Zero Punctuation: Splinter Cell: Conviction

[De Ronneman]

First of all: Yes, it was INCEDIBLY short, the "hey, let's scream every 5 seconds" thingy is really annoying and the "only jump here, and only here, or you'll open a door" screwed me over too, only in my case they played Scrabble.

But secondly: Yes, you mentioned your novel on your Twitter. 5 times. Maybe more, I'm not a regular.

 

[ImprovizoR]

Great review as ever.

Though the thought of Yahtzee actually performing a terrorist attack on the White House is an interesting thought.

He did visit the place last summer. Maybe he really is up to something

I guess you can't really appreciate Splinter Cell if you're not a fan of that kind of high tech spy stealth. I like stealth games, especially on their hardest difficulty. And I like Conviction because it's not like any other stealth game I played. I can shoot everyone but it feels more rewarding this time to actually sneak around. In previous games it was the most obvious option, the only option if you wanted to live. And taking guards down silently is awesome with those cool animations you can pull of. The biggest problem I have with the game is that deniable ops missions are actually more fun then story missions.

 

[DurianBlink]

Yeah, normally that'd be true, but personally I'd have to agree with Durian here. Even I usually get a laugh out of the times when he does that stuff, like constantly portraying Americans with cowboy hats, or what have you, but here it didn't really seem funny.

Yeah, same here man. I find his America jokes funny most of the time. This was just a flat out insult. No real joke to hide behind.

 

[Gladi]

Hungry hungry hipo =)

 

[JihadMatt]

Little Yahtzee! DDD

 

[Crabby_the_Frog]

TMNT reference made me literally fall out of my chair laughing.

 

[Kuilui]

Eh I laughed a few times but I felt the "America sucks ahahahaha retarded tossers" joke was not well done. I can laugh at a good joke at my country or political ideology but if it was well done. Like the cowboy hat in the space ship from last episode was funny. Even in I forget what review when at the end everyone is slaves and the republican is like "Why do you hate freedom?" I cracked up and I'm conservative. I just wish he would take some shots at Liberals every once in awhile if he feels so inclined as to make political jokes and no making fun of Hilary Clinton once does not count. This just seemed more like just plan hate for America more so than anything else. Of course this is just how I merely interpreted his words so don't go all flame war on me will you? Still good review and the hungry hungry hippos thing was pretty funny.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

I found it so easy it wasn't funny, he was right there.

 

[McGee]

I have pretty much the same views as Yahtzee on this one. After playing games like Thief and Hitman that are extremely fun and open-ended stealth games, Conviction is absolute garbage. I went into it expecting a stealth game, and it was an appeal-to-the-lowest-common-denominator action game. The most disappointing thing has to be the supremely awful AI. Co-op was fun with a friend, but a short co-op game with just as retarded guards isn't worth $60. It kind of sucks because I absolutely loved the first 3 splinter cells, didn't like double agent very much, and thought this one would be the great comeback. I was wrong.

 

[afaceforradio]

Hehee awesome video.

Those 'tard eyes' will never fail to make me laugh

 

[Hamburger_Time]

Great review, wonder what is going to be next.

 

[Srkkl]

Spliter Cell isn't a good 'steath game' it's more of just a shooter with steath elements.

I seriously don't know what game your playing but Conviction is only a "shooter with stealth elements" if you suck at finding an alternate sneak point or never use gadgets.

Spoiler

OT: The plot was pretty easy to understand, he wasn't in hiding when the game started, he had a hint to his daughters killer. Tom Reed thought he was getting close to his take over America plot(which btw wasn't taking over the U.S., it was putting the vp in power who had the same ideals as the big corperation who ran major cities and would cooperate with said corperation.) so he tried to take him out early, the only reason Sam wasn't killed right away was because of Grim.

Also the AI is only really retarded when your playing on rookie, which is same for all other games on the easy difficulty.

 

[tburke0]

All I'm asking is, if there's a rule that all posts before 12:05 are pulled, why not lock the thread? And yes, I waited until I could post in the first 5 minutes on a Wednesday to make my point... hurr durr...

Well, one part of the reason is that letting people get banned for things easy to catch means we have less people who ignore rules getting banned for harder to find offenses.

And the rule isn't that they can't post within 5 minutes, the rule is "no first posting". However, mods are human, and sometimes may ban before reading in the case of ZP threads. I think we've mostly stopped that these days though.

When you post something like "I enjoyed/hated this review" before it was physically possible to enjoy the review, then the only reason you are posting is to be a first post, or for something else equally inane.

If you post something legitimate and on topic (Random example of a rare post that actually contributes some discussion to a zp thread [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.176837.5096925]) then it doesn't matter when you post it. The end result is it is a very rare post outside of a problem report with the video that can be considered to be anything other then a "first post" in this context.

Also, if we did a 5 minute lock, we would still have the same problem with idiots waiting for the unlock to spam the thread in pursuit of a first post.

Fair enough, thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

[viking97]

lol plug

 

[aerumna]

Great Review

"Turns out she was in another castle"

haha

 

[Da Joz]

I just couldn't get into the splinter cell series.

 

[Santa Clauz]

wow, I never really bothered before, but skimming the comments, it just seems to me 4.5/6 pages of people sucking Yahtzee off.

In any case, as has been said, Splinter cell AI is only retarded on rookie, and the "playing for you" is actually necessary on realistic. Find me a person who is not an obsessive compulsive gamer who can beat realistic without insta-kill melee and executions, and he is a god of video games.

That said, the plot was complete crap

 

[ucciolord1]

Loved the last analogy. As fantastic as always.
Imma definitely getting my hands on Mogworld.

 

[Andaxay]

I always thought a waterproof camel would come in handy somewhere.

After all the positives I heard about this game, I was quite surprised to hear such a scathing review. Then again, enjoyment is in the eyes of the beholder. I haven't had a chance to play this one yet, though I enjoyed the first Splinter Cell quite a lot, someone told me this one was very different, and it sort of put me off, like it was completely losing focus on the whole "stealth" thing (which drew me to the series in the first place).

 

[BurroDiablo]

Good review, I agreed with pretty much all of it. I've always liked Splinter Cell games, but the last two have let the series down. Conviction was okay but it was very short and didn't really have the charm of the first 3. The shadows bug me the most; in the first 3 Splinter Cells the Shadows were very prominent... you had a meter to tell you how visible you were, but in the last two they did away with it. Why? The little slider was perfect... how all we have is Black and White... you're either visible or you're not, nothing in between, it's very poor. Also, in Conviction, as with Double Agent (which I thought was absolute dog shit) the shadows are really light, I have no freaking idea how Sam can hide in them... he really must be the master of stealth to hide in these piss puddles of darkness.
Ubisoft have changed SC too much from the old formula I reckon... it's just a bland 3rd person shooter now. Innovation is fine, but don't dumb the fucking game down.