Splinter Cell: Conviction

X

Xenomaniac

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
1,592
Man that was a great game. Too bad it's short. I've been dying to play the coop online but can't seem to find anyone. Does anyone have this game that can find any games online?
 
Online probably isn't doing too well.

I love this game. I love Deniable Ops. I sorely wish they'd put out even one more $5 or even $10 DLC with a bunch of additional DO content and I'd be thrilled.
 
Really? I don't think they could've failed harder. Overall it was probably the worst shooter I have ever played all things considered, much too brave a sidestep from the trusted and true gameplay that people have come to expect from SC. First of all I had gross input lag which made aiming hell. There are plenty of other options if I want thoughtless arcade action like that. Why does it sound like clashing platemail armor when I get shot with a bullet? Guns with range of less than like 10 yards?! Why can people take a million bullets to the chest? Why does the graphics turn black and white randomly? That's not neat that's just annoying. I realize they went for this noir style to go with the dramatic story, but everything was just annoying.. and most importantly about the story...:

Spoiler:

In the end of the prequel Double Agent you had the choice between saving Lambert or shooting him to side with a bunch of (to Sam) random crooks, the fact they chose the path of shooting Lambert for the ongoing plot in Conviction thoroughly pissed me off. Lambert was pretty much the best friend of Sam all along so saving Lambert was the only option that made sense in Double Agent. Rage.
 
Last edited:
I'd have to disagree with you hfk. I thought the new direction worked flawlessly. Going from color to black in white to let you know if you were invisible or not really helped immerse me into the game. It did get a little annoying a couple of times because with lack of color, I had a little trouble distinguishing what was a safe shadow to go into or was it a bright light. The cover system worked great and I loved being able to jump in and out of one area from cover to cover. Made things much more fluid. At times I had to release the cover trigger just to go around an object but once you get use to it, it can really save you when you are in a bind. Not to mention the ghost image of your last position where the enemy believes you are at just leaves so much room to exploit. I loved the new sound that the sticky cameras made instead of them clicking or making a whistle sound. The new sound they made that sounded like a 1930's music box and then having it blow up in their face as they investigated was so funny. Here is a clip of the sound. After you listen to it, just imagine an explosion in someones face after they investigate.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRW0tbUg8ao"]‪Splinter Cell: Conviction Sticky Camera Song‬‏ - YouTube[/ame]

I had no problems aiming and I used the Xbox 360 controller as well. I was getting head shots left and right. You're really not suppose to shoot the guys in the chest, it's all about head shots in this game. Only thing I can think of that explains why it took a bunch of shoots in the chest to kill a guy could be due to body armor. There was a couple instances though where I was using the Five-Seven pistol (actually used it through out the whole game) and I shot a couple of guys in the head that had a towel wrapped around their heads and it didn't kill them. I had to shoot them in the head twice. Only reason I could see why they didn't die was because the pistol had less power over the other ones but a head shot is a head shot so that's no excuse.

The story line was good. Kept me interested. It did have its disappointments though. Spoiler:
I too choose to save Lambert in the end of Double Agent and I was pissed to find out that they went with saying that Sam Fisher killed him. I was hoping that maybe he would have been killed by someone else and not Sam and he was framed, but then they showed that Sam did kill him which disappointed me.
Overall though I liked it a lot and I think it's cool it took off after Double Agent unlike the first three that didn't really link to each other at all (sadly I didn't get to play Pandora Tomorrow, though the HD versions are getting released soon. Hopefully in September in the US, August in the UK if they keep to their schedule). Having the objectives projected on the sides of the building was really cool and showing the flash backs as projections on walls and ceilings was cool. Not to mention the interrogation parts. Oh man I wanted to slam so many more heads into objects to see what else happens. Was so cool. Spoiler:
Interrogating the vice president by shooting him in the knee caps after he said that he was bullet proof was fucking hysterical.

I'm really interested in playing the coop story because I heard it had a really surprising twist at the end that I would like to see. The coop just looks so cool. I'm disappointed that the Spies vs Mercenaries is missing and hope they bring it back in the next splinter cell (they announced they are working on part six already back in May). I tried getting some friends to purchase the game but they are broke so I can't play with them. Just going to have to wait for another sale on Steam.

I'd give this game a 9/10. Great game and I think everyone should play it. I would like to go back and play Double Agent so I can match the stories up with Conviction but good lord that game had so many bugs near the end I just can't go back into it. Conviction had no bugs, no crashes, nothing. Was smooth as butter. Here's to looking forward to part 6 when it gets released.
 
Steam-n-saved it a while back. I had fun, but it's definitely short. I wound up having my favorite 1 or 2 guns and just went to town.
 
I never had input lag on mine. That would ruin any game. Maybe check vsyc or some other settings. Fiddle with DPI settings. I never really had to but different people have different preferences.

Sure, it was different from other SC games but on its own merits I had a really good time with it. KBM worked fine for me.

Certainly some fair criticisms about the story and such particularly the one that hfk is really taking exception to.

Easily an 8/10 game in my book.
 
I'm having a lot of trouble with the game.

I play one game of Deniable Ops and it's ok, but when I go into the second game it freezes at the loading screen and I have to do a hard reset. I also get a lot of stuttering, jumping and carrying on in all the loading screens and cutscenes.

