Zadzooks: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction

Superhero and cartoon characters are integral parts of the electronic entertainment industry. With this in mind, I salute the meld of pop-culture character and video game with a look at Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction (from Ubisoft reviewed for Xbox 360, rated M for mature, $59.99).

The fifth game based on the adventures of the now-fugitive elite covert ops agent Sam Fisher takes a player on a revenge bender that requires our hero to use all of his stealthy skills and bloody ferocity to become the deadliest of high-tech hunters.

What’s the story? From the manual: Now operating as a free agent, Sam follows the trail of his daughter’s killer to the island of Malta. What starts as a personal mission, however, becomes part of something much bigger when the Third Echelon intervenes. Sam is taken back to Washington, D.C., for interrogation and learns explosive secrets about his past and Third Echelon’s future. Forced into an impossible situation and tormented with new knowledge about his daughter’s fate, Sam teams up with old allies to unravel the deadly web of conspiracy that entangles his family.

Play the role: In the solo campaign, a player takes control of the grizzled agent, who looks like a cross between Charles Bronson and Gerard Butler and has the sneaky moves of Ezio Auditore de Firenze.

Mr. Fisher’s world is filled with shadows, mistrust and attacks from members of Third Echelon and Black Arrow as he single-handedly assaults a Malta fortress, wreaks havoc on an air base, survives at a carnival on the National Mall and even infiltrates the White House.

Giant projection screen signs appear on objects to offer the player a billboard-style guide to objectives as Sam sneaks like a snake around the world before delivering fatal strikes to all who have wronged him.

His tools of the spy trade include mirrors to look under doors, sticky cameras to monitor areas, sonar goggles, a fiber-optic snake cam and portable EMP devices.

His moves include shooting out lights, easily crouching behind nearly any barrier, climbing a wall, shimmying down a pipe and hanging from the ceiling. Best of all, he can start a fight and leave a mark in his last known position with a silhouette (to help the player) while moving around to flank his foes.

Get to the action: Let’s first dig into the assortment of weapons available, including pistols with silencers, the M-500 shotgun and MP5N submachine gun and flash grenades. Success with certain objectives is rewarded with points that can be used to upgrade an arsenal through found weapons stashes.

Now let’s look at the slick specifics. Every time Sam kills an enemy within close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, he earns an execute token that makes his job much easier from long range. Specifically, a player can target multiple bad guys at once, lighting an arrow over their heads, and with the press of the button the shooting rampage plays out.

He also can throw foes out of windows while hanging on ledges, use them as a shield and even interrogate them. The interrogation is a brutal affair: The player controls Sam as he drags the unlucky victim around by the collar and inflicts pain and intimidation, such as slamming a head into a bathroom mirror, delivering a knee to the gut or dangling the loser over a ledge.

Memorable moments (in no particular order): While Sam scampers around undetected, his world turns a noirish black and white; watching the stuffing fly out of a couch after shooting it (I’m easily amused); video slide show presentations projected on walls revealing flashbacks to the story; the firefight in Iraq while playing as Victor Coste; crouching on a warehouse catwalk while an industrial fan slowly spins and plays with light and shadows; and taking down a dozen Echelon goons in less than 60 seconds.

Violent encounters: The multitude of head shots delivered by the agent’s guns leads to an assortment of blood-spray patterns across various backdrops. It’s truly for the mature player, especially when topped off by the already mentioned interrogation option.

Also, a “Chris Rock concert” level of profanity rings out nearly every time Sam is spotted by thugs, making killing a requirement to shut up the morons.

Players themselves will curse a blue streak at the difficultly level as it takes a combination of strategy, covert tactics, intelligence amid chaos and luck to survive.

Multiplayer: A special co-op campaign finds a pair of players controlling two opposing agents (Archer and Kestrel) and working together (either online or via split screen) to stop the sale of advanced EMP weapons on the black market. Additionally, the players can take part in four types of challenges not following the story, including Hunter (clearing a map of foes) and Face-Off (spy versus spy).

Read all about it: Gamers purchasing the collector’s edition of the game get a PDF of the digital comic book Digging in the Ashes, which acts as a prequel to the action. It also is available on a page deep in the Splinter Cell Conviction website (www.splintercell.com/usbfile).

Pixel-popping scale: 8.0 out of 10. If the game had come out six months ago, the score would be higher. However, incredible movielike visuals from recent titles (Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III and Heavy Rain, to name a few) take a bit of the cinematic steam out of the latest Splinter Cell. Its ode to the Hollywood action film is apparent, complete with decent cut scenes, near seamless game play and a suspenseful flow of the story, but I still felt stuck in the collision-detecting world of a video game.

What’s it worth? Splinter Cell: Conviction should satisfy fans of the franchise, especially those willing to co-op it. When compared with other recent third-person-style shooters, not limited to the Assassin’s Creed 2, Army of Two: The 40th Day and Just Cause 2, it’s certainly worth a rental.

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