Fright Night

Like I had mentioned last week, my experience with the horror genre in general is pretty limited. I've played a few of the Resident Evil games, most notably the 4th one—clocked in around 20 hours if memory serves. I've played, or was at least in the room watching, Fatal Frame back in the day. Silent Hill 2 comes to mind also, Sean and I played it together for a little while, trying to stave off the fear of it all by laughing at the ineptness the enemies displayed. I never beat any of these games and aside from Outlast, the only other horror game I've beaten was the first Dead Space.

I was always hearing from my friends that Dead Space was sick: Filled with cool weapons, having a creepy as hell atmosphere and being a ton of fun. And can I tell you that damn, was it ever! The only reason I actually sat down and played it though was because of my job. At the time I was working at EA and they were in a transition period so there wasn't much to do. The studio was on the verge of collaborating on Dead Space 2, so to get into the game I read a ton of design documents about the lore and I played the entirety of the original Dead Space.

From what I remember of the game—I did play it over 5 years ago after all—it was really fun. I don't remember it being ridiculously scary mind you; but the atmosphere they created in the game was insane. The thing with space is that it’s quiet: There's nothing outside the ship but emptiness. You hear the ship expanding and contracting and the echoes of the enemies just carry on forever throughout the ship. It's the kind of atmosphere I expect to see in that new Alien's games Alien Isolation.

As you may know I'm a huge sci-fi fan and while I'm not big on horror, the alien series did catch my eye after a while. So I got all the movies and watched them... Well at least the first 2, I could never really sit through the 3rd one and never bothered with resurrection. Alien Isolation is supposed to really hit home with the first movie in terms of atmosphere and overall terror the xenomorph is supposed to instill. Depending on how you approach the game, i.e. being slow and methodical or going fast and loose, Alien Isolation is supposed to take about 15 hours to beat, and boy does it look terrifying.

I'll probably pick it up one day, maybe not. I've heard it's more of a stealth game than it is horror, so that definitely bodes well for me, but do I really want to risk shitting bricks? Who knows! The self-loathing is strong in me some days.

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Dishonored Stories Filled With Whale Oil And Clone-Faced Guards

Lastweek I spoke briefly about Mark of Ninja’s impeccable blend of visual aesthetic and stealth. Since then, I’ve put another few hours into the game, which have served to reinforce my initial perceptions of the game. I’ve also begun thinking more and more about Dishonored, a game I played a while back which felt fairly similar.

Of Whale Oil and Clone-Faced Guards

Much like Mark of the Ninja, my time with Dishonored was largely positive. Much of my impression of the game was due to its tone, pace and relatively open maps, which offered the flexibility to approach missions in a large number of ways—similarly to Mark of the Ninja.

More than these qualities though, I felt that much of the story that transpired throughout my time with Dishonored was forgettable: the sociopolitical machinations that served as the subtext for Corvo’s actions throughout the game felt wafer thin in terms of their depth, and belied what could have been a much more captivating tale about whale oil. That’s about the only lasting piece of terminology that has stuck with me about Dishonored.

Fortunately, the general lack of compelling storytelling was offset by the carefully constructed aesthetics surrounding each mission. While the world’s locations, culture and history all felt non-existent or else poorly conveyed to the player, my imagination tended to naturally populate these unknowns, thanks in part to how wonderful the art direction was for the game.

What resulted was a compelling personal narrative which I built over the existing story. My Corvo was a contemplative loner, who chose to keep silent because he felt contempt for the lack of solid writing which went into characterizing him and his world. Killing felt unnatural because all of the guards he had the option of killing looked exactly the same. My Corvo secretly feared that he too looked like these guards under his mask, and so chose to avoid killing anyone altogether.

