All this week, I shall be standing outside with a bucket, attempting to catch as many ephemeral droplets from the downpour of videogame sequel news as I possibly can. Well, I wish I was outside. And I wish I was standing. Instead, I shall be sitting inside and embedding as my already withered legs continue to atrophy. Next to meet its fate at the hands of my ability to resize video code to 600 pixels wide is the latest, somewhat rebooty Splinter Cell. It’s called Blacklist – a word that strikes fear into the hearts of many a videogame journalist who’s dared to say negative things about [REDACTED] or [REDACTED], and it stars an apparently younger Sam Fisher in a more action-orientated setting, with Michael Ironside retired from voice duties. There’s already been a letter from the dev in a desperate attempt to placate the inevitably furious response.
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I just euthanised Sam Fisher.

It was the right thing to do. I couldn’t let him go on like that, constantly trailing off mid sentence, sometimes for minutes at a time, before carrying on exactly where he left off. Or he’d pull himself into safety behind a piece of cover, only to get seemingly distracted, vacant stares as all around him was chaos. When he finally returned to reality, he would just as likely be somewhere entirely different to when he started.

I don’t blame him though. It’s not his fault he’s like this. It’s Ubisoft, with all their talk of good intentions and protecting their creative license, that have really killed him, not me. It wasn’t me who decided that it was time to fight the pirates at all costs, even if it meant that the only true victim would be the paying customer. It wasn’t me who waged this war over copyright infringement. I’m just collateral damage.
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Ubisoft, as part of their current PR campaign to win the hearts and minds of PC gamers, are taking a new approach. Not only will anyone wanting to play Splinter Cell: Conviction be forced to keep their PC permanently online (and hope Ubisoft’s own servers stay online over a weekend) if they want to be able to play the single player game, but now very disappointingly there’s no demo for the PC player.

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As Splinter Cell Conviction nears, the potential-0-meter is pretty high. Many years of development, a lot of time dedicated to getting it right, it could be the new peak for Mr Fisher and his convoluted life. You can see a ton of footage here, should you wish. And below is a new trailer, introducing Victor Coste, who explains a bit about the fall of Sam Fisher, and his current state.

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We’re peering through the futurescope at the games we can expect to see in the coming year. There’s plenty to work through, so let’s get on with a look at some of the notable games of Spring and Summer 2010. (You can read part one here.)
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Splinter Cell Conviction, eh? It’s certainly a video-isual game in development currently. But it’s more than that. It’s a video-isual game in development which Gamespot have put up 12 (Count ’em!) minutes of Footage of. Crikey. With that kind of exposure, you could probably watch it and not bother playing the game when it comes out. The video is hiding nearby. Find it. Go find it!
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Splinter Cell: Conviction has been in development for quite a while. It seems hard to focus on this, Ubisoft having entered a phase of churning out their franchises once a year, saturating the market and our consciousness with too many games, multiple teams working on alternate sequels for each series. But then that madness stopped, and now Conviction is over two years late. Which all seems to be pointing toward its being two years better, too. And the co-op – this could be another good reason to be excited about it. Rather than a tacked on mode for the main game, it’s a two-player prequel to Conviction’s main story, lasting around six hours. There’s a trailer about it below.

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I’m going to assume there’s an achievement for getting through the entirety of Splinter Cell: Conviction by breaking people’s necks. Anyway, this walkthrough trailer is extremely detailed, showing off loads of the new takedowns, an interrogation function, the sticky cam, Sam’s goggles with their new cheaty wallhack feature, and some other man-violence. Oh, Sam, you sure know how to deal with a faceless enemy thug. Swoon. The game is apparently out in February.
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Ubisoft have clearly gone bonkers, but in a splendid way. In the spirit of PAX, they’ve created a very silly teaser to promote Splinter Cell: Conviction, containing possibly the worst piece of photoshoppery in the history of the world. It’s a fun time, see below.

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Well, isn’t everyone tremendously excited about Splinter Cell: Conviction? There was a bit of fatigue setting in when the game was first announced… six hundred years ago, despite Chaos Theory still being well loved. Ubisoft had two factories making it at once, trying to produce one a year, and it didn’t bode well. Then it went quiet and they seemed to have the idea of spending ages on it, to make it really good. Well, it’s looking that way. There’s a new trailer fresh from Comic Con, in which you can enjoy the head-smashing, wall-crashing brutality of a Very Angry Man who wants his missing daughter back.

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“Prepare, execute, and vanish,” say Ubi Montreal of their new Splinter Cell philosophy. That, apparently, is the best way to explain the way Splinter Cell: Conviction will retain stealth options while boosting the action quotient. While standard sneaking allows you to prepare your approach, you’re going to be going through fairly ostentatious action sequences, before slipping back into the shadows. Hide and seek with neck-breaking, then. Also, “Mark and execute” is the new central motif – the tagging system which we saw in the E3 trailer – allows you to mark out enemies before you engage, allowing Sam to have the upper hand in the first moments of a fight. Anyway, go take a look at the developers making earnest hand-gestures about their game concepts below.
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Sam Fisher’s been off the radar for a little while, Ubisoft having given the old lad some time off whilst they made that bloke in the hood from Assassin’s Creed their stealth-man of the hour. Well, the guy who pays Michael Ironside’s rent is coming back this year, in the long-delayed Conviction. In the CGI and in-game footage below, it’s clear this is an earthier, angrier, more brutal Fisher. Maybe he’s so grumpy because he just heard the Left 4 Dead 2 announcement?
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