Xbox 360
Sam Fisher is back, and he is pissed. Not in the normal ‘terrorists are threatening the world, I had best utilise my super stealth skills and government gadgetry to save the day’ sort of way. No, this time it is personal. About as personal as it gets; Sam has gone rogue, leaving behind his government sanctioned routes to take to the streets, find the killer of his daughter and teach them a lesson. Probably involving his fists, and maybe even a car battery and their testicles.
Sounds a bit Jack Bauer? That’s probably because the latter half of the previous paragraph was taken straight from 24. But this does serve to illustrate a point. Sam Fisher, normally a government spook, has gone all Jack Bauer. He is on his own, without his high tech equipment, and so Splinter Cell has become a very different beast.
Normally, the emphasis would have been on stealth; slowly and methodically moving between cover, carefully planning how to evade the guards and timing your moves perfectly. Good fun for a while, but it was a bit slow. Not Ubisoft has cranked things up a notch, taking inspiration heavily from 24 a whole slew of new features make the stealth based gaming more fast paced, and a whole lot more brutal.
Demoed at E3, things kick off with a bang as Sam chucks a guys face right into the urinal, the first step of interrogation 101, as I’m sure you know. What follows is a much more visceral interrogation than normal, all looking brilliantly cinematic. But what is great here is that you are fully in control, smashing a guy about the bathroom until he spills the info you need.
Then things get seriously cool as the game zooms in, movie style, through a pool of the enemy's spilt blood to show you your next target. Then you are ready to go. What appeared to be a wee cutscene was actually a loading scene. So at the end, you just get moving. NO LOADING! If this works as shown, Ubisoft will have finally done what games have needed for an age.
Throughout the game you get to interrogate the relevant targets, but Sam also uses his new found freedom and brutality to swiftly despatch enemies. Previous games saw Sam struggle to take down a baddie at close quarters. This is no longer the case. Arms are snapped and people are thrown into walls as quickly as they can say ‘Who the f-’.
Alongside this new combat efficiency lies a system called 'mark and execute'. This lets you target enemies on the fly so when ready, you can leap from the shadows and shoot them dead at the touch of a button, with no aiming required. While this might sound a tad easy, the genius lies in that you can only do this a few times and most scenarios are too enemy heavy to be able to deal with everyone in this manner. This means that fast thinking, excellent planning and a good bit of improvisational skill are all needed in the game.
That is not the say that the game is no longer about stealth. Sam still uses this to great effect, leaping from the shadows to take out guards and then dissapeaing again to outflank them. Gone are the light meters which told you when you were hidden, now the games colour drains when you are in shadow, so you can tell easily if you are hidden. Not only this, but another system which shows you where the enemy last saw you allows you to break into the shadows, and plan a counter attack on the guards racing to where you were. Simple tools, but tools that keep the flow and pace of the game flowing consistently, while still emphasising stealth.
Let’s talk you through an example of how all this works: Sam has a wee glance under a door (using a bit of broken mirror, no high tech fibre optic cables here), spots a room full of guys getting ready for him. He tags a few for insta-death when he breaks into the room and fires a shotgun blast through the door to get another. A quick kill and he grabs another guard, using him as a shield. But, there are two guys at the othe end of the room with machine guns. Balls, you're screwed right? Nope. Sammy just throws his ‘shield’ through a window, leaps through after him and shimmies along the ridge to get behind his opposition, pops through the window and grabs the guy. Slick as all hell and very, very cool.
So the combat and the stealth are all looking super. As do the visuals generally. In fact, Ubisoft have done a hell of a lot to make the game as engrossing as possible. From the cinematic, player involved cutscenes and interrogations to a new projection system. Gone is the ol’ voice in the ear, harping instructions (Sam is, after all, now rogue), now your objectives get projected onto the environment, so as you wander around there are no screens to interrupt you. Bonza. This system is also used to bring you into his world, projecting flashbacks as you progress the levels and perform interrogations, in a cool, movie-like way.
Splinter Cell Conviction is shaping up to be quite different to the rest of the series. While it retains the general stealth aspect, it also cranks things to eleven. The pace of gameplay is much faster and the simple and involving presentation feels much more intuitive and involving than before. If Ubisoft can get the whole game looking as good as the demo, then we are all in for an experience which is truly next level.
Splinter Cell Conviction is coming this October.
