"...the world you see is yours, because it is different for everyone else."

About Evon

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I am a photographer, a sometimes writer, a gamer, a driver and more. I graduated from Central Michigan University with a double major in Journalism(Photo) and English(Creative Writing). Any Photos are copyright Ryan Evon, The Facts or the Morning Sun 2010/2011/2012. All words by, representing and claimed by Ryan Evon & only him, unless in quotation marks & specified otherwise.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Baseball fun

Shooting Chippewa Hills baseball today I was wandering around the field, after being told to leave the field by the softball ump (for no other reason than he doesn't know what he's doing) I left (Sorry Chip Hills girls, no photos of you for Wednesday) and focused on baseball.

Got this shot in a moment of comeback for the team. The color went really wonky, but I like it because of that, otherwise, normal high five.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

GAMES: I Spy with my little eye, a bunch of dead guards. Splinter Cell: Conviction

The Splinter Cell games have always gripped me. Then used their elbows to cave in the soft spot at the back of my skull, rendering me a sack of worthless flesh laying on the ground.

Honestly, I didn't spend much time with Double Agent because when it came out I couldn't rent it and when I finally got it my situation just didn't allow for a lot of free time, so I had to abandon the game like a poor war buddy who was blown in half during a fire fight. I love you Billy, but I gotta get this freaking homework done!

When I played the demo for Conviction my inner Sam Fisher woke up, in a frenzied blood-lust; wanting vengeance against pitiless henchmen and innocent light bulbs. Damn you, light bulbs!

Conviction is different but the same, better but worse than other Splinter Cell games.

The text on the walls is a clever tutorial mechanic that rolls into the higher gameplay, telling you what to do. Tim Buckley of CtrlAltDelete poked fun at it here. The memory videos projected onto walls are also interesting, but easily overlooked, which isn't always a bad thing.

Weapon and gadget upgrades in Conviction is a nice addition. Sam doesn't start with the biggest and best anymore, being outside of Third Echelon, he has to earn scopes and higher damage grenades by getting achievements, mainly from killing henchmen in various, creative ways.

They fine tuned the story and presentation in this release and I'm itching to snap some more necks, like right now if I didn't have to work and even that is barely enough to restrain my urge.

My want is always much more important than my need.

Fisher as a super-badass, super spy was fun but pushing it through several games without any real evolution would have led to continual stale rehashing.

Conviction shows Sam out of the spy game, for about 3 seconds, until he is pulled back in with information about his daughter.

As always the missions leave you to decided how to approach and deal with various guards and bosses. One new trick Fisher has this time is an "Execution" mode. Cued up by taking someone out in hand to hand combat you can mark multiple baddies in Fisher's vision and then "Execute." Sam pulls his pistol and plants a head shot on all the marked targets, hopefully clearing a bottleneck situation.

This is emphasized in co-op play. Teammates can tag baddies and use each others Execute or position themselves and perform a synchronized Dual Execute.

One complaint I have, as apparently most other reviewers do, is you no longer have the ability to move bodies. Now, I've never been an actual spy or hitman. But I've played enough games to know that when you are stealthily dropping goombahs you don't want to leave a trail of them for someone to find. In old Splinter Cell the elbow to the head and the carry were part of the same swift stealth Splinter Sam smotion. Sorry, wanted to keep the alliteration going.

It seems like a simple game mechanic, why leave it out?

Multiplayer is quite entertaining, if only for the missions where it is better to NOT knock out every guard because it turns into a "who is going to cave and punch one of them" contest. But in this contest everyone loses, because you have to start the mission again. Yeah, Shawn! Leave him alone!

Strategizing and communication are key aspects of multiplayer gameplay for me. You take the two up top, I'll grab this guy down here then we'll tea bag everyone else. Communication is essential in tea bagging scenarios people!

Sometimes your duo has no choice but to forcefully take a door and it leaves the super spies completely exposed. But only a silly spy breaks a door down without peaking under or using a sonic detector or the Force to figure out how many henchmen are standing on the other side. Silly spies, they never learn.

Chaos Theory had some fun multiplayer actions where one spy would launch the other over a wall to access something. That doesn't seem to be in Conviction, which is a bummer. Double Agent might have had it, don't know. I should go back to that one.

Anyway, so far so good. May amend this upon further play time, but I'm under a similar time constrained situation as with Double Agent. So I might leave you with this.

Splinter Cell: Conviction
Still in possession. Very likely to re-rent.

3.75 out of 5 as a sequel
4 out of 5 if you haven't played previous versions