon for $51 and use promo SPLINTER for $5 off of that.

Downloaded the demo and quite enjoyed it. Loved the hell out of the earlier Splinter Cell games - loved how you took your time and waited for ages to execute the perfect clean kill using as few bullets as possible - some levels could last for well over an hour.

Thing is, as I no longer live a my parents and moved in with the missus a good few years ago my gaming habits have changed from 'play for hours and no one will bother me' to the 'get a quick game in while I can' so I simply wont be picking this up no matter how good it is. Shame, because I love these games.

The lack of mercs vs spies multiplayer action is a deal breaker for me. I played hundreds of hours of SC: Pandora Tomorrow on multiplayer without ever touching the single player campaign. The subsequent SC game (forgot the name) didn't get much single-player love either.

Co-op could be fun, but it's not enough for me.

Shouldn't be that difficult to fit in...according to IGN the single player campaign is about 5 hours long. *vomits*

Hmm, well that's about MW2 length. I would hope the multi is really...oh.

It does have a second 2 player coop campaign as well.

My new Xbox bundle is set to arrive tomorrow, and I'm seriously thinking about Ebaying this game as soon as it arrives. 5 hours? Really? I think I'd rather have 50 bucks.

I've read between read between 5-8 hours (majority of the reviews I've read put it closer to 7-8 hours). I'm torn..on the one hand I wouldn't mind waiting until this drops in price. On the other I've got $25 in rewardzone points burning a hole in my pocket

So has anyone actually played any of the 5-6 hours of gameplay yet? Is it awesome? Think I'll trade away FF13 for this later on today.

Giant Bomb says the average player will take 7 hours to finish, but still gave it a fairly positive review. Short game with no replay value though, and I don't really see myself playing the multiplayer. May as well sell it now and rent it later, or wait for it to drop to 20 bucks.

GameTrailers.com said the single player is 8-10 hours, while the co-op is 4-6.

I've been playing the single player on realistic and I can't imagine finishing this in 5-6 hours, the reviewers must have been rushing through on easy or normal. Ubisoft just announced that Conviction is going to be getting free weekly DLC (I don't think they said how long) which will include weapons, armor and deniable ops (terrorist hunt) maps.

I haven't even started the campaign but deniable ops co-op is pretty awesome. This is like Batman AA with guns.

aaaaAAAAAAAAINEEDTHISGAMENOW

I played the first couple levels of the single-player last night, and I had quite a bit of fun with it. A couple of areas felt somewhat similar to the parts of Batman AA where you have to take out a bunch of guys in one room. There are a bunch of ways to go about taking the bad guys out. I'm sure this feeling will only increase as Sam gets more gadgets.

I've finished the story mode now, and I had a lot of fun with it. Has anyone played any of the co-op missions yet? I played through part of a mission by myself with two controllers, and it was kind of fun, but obviously not the optimum way to play that mode.

I'd be down for doing some co-op story mode sometime. I've done most of the hunter mode co-op but that's about it.

I love the co-op. It's basically the prologue to the game. Add me if you like!

I just added you to my list, Alex. I'll keep my eye out for you guys the next time I'm playing Conviction.

well single player story sucked me in one Saturday (on XBOX), and I think it was a good 7 hours. Recently I made the mistake of playing co-op with the gf, stealth is not really her forte. Good thing is half the time she ended up as the gunz-blazing decoy. We played story too though, looking forward to trying the other game types this weekend.

The short list of complaints I have heard though:
1) Enemy AI is about as smart as a retarded monkey. They taunt the worlds most bad-ass killing, making it simple as hell to track their locations. Not to mention their about as observant as mr. Magoo. Take 3 steps away from your last position and they think you vanished.

2)Once you have a good pistol, you don't need any other weapon. Since they are semi-auto, just pull the trigger as fast as you want. Of course this is not really that necessary when you get head shots from the dark.

3) i have heard complaints about the cover system, actually, more on the moving while covered system. Left trigger to hug, and then point and click all over the place. I don't mind it so much, but I have heard more than enough complaints from Thief and Hitman fans.

All in all I think it was worth the $36 purchase from Amazon (yay GOWIII credit) and you can certainly find me online playing it.

Man, I loved the cover system in Conviction. I liked being able to hit a button for Sam to dive into the next cover, and you can only "point and click" if the cover is close enough to you anyway. That said, there were still a ton of times when I would manually roll across a gap or through a doorway instead of using the button press.

I agree with your pistol assessment, except for Realistic difficulty. A shotgun or silenced assault rifle is a must on that difficulty. Sure you can fire pretty fast with a pistol, but a shot or two from the more powerful weapons is much faster, especially when you're caught in the open with half a dozen guys closing in on you.

The enemy AI is pretty dumb, no arguments there. Personally, it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the game though.

My biggest complaint with the single-player is the cheating they do towards the end of the game when squads of the powerful enemies spawn into rooms. You should be able to see them beforehand (because they are almost instantly inside a room with no windows), but they cheat so that you can't prepare. It is completely different from the rest of the game where you happen upon an area with several guys in it and you have several options on how to tackle the situation. I get that they wanted to keep the player on edge a bit, but it felt a bit too much like a cheat to me. The enemies seemed to literally come out of thin air, not cool for a game without magic.

I finished the game on Realistic this weekend, and I have to say that the foot chase level at the Lincoln Memorial was still by far the easiest level in the game. It is a damned fun level to play though, especially the first time. It switches things up in a good way.

I'll chime in with more positive words for this one. The single player story is fun, and is much longer than previously reported. The co-op looks like it would be a blast, and I really appreciated the lack of stupid collectibles ("We have to run for that submarine before it nukes the US! Oh, wait, you should probably check every corner of these offices for briefcases of foozles first!"). Unlocking upgrades through creative kills was a great idea.

It does annoy me how much more linear this game appears compared to the last SC game. That feels like a step backwards. If I didn't already have MW2, I'd probably buy this, but as it is, it's a fun rental.

Thanks to playing some co-op Story and Hunter with thecallahan, I have discovered an inane part of this game that is absolutely hysterical for no reason whatsoever. Simultaneously trying to kick down unbreakable doors is completely awesome and dumb all at the same time. Also, bashing down a door that you only *thought* was unbreakable and running straight into a group of pissed off enemies with automatic weapons is also awesome. So is beating a section of a level only to fail because your co-op partner dropped a gigantic chandelier on your head.

If you're getting the idea that co-op in this game is a blast, partly because of the random shit that happens, then you're definitely right. It is almost more fun when everything goes crazy because you tripped an alarm, allowed a guard to see you, or accidentally ran into a trip mine for the third time in a row.

Hey now, I didn't run into the room after kicking down the door, three bad guys just shot me through the doorway, get it right! And you've got to admit, it was good timing on my part when I shot the chandelier and it hit you, granted I didn't know it was an automatic death so I thought I could just revive you. I still hit X (gadget button) for reload by accident and it kills me, sometimes literally.

Co-op is a blast though, mainly because no matter how hard you try to go stealthy it usually devolves into running around like a headless chicken shooting everything in sight. I found it usually goes that route when one of you is sneaking up to stealth kill a guard and the other person shoots out a light, thus alerting the guard and getting a flashlight shined right in your face.

what are you guys playing it on? I have it for the 360, and could use a few more multiplayer victim...err...buddies to play with. I nearly spit my Pepsi all over the keyboard after reading the dropping chandelier bit. I tried realistic last night and it wasn't too bad, but I did only play the first level. Anyone feel free to send me a xbox invite, I'll just make sure to not stand under any chandeliers.