Still waiting for my Splinter Cell: Conviction copy to arrive, so what do you think I should be doing? Well, I think I definitely should be playing the shit out of the demo. First time I went through it, I was a bit pissed it lasted only 20 minutes. Now that I’ve finished it 50 times over, I just don’t care: who would have thought it’d be so much fun killing the same 6 guys 50 times over?

One thing I noticed though, is that Sam Fisher seems to randomly comment on your actions “Not bad”, “I see the training paid off”, etc. If I simply grab a guy and pull him over a ledge (an action that only requires me to press a single button), Sam just might comment on that.

I think it would be better if Sam only spoke out when the player’s actions deserve it: say, if the player takes down 3 enemies in less than 3 seconds and without anyone noticing, for instance. These comments could also be modulated by the level of difficulty, and possibly on how well the player has been doing so far.

The tools needed to estimate how well the player is doing aren’t that complicated: a timer, and simple frustum, alert and kill checks. And in return, players would have the satisfaction of having a skilled assassin commenting on their actions; a formidable form of reward that seems underutilized in SC: Conviction.

That said, I’m itching for my copy to arrive: switching from pure gameplay to cinematic moves and back with variable granularity simply feels so great; the re-playability of this game must be insane.

Oh, and while I’m at it, I just witnessed the freakiest thing I ever thought I would in a game: after I finished cleaning up a room, I noticed movement on my latest victim. “Wow, they even added the nervous twitch of a guy who took a bullet in the head”, I thought, impressed. But as I got close, I watched in horror the dead guy – bloody bullet hole in the forehead, dead eyes to the ceiling – move his lips in a silent and never-ending litany. Pretty please, fix those facial animations: it’s just too spooky for a Splinter Cell game.

Often enough, you don’t measure how important something was until it’s not there anymore; case in point with the radio chatter in FEAR2 (as I have just started playing it, I won’t pass any judgment on the game itself at this point).

In the original FEAR, you could hear the enemies’ radio chatter. This had several uses:

• They provided information regarding the opposition you were facing: when a squad had been decimated, the comm chatter of the survivors would tell you just that: “No way!”, “I got 2 men down!”, “I need reinforcements!”
• They increased tension: “Flank him”, “I have him in my sights”

The last one I realized while playing to FEAR2:

• They signaled someone’s presence in the area: what keeps happening to me in FEAR 2 is, I’d kill everyone in a room, then start looking around for some ammo or intel… and I’d get shot at point-blank by an unsuspected enemy that was sitting right next door; as this would never happen in the real world – the noise of a heavily armed soldier moving around would be enough to reveal his presence -  I found it a bit frustrating.

And in my understanding, it really fit the philosophy of the first game: it’s not about straight up surprise, but about the anticipation build-up: paranormal activities were always “announced” through cracking static in the headset, and replica soldiers attacking where similarly “announced” through these audio cues.

Some other noises would go in the same section: an elevator beeping when stopping on your floor or a door slamming open would suggest an imminent assault, whereas most of the time in FEAR2, the player would be the first one to get shot if he had not seen the enemy (and they can see you very well).