Of Human Oil and Clone-Faced Guards

Similarly, I fitted a contextual narrative around Mark of the Ninja while playing it. I began as an earnest ninja, silently moving past enemies. Once I completed my first mission, I was presented with a scorecard, detailing all the enemies which I left alive. For not killing anyone, and for not being detected, I was awarded a paltry amount of supplemental points; what amount to the equivalent of killing and hiding six guards was reward for passing through a level in which there was easily three or four times this many guards. Sure they left my ninja cave and went home to study for their finals in looking like clone goons, but I was poorer for it.

As the game progressed, I opted to become an increasingly efficient assassin, and would kill every guard, carefully hiding them afterwards. Now when I escape from castles and derelict buildings, I leave only dogs alive. The rest of the enemies are carefully tucked away in vents and bins. Maybe their bodies eventually smell something fierce, and eventually decompose into what I assume is human oil.

Essentially, I feel that both Dishonored and Mark of the Ninja’s subdued storytelling is to their benefits.  As a result, I am able to make sense of my actions much like I would in a character-creation Western RPG, such as Elders Scrolls or Fallout.  I wondrously await the next half-baked story to bastardize and populate with a wholly inaccurate rendition of the world that the developers intended for the player. Until then, I suppose.  

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Mark Of The Ninja: A Tattooed Love Letter To Tenchu

I’ve long adored stealth games. Much of this admiration is rooted in my early memories playing Tenchu Stealth Assassins for the PS1.  I recall being young and immensely captivated by the level design and choice of tools, which I felt were inventive and allowed me to approach situations in a wide variety of ways. Many stealth games that I play are held to a standard set by Tenchu.

Klei Entertainment’s Mark of the Ninja (Ninja) comes across as a contemporary Tenchu in many ways. Its levels are well-realized, its choice of tools is vast, and its stealth is straightforward. But Ninja takes its gameplay a step further, incorporating sound and light mechanics, without teetering too far into earlier Splinter Cell territory. It’s handled quite well.

Still, I find myself unfairly comparing my time to Tenchu, which was a marvellously ugly gem. Which I suppose is sort of strange. Beyond its core design being rather similar, much of Ninja is actually quite different from the Tenchu series. For one, Klei’s background in crafting beautiful side-scrolling action games (Shank and Shank 2 come to mind) really shines through. The game’s art direction is pitch-perfect, and blends a complex contemporary cityscape with ninja. Also, the game’s pace is punchy, instead of overly plodding like Tenchu.

Actually, the anachronistic feeling of utilizing stealth and melee to handle armed enemies is slightly reminiscent of Batman Arkham City. Except, the stealth in Ninja is actually good instead being a shallow and ugly mess which makes you wish that Batman didn’t know how to utilize stealth at all in any of his previous incarnations so that Rocksteady didn’t have to feel compelled to make what I feel is the stealth equivalent of water with some of your vomit in it.

I tend to enjoy inventive and challenging stealth games. Or really, anything that isn’t Batman Arkham City: The Stealth Game. Ninja can safely rest its weary head on my soft and gentle compliment. And Klei should pat themselves on the back for developing a stealth game which high-fives smart game design. Perhaps when they make a sequel, they could call it Tenchu.

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Hide and Seek LOL

I’ve been playing League of Legends for about 4 years now but I’ve never been a huge fan of the ranked system; so when I hit level 30, it never gave me much endgame content or satisfaction until I discovered the player created custom game types and the wacky crazy fun that they offer. There are a bunch of different game types and this week I’m gonna talk about one of the more common ones: Hide and Seek. I'll give you a brief summary of the rules, and some strategies that are useful.

This game is always played on Crystal Scar, in Draft Mode. The blue team plays the hunters and receives first pick; purple side plays the hiders and will get the counter-picks. The objective of the game is to hide and seek obviously, and killing the hunters is pretty frowned upon. Hiders get 5 lives and the game lasts 40 minutes. The map objectives are off limits and capturing one means the game is over and the team at fault automatically loses. The game is won when all the hiders run out of lives, or if forty minutes pass without the seekers having killed all hiders. There are a few smaller rules like: only one person on each team may have a passive slowing item active items have no restrictions so long as they slow or speed up, etc..

