Ladies and Gentlemen I give you a first impression review on the shortest time I have ever given a game. EVER: Splinter Cell: Conviction.
I blame the lack of proper rating solely on the ESRB and thereby apologizing to Tom Clancy in advance for not being able to review this game with some honest time invested. But, if this was properly ranked, it would have never made it into my house. This game came highly recommended by some of my friends with how you could do certain things in the game. It is a first person adventure which means I get to do some FPS action.
Story
To start off the story is interesting. Spy type guy that has given up working for 3rd Echelon (faction of the U.S. Government I presume) since he had to kill his best friend and his daughter and wife (I believe) are dead. He has nothing to live for nor does he feel that he owes any loyalty to anyone. He is sitting alone at a restaurant when he gets a call from his old job letting him know people are out to kill him since they think he is going to kill them for killing his daughter. He reluctantly starts fighting and gets his grove back for killing the bad guys. He has various ways of dispatching his enemies besides shooting them (like shoving his pistol in the eye of an assailant before snapping his neck) and you get several pointers from 3rd Echelon for helping you fight. And you even get some flash back action to help with learning how to control your character. You get to a point where you find the guy that is in charge of the thugs trying to kill you and find out where the guy that killed your daughter is. Time for revenge!
I’m going to stop there with the story since you do go after the guy and stuff happens but if you really want to find out what happens in the game it will take you all of 15 minuets of game play to get there. Like I said the time playing this game is short.
Graphics
Excellent. Not 10 out of 10 but they don’t let you down. Everything from the cut scenes to the environment, the enemies to the shattered glass of your gadgets are excellent. They run the game engine off an Unreal type and call it Lead. The game looks pretty and if it were just up to the story and graphics of the game, it would have taken a lot for me to stop.
Sound
Sound is where it needs to be with nothing out of place. The music is just to keep you from falling asleep and it helps keep you on edge but, the language on here is enough for me to be embarrassed by it. I can mute if I need to but, the subtitles still spell it out for me. When I was playing this I was home alone with my 2 year old (who was passed out thank goodness. I would have been in deep shit if my wife came home and she said “f**k off you ass hole” to my wife) and my 1 year old. My whole time playing this the only time “f**k” didn’t come out of some cock suckers mouth was when he was dead. And it wasn’t like if there was no one in the room it would be quiet, no! You could hear the other guys in the other room talking and all they were saying is “f*** this” or “f*** that”. Seriously, people can say other words. Even if you had one guy left to kill, he was still cursing.
Now, I don’t have a problem with cursing, as you can see above and from my other reviews. I do it all the time and I really don’t have a problem with it but, if I were to match the amount of cursing that this game did the in the few minuets I played it my review would be something like this: F**k those shitty ass clown f**ks. F**king shit f**k f**k f**k f**k. Shitty f**k f**k shitty f**k. OH F**k this f**k needs to f**king f**k that guy. I f**king hate this f**king cunt licking mother f**ker piss ant. You get the point. You would be done with my reviews just like I’m done with this game and I wouldn’t blame you.
Gameplay
Holy crap, they decided to make the controls retarded on this. The only intuitive part of the controls are the directions (its hard to screw that up) and the trigger. Other shit they put on the controller you have to stop and think where the hell it is. However, there is a bunch of cool shit to do in game. You can mark people for execution which has your attacks almost as fluid as in the game Batman Arkham Asylum. You can take your enemies and hold them hostage or use them as a human shield. And then you can interrogate them as well. This was going very well for me since the Marine in me took over and I got to smash people against a concrete wall, crush larynxes, smash heads through urinals, and pretty much just torture the crap out of these clowns until. . .
They put a woman in front of you, defenseless (or refusing to defend herself, it really doesn’t matter), and waits for your command to hit her.
At this time, my 15 year old boy has been watching me play (and even he commented on how much this game curses) and there I was, watching this game asking me to hit a woman. I walked up to the 360 and promptly ejected the game and will never be playing it again.
I really don’t care if you are going to defend this game, because if you do, you are willing to hit a woman. Those type of people I have no respect for and I would have no problem beating the shit out of. Yes this is a game, not real life. Yes I really would not be hitting a woman but I would still make the actions of my character hit a woman. I get the fact between game and real life but, when you have to make a choice in a game that is sticking close to real life, you are making that choice to do something you know is wrong. This isn’t Street Fighter II or Mortal Kombat where women are attacking you or vice versa. She is unarmed, refusing to defend herself (because she asks for it) and his fist won’t land unless you tell him to.
I really hope that the game takes over and does not let you hit her or that the main character doesn’t hit her despite the command given. But I won’t give it a chance to hope for the best. I have never, NEVER, hit a woman. I don’t encourage the thought, and I don’t agree with anyone who does so.
Multiplayer and Replay
Since I have not gone past the part where you hit defenseless women I can only give it an average score that it might be good and it might be bad. I really don’t care either way since I will not be playing this game again.
