By John Walker on September 24th, 2009 at 8:55 am.
Splinter Cell: Conviction has released a super-gruesome trailer to make clear its release date. The 2nd of the 23rd month of the year. Which I believe is called Fructosember, of course originally named after the Roman god of naturally occurring sugars. Wait, hang on, it’s that backward American dates thing isn’t it? They meant the 23rd of February. Who picked that? Do you Americans write the time as 56:05? No! Wait, but that would be more right. Oh God! It’s all falling apart!
The new trailer sports one of the fancy new red 18 PEGI logos, and plays out like someone went back to the 80s and stitched together all the cut scenes from ITV showings of action movies. It’s a more serious tone that the toilet-face trailer of July, and a lot more serious than the previous PAX keyboard cat spoofery.
24/09/2009 at 09:13 Blurr11 says:
Wasn’t splinter cell about stealth ?
24/09/2009 at 09:54 Alez says:
I thought splinter cell was a stealth game too. Must have been wrong. I’ve apparently been playing some third person shooter all this time.
Is it me or does the video look like crap? The graphics seem worse than Splinter Cell 1. Maybe because there’s so much light now.
24/09/2009 at 13:06 phil says:
As dude points out, this is essentially 24 the video game, and Jack was never the stealthist of spys. Hopefully the loony toon right wing popaganda and torture happy narrative will similarly make the transition, the final challenge could be creeping around the Amnesty International HQ, water boarding the fund raising managers and staging an extrodinary rendition on Tariq Ali .
24/09/2009 at 22:15 Tyshalle says:
Yeah, this does not look especially impressive; and I had the same thought about the graphics. They do look worse than they did in the first game.
Also, is it just me or is Sam younger in this game than he has been in any other thus far?
24/09/2009 at 09:23 FunkyLlama says:
Dear lord they couldn’t have put me off more if they tried. :/
24/09/2009 at 09:24 Psychopomp says:
I want Hobo Cell!
24/09/2009 at 09:26 Psychopomp says:
Oh, hey, my avatar finally started working again!
24/09/2009 at 09:26 Lack_26 says:
Aw, I was really looking forward to all those new months. I guess we should abolish years and have count in decades that way we can have 120 months a year. I’ve decided on this since every sort of trend seems to be divided by decade.
Oh yeah, that trailer made the game look quite fun. Didn’t show much sneaking though and I play SpC for the sneaking and then breaking a man’s neck after whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
24/09/2009 at 09:31 Dude says:
Jack Bauer is that you? Looks more 24 like than splinter cell like…
24/09/2009 at 09:44 Sobric says:
Why does he shoot a guy in the leg, then the hand, and then pistol whip him? What’s the point? Why not just shoot him once and be done with it?
And why does every trailer sound like I’m listening to it from the bottom of a well?
WHY OH DEAR GOD WHY ALL THE QUESTIONS?
24/09/2009 at 09:45 Heliocentric says:
Hmm
I’m going to set my pc clock to read
sec:min:hour:day:month:year i wonder how long it’ll be until i miss appointments.
Really, after the turd that double agent was i need a demo, so no matter how lowest denominator these videos are i don’t care.
24/09/2009 at 09:56 El_MUERkO says:
i thought conviction was a 360 exclusive, or is it just a 360 console exclusive?
24/09/2009 at 10:02 Jim Rossignol says:
360 console exclusive.
24/09/2009 at 10:02 gulag says:
Playing Chaos Theory at the moment, and it’s fab. Is this in the sames series?
It is? Really?! Are you sure?
24/09/2009 at 10:35 Dominus says:
if you thought any Slinter Cell game was about stealth, go play Thief than think again.
24/09/2009 at 10:40 Dominic White says:
Fructosember is the worst month. I do highly approve of the branding Double Fine have done in the run-up to the release of Brutal Legend. I’d be quite happy permanently renaming next month to Rocktober.
Of course, there’s also a new season of Venture Brothers starting next month as well, so we’ll just add one more letter to make it Brocktober. The manliest of all months.
24/09/2009 at 18:29 Funky Badger says:
Rocktober, the month directly before Gamevember.
Sounds eminently sensible.
24/09/2009 at 10:47 Heliocentric says:
Dominus, splinter cell has a gun, but shooting everyone is not the point.
You have a sword in thief, stabbing everyone is not the point.
The gun just represents a dynamic “easy mode” button, where the sword in thief was the “you just fucked up son” button.
24/09/2009 at 11:09 Optimaximal says:
Well, unless you’re playing Deadly Shadows…
24/09/2009 at 10:55 gulag says:
I’m finding Sniper Elite to be a very happy balance between the tensions of sneaky hiding and runny shooting. It has a great mix of missions that can be completed either way, and one or two that are murderously hard. Lovely mechanics. I’d quite like to see Rebellion try a Clancy-esque stealth-shooter.
