For a long time, I’ve been a fan of the Splinter Cell franchise. I remember opening a copy of Xbox Magazine and playing the exclusive demo for the original Splinter Cell on my Xbox and immediately hating it because I couldn’t run around, guns -a-blazing, like I originally thought. Then, slowly but surely, after many replays of that same demo, I warmed up to the stealth aspects of the game. I began to enjoy moving through the shadows, stalking my prey silently before moving in for the kill. I began to relish that moment of conquest when I’d lured a hapless soldier into the darkness and grabbed him, placing him into a tight chokehold and interrogating him, later knocking him out and moving on, either to my next objective or, to the next target as I slowly and methodically eliminated my adversaries one by one until a room was cleared. I received the original Splinter Cell game for Christmas and because of my time with the demo; I was instantly a fan, eventually buying every successive Splinter Cell game in the series and being increasingly impressed by each one.
That was until Double Agent came out. It was still entertaining but it lacked that special something that Splinter Cell had delivered before. The missions didn’t really grab me like I had expected them to and the mini-missions in between operations in which you skulk around the JBA complex performing tasks for the JBA and building dossiers for the NSA were often quite boring. Still, it was a good game that, for the most part, allowed Sam to do what he does best, stick to the shadows and take out his targets stealthily or merely avoid them entirely. Now the demo for Splinter Cell: Conviction has been released and I don’t know how to properly express myself except by asking…what the hell has Ubisoft done to Splinter Cell?
