Splinter Cell Conviction Demo Impressions Live video

Well it’s here and with a title like Splinter Cell, conspiracy theories can be a fickle mistress seeing as the title has gone through a complete reworking from its previous fall 2007 release date. What you really need to know is this though: Fisher is back! Sure he has had his George Clooney makeover to hide him from the feds and hangs out with Kiefer Sutherland’s alter ego Jack Bauer sharing tips and hints over a few drinks while talking about their respective daughters.

So how does it effect gameplay I hear you cry? Well it runs off the Unreal Engine borrowing a bit from the chest high walls tool kit at the beginning and making pretty decent use of the tools placing them in nice spots. The core mechanics are there with a pocket full of gadgets and a semi-silenced pistol. It seems while the gun doesn’t appear to be silenced, it certainly acts like it. AI on the other hand is a lot nicer; not perfect, but nicer.

For example the enemies react to ricochet noise from your bullet but don’t know where you are. They tend to follow the priority of allied merc being killed and say while only one can see it [dead body] with say three AI enemies in the adjacent room, the AI will be alerted enough to a body but only the one who first found it will wander out to investigate. It’s definitely enjoyable and exploitable this new level of AI. While only three runs deep I have yet to experience any of the fabled sneaking backlog, where sneaking past a set of enemies and then triggering an alarm will cause them to all come running; however this seems to be a bit of a defeatist issue.

The level itself consists of two and a half floors. One is ground level with a factory you need to navigate and is realistic in size and not overly complicated. This is followed by an underground tunnel area where you navigate two rooms of enemies and a tier leveled room before the end of the demo. It’s a shame they didn’t include a single multiplayer map to tide the die hard fans of the series over until launch. Sadly it seems replaying the previous trilogy and Double Agent will have to suffice.