24/09/2009 at 11:04 Dominus says:
Heliocentric, its not about gun/sword, its about immersion, about sneaking and about freedom to do whatever you want.
24/09/2009 at 11:26 Heliocentric says:
If you are talking about pandora or the original splinter cell then yes, they were stupidly linear. But chaos theory really opened up and the advantages of linear gaming mean that they can line up scenes they want you to experience. So yes the game (chaos theory) does get split into challenges some times, but i find that wide open stealth games are too easily circumvented or suffer from overly limited ai.
24/09/2009 at 11:05 Vandelay says:
I share everyone’s dismay at the abundance of a Jack Bauer version of Sam. Having said that, I did actually see some stealth kills, which I hadn’t seen at all in any of the the other trailers. Hopefully, the game will be as Heliocentric says and the gun will just be there for easy mode. As long as stealth is achievable throughout and combat is not forced upon you constantly then this could be good.
24/09/2009 at 12:05 Arsewisely says:
Looks great, can’t wait. It’ll hopefully be more Borne than Bauer in terms of the frantic, hand-to-hand with guns combat. Arkham Asylum uses stealth and close up brutalizing successfully, I don’t see why SCC can’t do both as well.
In any case, I struggle to see how people can like stealth that much anyway – generally, if you screw up, that’s it which encourages too much saving and reloading and really breaks the flow of the game up. Either that or you hide until the guards inexplicably go back to their default routines and you try again, which is another immersion breaker in its own way.
24/09/2009 at 12:09 Heliocentric says:
Or you pull out a gun?
24/09/2009 at 12:17 Arsewisely says:
Well, I was kind of assuming that stealthing, a la previous Splinter Cell games, involved shooting people quietly as well as strangling them and what not. If you have to pull out a gun when you hadn’t planned it haven’t you failed the stealth aspect of the game? And if that is part of playing stealth games, and is in itself fun, then can’t SCC be as well?
24/09/2009 at 12:24 Ybfelix says:
Isn’t alarm status in previous SC games irreversible? Or maybe just on higher difficulty
24/09/2009 at 15:49 Heliocentric says:
I’m one of the crazy people who do non-lethal playthroughs. So, yeah, killing everyone is very optional, hell generally speaking you can get by unheard, unseen and without even knocking people out (there are a few mandatory interrogitations in the earlier games) hell, you can even get by without breaking a single lightbulb.
My favourite is to not go unheard and abuse making noise to lure people from problematic patrols. Went through deus ex using a packet of soy food to help me knock out almost the entireity of the majestic 12.
25/09/2009 at 01:32 nutterguy says:
Definitly looks more like they are going for the Bourne look and story for that matter, which is NOT a bad thing mind you. Every action film since (Bond) has been trying to copy that fighting style, time for a game to try replicate it.
I’m pretty sure Sam Fish*coughBournecough*er is even younger looking than he used to be…
24/09/2009 at 12:19 Ybfelix says:
O_O I will convert to the God of Naturally Occurring Sugars anyday.
24/09/2009 at 13:11 Ruda says:
I’d love it if they just made another ten levels or so for Chaos Theory. Never mind the story, Fisher doesn’t have to be the central figure in it. Let him do his job, because that was, and is, great game play. And yes, it can be challenging too. Just a few tweaks here and there – give the NCPs 20/20 vision and deadlier bullets – and we have a brilliant game.
24/09/2009 at 13:30 stormbringer951 says:
You know, once upon a time I liked Splinter Cell. When it more or less followed the Thief model of being die-hard sneaky. Now it’s just an action game.
I’ll go and get Doom3 (for the Dark Mod) for cheap, and go and buy OpFlashPoint2 instead.
24/09/2009 at 14:17 Dracko says:
And unsurprisingly, it looks like a shitty ITV action/spy serial as well.
It’s amazing how utterly stagnant the spy genre has become. They’re lifting it in fucking car ads, of all things.
24/09/2009 at 14:36 mrrobsa says:
Well nuts to (most of) you guys, I think it looks likes a potent dose of super-spy thriller fun, but then I’ve not played the Splinter Cell series so I’m not judging it against previous entries. Isn’t the point of all this action stuff to show that if you’re shit at stealth you’re still gonna enjoy the game? I’d be surprised if it didn’t lend itself to the hardcore stealth playthrough as well as gun/fist brutality.
Also 24 the game would be welcomed by me, its bonkers enough that it would mesh nicely with game logic.
24/09/2009 at 15:22 lumpi says:
24 – The Game already exists… not so hot.
This looks pretty good, though.