It is also running very poorly for a UE3 game. I can run UT3, Gears of War, Batman, Raibow Six Vegas 1/2 and other UE3 games fine but this I have to lower to 1024x768 and have everything set to low just to get playable frames. Is there something up with my PC or is this just more untested and unfixed Ubisoft garbage?

Display drivers have all been uninstalled and then had new ones installed, have uninstalled and reinstalled the game several times, verified the game files through Steam, even did a re-download of the files. Nothing seems to work.
 
Hmmm mine runs smooth. No problems. I haven't updated my display drivers though because when I did, I couldn't play Double Agent at all. Double Agent would crash before loading up my saved games at the last level. Rolled back my display drivers then I could play it. Couldn't see the ending either because the game had a lock up bug that wouldn't start the animation of the swat team coming in after I disabled the bomb. The camera would just pan up and nothing would happen. Had to alt tab out and close the program. Double Agent had some serious bugs in that game. Was the only Splinter Cell game that I had trouble with. Sucks because that one had a lot of replay value I was interested in. Couldn't play online either. Double Agent was badly ported.
 
There are some possible reasons. For instance Unreal 3 is heavily optimized by Epic for crossplatform games and they are likely much more experienced at this. This would mean the additions to Unreal 2 may not be optimized for the PC, but more so for the consoles, since you can't just "throw" more hardware at the issue if it doesn't run properly on them. Also Unreal 3 would likely perform better in general because it is designed from the groundup to achieve a certain level of graphics expected in modern games, whereas simply adding these capabilities to an older engine is not as efficient.

For instance DNF is also a Unreal 2 based game, and its graphics quality to performance ratio is not very good either. FXAA implementation for example I believe has much higher performance hit than say FEAR 3?
 
I really enjoyed Conviction, but yeah it was short. I haven't played any other SC I think since the first one years and years ago, and I heard there are some that were pretty bad. Any recommendations for others I should look at?
 
Space_Coyote said:
I really enjoyed Conviction, but yeah it was short. I haven't played any other SC I think since the first one years and years ago, and I heard there are some that were pretty bad. Any recommendations for others I should look at?
Click to expand...

Many people regard Chaos Theory as their favorite in the series. Double Agent gets a lot of criticism. Hell I still haven't beaten the first one...fun games though!
 
hfk said:
Spoiler:

In the end of the prequel Double Agent you had the choice between saving Lambert or shooting him to side with a bunch of (to Sam) random crooks, the fact they chose the path of shooting Lambert for the ongoing plot in Conviction thoroughly pissed me off. Lambert was pretty much the best friend of Sam all along so saving Lambert was the only option that made sense in Double Agent. Rage.
Click to expand...

It's a shame that Ubi chose the dead Lambert path to create a major element in Conviction's story line (Tom Reed taking his position as Director of Third Echelon), but maybe they'll bring him back in the next sequel? I mean, we all thought that Sam's daughter was dead; that is until Grimsdottir mentioned that she was still alive and well in the third mission in Conviction. Maybe they did the same with Lambert?

BTW, whatever happened to Director Williams from Double Agent (the asshole that filled Lambert's position after his departure)? He just kind of disappeared.
 
People don't like Conviction because it is the most different from the first 3 games, changing much more than Double Agent.

But as an actual game I found Conviction pretty good, it manages to provide a cinematic type experience yet still letting the player play and in an open decision making manner. I mean compare this to say Mass Effect, a cinematic oriented game, and ME is basically much more linear and on rails by comparison and limiting to the player.

Of course with action oriented cinematic games, the issue is always length these days, somewhat unavoidable.
 
Overall I'd have to say that Chaos Theory is the best of the entire series for me.
 
Q-BZ said:
IMO Double Agent is.

I think this game is pretty good on its own merits myself.
Click to expand...

Double Agent for the 360/PS3/PC was the worst of the series. The last-gen version IMO was comparable to Chaos Theory, though it suffered terribly in the graphics department and lack of Spy vs. Merc.

Conviction was an OK game on it's own, though if it weren't for the Co-op and firefight modes I think it could have easily been the worst in the whole series.

Q-BZ said:
Overall I'd have to say that Chaos Theory is the best of the entire series for me.
Click to expand...

This. Though it's a shame that multiplayer is dead with XBL classic being offline and Ubi having absolutely no interest in porting that particular component over in their HD re-releases for the PS3. I think the PC multiplayer network is offline as well, isn't it?

limitedaccess said:
Most people, me too, liked CT the best. Just needs a train level for style points.
Click to expand...

You can probably hunt down a copy of DA for the Wii/Xbox1/PS2. Gameplay is nearly identical to Chaos Theory and a train level exists that is very much like the one in Pandora Tomorrow.
 
Conviction never felt like a true SC game to me. Too much "run and gun" and not enough stealth. There are many areas in Conviction where you have to kill a bunch of guys head on in order to complete a mission objective. In the rest of the series this would be impossible (due to lack of ammo, alarms, etc).

Any SC where you have to enter an area guns blazin' to complete a mission objective isn't SC. I know the whole game isn't like that, but much more than I expected for a stealth game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top