ESRB
Seriously, F**K OFF! You need to start rating the games like they are and not how the games pay you to rate it. How can you rate: Halo 3, Borderlands, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and God of War 3 all M? How are any of these games equal to one another in the M rating? I think I hear a cuss word or two out of Halo and maybe some alien guts here or there, Borderland is cell shaded but you do hear cursing on occasion and some blood and guts, Splinter Cell: Conviction you have cursing every 5 seconds and situations that cause you to betray your moral code, and God of War 3 YOU HAVE PORN IN IT!!! How am I supposed to trust your rating when you don’t honor it yourself? You are screwing over the gamer and future gamer because some kid will convince his mom to buy him an M game cause Halo wasn’t supposed to get M so all the other games MUST not be as bad since the ESRB is being a tight wad right? Mom gets God of War or Splinter Cell: Conviction walks in on a cut scene of porn or woman hitting and said future gamer is now grounded for life.
As a parent I have learned to ignore the ESRB rating way before this game. This just gave me an excuse to go off on it. ESRB, you fail . . . epically.
OVERALL
Don’t let me know that the main character doesn’t hit the woman, I will not choose to hit a woman and apparently you have. You might want to rethink of how you choose to act. That scene absolutely ruined the game for me and any chance of having a decent score.
Graphics
9.5
Seriously one of the best graphics I have seen in a while.
Sound
1.0
Can we have a game that doesn’t cuss so much? I have been around Marines and construction workers and all of them COMBINED does not match how much cussing that is in this game.
Gameplay
5.0
The stuff you get to do does not outweigh the retarded controller set up. You can never take cover standing up. You are almost always crouching. Even when walking.
Story
0.0
If I could give a negative score for the story hitting a woman I would.
Replay Value
5.0
I cant say ya or nay on it since I wont be playing it again
OVERALL
4.5
Due to poor language and even worse moral conflicts in the game a game that has really good potential is met with a man that has a .45 and a shovel.
This game has the best taboos, beating up a woman, beating up a black
politician in DC, and killing towelheads in iraq.
Riley
20 Jun 2010, 19:55
So you wrote a negative review of a game that you quit after the 2nd level?
Weaksauce. You should keep playing because it is a good game and that is
the only time you hit a girl. The hitting a girl scene made me
uncomfortable in my chair but it is uncomfortable scenes like these that
make games such a more powerful media than movies or television.
Stu the man
23 Jun 2010, 08:02
Oh man dont give up on Splinter Cell just because the redhead hacker got
smacked around a little. At least Fisher didnt beat her to hell like all
the baddies and terrorists. Splinter Cell games are hard core like 24 with
all of the terrorist torturing. Keep playing this game and rewrite your
scores. Peace!
Rene Reiche
24 Jun 2010, 13:27
I was just playing it myself and have ABSOLUTELEY no problem with the
language. I found this beat-up mechanic well done, but never "that is SO
COOL!" it wasn't really entertaining, I admired it on a more technical
level. Saying that, the rest of the game wasn't much fun either. A
Splinter Cell game where you can't and don't have to hide bodies, that's
not what you signed up for...or at least not what I signed up.
Good, that said, I just came to the scene that asks you to beat up Grim(the
girl that totally looks like Meryl from Metal Gear Solid IV)...
Just as you, I stopped playing. It is WRONG to hit her. Yes, she asks for
it, yes it would help her(she wouldn't have to wound herself and would be
more believable for her employers), BUT, here comes the big "but":
FIRST Sam refuses to hit her and wants to walk away from it all, THEN she
makes some stupid remark about Sam's daughter and he get's pissed off...
the games asks me to push "B" to hit her. That would be like saying it's
ok to hit women to let off some steam" and I will not give that command,
end of game for me!
You did the right thing with stopping to play, Zimes! On the other hand you
did the WRONG thing by handing out scores to things you can't judge as you
didn't get the full experience.
Anyway, let's both write to UBIsoft and tell them that.
LaughingMan
24 Jun 2010, 16:58
@Rene Reiche
You should read the forums on this review. The debate over hitting women
rages on.
Rene Reiche
25 Jun 2010, 06:51
@LaughingMan
Thanks, but I couldn't find anything about hitting women or this game in
the forums of this site. I even tried the google "site: ..." search.
By the way... I found some Top100 comments by Zimes and your top PSN-games.
You guys from this site here have a REALLY STRANGE TASTE, no $&'% ! A PSN
Top-list without Flower, without Pixeljunk shooter, without Fat Princess,
without BRAID(!) without Echchrome... tzzzz....
LaughingMan
25 Jun 2010, 10:47
@Rene
Hmmm... it has been about a year and a half since I wrote those. Maybe I
should either update them or take them down. haha.
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Splinter Cell: Conviction
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