Coming Soon: Splinter Cell Conviction

After suffering a number of setbacks on the production line, Splinter Cell Conviction is now on course to hit our stores very soon – April 13th in fact. With this date approaching ever closer, we thought that we’d have a browse through some of the new features and tell you why you should buy Sam Fisher’s latest instalment.

Mark and Execute

First of all, the mark and execute that we saw briefly in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas has been added to the game to make the stealthy kills easier. Simply get into a vantage point where the enemy cannot see you, tag them or objects (for example lights) and then when you shoot, these targets are automatically selected, making quick double kills far easier than they have been before. However, to ensure that players don’t go overboard with this new feature, Sam has only a limited amount of Mark, and so cannot kill all his enemies easy as you like.

Prologue

A new co-op mode, prologue, has been added. You and a friend take control of Agents Kestrel and Archer in the Soviet Union, where the Russians are proving a threat. The Mark and Execute feature can be used here as well, with one player marking the enemy whilst the other does all the leg work. Players can revive each other, meaning that you can now survive more hits, but be careful, you don’t get it all your own way in co-op mode. You or your partner can be grabbed by the enemy and held hostage in an attempt to lure the other one out of hiding, in a manoeuvre that Sam himself would be proud of.

Last Known Position

This is a clever new feature that has been added. When you are spotted by the enemy, a ghostly figure of yourself will appear in the last position that you were seen in. This gives you the chance to get away, but also to use this to work out where the enemies will be heading to and set your own traps to get them as they try to kill you.

Other Features

The environment will now be much more interactive – shooting lights plunges enemies into darkness, and Sam can merge into a crowd as a method of escape. Characters can now be interrogated during the gameplay, instead of having to cut to a video scene of the interrogation. Also, Ubisoft have made it so that the instructions that you receive are posted in huge letters on surrounding buildings (as seen below), meaning that players can stay immersed in the game for the whole time.

My verdict: April 13th can’t come soon enough!