24/09/2009 at 15:37 dingo says:
I agree with the sentiments concerning stealth gameplay.
I’m hoping the trailer is aimed for the 14 year old ADD children that need ACTION and there is a way to play it stealth as well.
24/09/2009 at 21:56 radomaj says:
I played Chaos Theory when I was 14 years old and I did it with a mostly non-lethal playthrough (although the game did get the better of me and I killed a guard when I didn’t have to). Mostly tried to avoid shooting lightbulbs and used that electrodisabling gun-thingie. It’s not teenagers that need ACTION – I find that it is people in general.
24/09/2009 at 15:59 Hermit says:
Fructober, surely.
24/09/2009 at 16:26 Waste_Manager says:
What a rubbish trailer. Makes it look like every other 3rd person shooter – shame because the e3 demo thing that was floating around looked really cool.
24/09/2009 at 17:43 Lars Westergren says:
I think I’d rather play playing Alpha Protocol.
24/09/2009 at 18:40 Vandelay says:
You would rather play as someone playing Alpha Protocol? That would be a strange game.
25/09/2009 at 07:03 Lars Westergren says:
I don’t know, Virtual Virtual Pool was pretty good, and look how popular World of World of Warcraft is!
…either that, or typing a message on a tiny mobile screen is hard. :P
24/09/2009 at 18:17 Demon Beaver says:
Okay, at the end it says “In-Game Shotgun (…) only at GameStop”. Does that mean that I get the shotgun in the game, or that I get a real life shotgun which looks like the one in the game? The second option has me intrigued…
24/09/2009 at 18:57 Esc says:
As an american who has to communicate with his finnish office regularly, I say: “All hail Fructosember! Death to Saccharinary! “
25/09/2009 at 00:47 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
I agree. If they could see it in their hearts to write yyyy-mm-dd OR dd-mm-yyyy that would be fine. Changing your mind halfway though is just disingenuous.
At least it wasn’t publicised that it would be released in “fall” though eh.
As a die hard fan of SC I’m very close to passing on this one.
25/09/2009 at 02:26 Starky says:
Actually the Americans are right with fall, it was we English that changed (to a french word, pah!) to Autumn and they that kept the English fall.
English colonists took “fall” with them to Yewessay and it stuck, while us lot back in ol’ rainy land decided fall was too working class, and needed to be tarted up a bit, so we nicked the word off the french. Like coz dey like sound well posh like innit.
Damn those Yanks and their keeping our old language, words and measurements!
Shame they lost sarcasm though, but then I firmly believe that the phenomenon of sarcasm is a cold weather creature, natural-selection like it is purged from people in warm weather climates. It’s main source of food is one simple question, one that with good weather is literal and this offers no nourishment.
Lovely weather isn’t it?
25/09/2009 at 08:02 Katsumoto says:
In fairness, I completed T:ds without killing anyone! I think it’s just as stealthy as the previous two. Well… I took out a few zombies, does that count?
25/09/2009 at 08:06 Katsumoto says:
Um, that was meant to be In reply to Optimaxetc. Damn iPod touch!
25/09/2009 at 09:06 whalleywhat says:
Whatever, this game is gonna rule. Just bought Chaos Theory off Steam in anticipation.
25/09/2009 at 16:08 Urthman says:
The guy doing the Saturday (?) demo at PAX was the most over-the-top video game presentation I’ve ever seen. He sounded like a WWF announcer, “OH MY GOD I can’t BELIEVE how UTTERLY BRUTAL Sam Fisher was to that guy’s FACE! But is he DONE? NO WAY! He’s JUST GETTING STARTED! Now he’s going HUMILIATE HIM by breaking a TOILET WITH HIS HEAD! SAM is UNBELIEVABLY HARDCORE! Because those BASTARDS KILLED his DAUGHTER so THIS TIME it’s PERSONAL! BUT the guy STILL WON’T TALK! ARE YOU GONNA TAKE THAT?”
I swear. I don’t have the quotes exactly, but I am not exaggerating even a little bit.
I was hoping for a youtube video. This is the best I could find, but it’s a later part of the game and the demo guy has toned it down a lot, although catch the end where he yells “SHOOT HIM! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” when the guy playing the demo has a gun at the enemy’s head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaWMBBPmyKg
“UBISOFT! MAKING GAMES THAT DON’T SUCK! FOR BRODUDE FRATBOYS LIKE YOU!”
He really wanted to make me hate this game, and I mostly do, but the was a pretty cool stealth bit where when you get out of sight, you leave behind a ghost that represents where the AI last saw you and where they currently think you are, so you can watch them close in on your former position while you sneak around and ambush them.
08/10/2009 at 03:00 Aorawn says:
LOL AMERICANS ROFL ROFL