Splinter Cell: Conviction Preview

Sam's shrine to Girls Aloud was coming along nicely.

At this point, the demo branches out a bit. There are at least two ways to infiltrate the base - through the front door or via a nearby drainpipe - but however you get in, you'll have to deal with a large group of armed guards. The villains seem to be testing some form of large EMP device that's hanging from the ceiling, and with a careful shot you can send this heavy machinery crashing down upon the men below. Needless to say, doing this will cause your enemies to swarm all over the place in search of you, and once this happens you'll have quite a battle on your hands. In case you'd forgotten, this is the new, faster, nastier Splinter Cell: kill or be killed is the order of the day.

Luckily Sam has a number of lethal toys at his disposal. At the start of the game he's just a crazy ex-spy, forced to rely on the tools he finds - like the piece of wing-mirror we saw in the E3 presentation. However, as time progresses you'll also find a number of other devices, many of them familiar. Nightvision goggles make a return, but this time they have an extremely cool sonar ability that allows you to see enemies through nearby walls. In my last preview I mentioned that the sticky camera is back, but I forgot to add one important detail: you can use this gadget as part of the new mark-and-execute system, the feature that allows Fisher to pre-assign targets and then wipe out several enemies in one go. Once you've charged this ability by performing a close-combat kill, you can single out multiple enemies for death using the RB button on the 360 pad; as soon as the enemies are in range, you just hit Y to kill everyone in a single, fluid motion. The number of foes you can target varies from weapon to weapon, but apparently you'll be able to boost this figure via some form of weapon customisation - Ubisoft won't give up the details on this yet.

In any case, the point is that the sticky camera now has an added layer of usefulness, since you can chuck one into a room, mark the thugs, then dash in and gun them down. Parizeau explained to me that the team wanted to make Sam's tools more gameplay-focused in terms of the way they're used. In the past, you'd just use the goggles when you were in a dark place, then you'd switch them off when you were out in the light again. Now, thanks to their sonar power, they'll help you to form your battle strategy.

Parizeau certainly knows how to use these devices, too. While my performance in the demo was remarkably clumsy (hey, I was rushing through it), he gracefully glided through the stage like a swan trained by the SAS. He cleared the main room in a matter of seconds, hurtled through the facility and down into some form of sewer, shimmying up pipes and crawling through vents at speed. There's no denying that Conviction has a swifter pace than its predecessors, and it's certainly easy on the eye. The lighting effects are particularly atmospheric, providing plenty of sinister shadows for Sam to skulk around in, and while you're hidden the screen takes on a grainy appearance - a subtle and stylish way to indicate that the player is safely hidden.

As I said earlier, the animation is also particularly elegant in its violence. There are quite a few controls to keep track of, but once you master them you'll revel in showing off as you despatch your opponents. At the close of the demo, I watched Parizeau as he silently crept up on a trio of unfortunate guards. A small metal cylinder suddenly landed by one of the guards' feet. "What was that?" he cried. A second later, the flashbang blew. A second after that, the three men were on their backs with bullets in their head. What was that, you ask? That was Sam Fisher, pal, and early next year, he's coming to get you.

Sam Fisher is coming to get you, if you have a PC or Xbox 360, in the first quarter of 2010