Hunters have to wait 2 minutes to leave the base after the game starts to give the hiders a head start, and of course hiders must leave the base before the 2 minute mark. The centre fog of war is the only place you hide, as the outside rings of the map are off limits and if a hider is found hiding in this area (different from quickly getting the health relic) they automatically lose 1 life. Any side not sticking to the rules loses 3 minutes per fault, meaning if the seekers are caught cheating once, the hiders need 3 minutes less to win the game by surviving.

Three champs are auto banned and for pretty good reasons: Evelynn, for obvious reasons (she is always invisible unless you are on top of her); Kassadin, because he's impossible to catch or escape from; and Rengar, because the cooldown on his ultimate is too short making it either a guaranteed escape or kill depending on which team he’s on. The rest of the rules are more bureaucratic so here's the list. I had on a word document on my pc that was stolen from a forum post somewhere.

Seeking Rules

• Seekers are allowed 1 passive slowing item on the team (ex: Rylais, Frozen Mallet, Iceborn Gauntlet)
• Oracles are banned until 15 minutes
• Seekers must return to their base BELOW 300 HP. Likewise they must be given the chance to do so.
• If a seeker does not return to his base BELOW 300 HP then none of the kills he assists in or gets do not count toward hider lives.
• If a seeker does not return to his base BELOW 300 HP the hiders may kill him after a short period of 5 seconds.
• Once a seeker begins to "back" they must finish the channel, regardless of a hider stumbling onto them
• Seekers may not leave their base until 2 minutes into the game, while "their base" counts as the area where enemies get hit by the fountains laser.
• Seekers may not kill a unit on "Grace". If done, the kill does not count. If repeated, the hiders lose 3 minutes.

Hiding Rules

• A hider may not use an ability unless it provides "Hard Crowd Control (CC)" (SLOW, STUN, ROOT, PULL, CAGE, FEAR, TAUNT, PUSH), MOBILITY, SHIELDING or HEALING.
• Skills that provide only a SILENCE, VISION or DMG ONLY ARE NOT ALLOWED AT ANY POINT. ("Silence" and "Vision" are soft CC and are illegal.)
• Combination skills that lead to any of the named "Hard CC", such as brand stuns, kennen stuns, Lee Sin Q or Tempest are NOT ALLOWED. Riven's 3rd "Broken Wings" is allowed, so long as she is not INTENTIONALLY using the first 2 procs to deal damage and ONLY being used for escape purposes.
• No more than 2 hiders may hide together. This is to stop the popular group and run tactic.
• If there are 2 hiders in a brush together a third is not allowed to join them even being chased, if done, the hider loses 1 life.
• The group and run tactic is also not allowed at any point, even being chased it is only allowed to get help from up to 2 more hides NEVER from 3 or more.
• Thornmail, GA, Frozen Mallet and Sunfire Cape are banned for hiders.
• Any items that don't give movement, cc or defense are automatically banned in addition to items already mentioned. If bought, caught, and confronted you must return to the base and sell the item. You may not buy any additional items afterwards. You are given "Grace" for that time.
• Hiders must hide in the center of the fog of war.
• Hiders may NEVER auto-attack (even to heal) unless it is A HARD CC SKILL (udyr bear stance, blitzcrank popup, etc.) and even then only once per application. If abused and auto-attacks occur outside of CC, a warning should be issued, afterwards the hider will lose 1 life upon the hunter's discretion, if properly warned.
• Once a hider re-spawns, it is their responsibility to state the time upon when their "Grace" ends in /ALL. If they do not, they do not receive grace and may be hunted freely, the timer still applies for 45 seconds regardless.
• Once a hider dies, they may buy until they re-spawn and up to 45 seconds afterwards during their grace period. At the point when the hider spawns, they must write in the "/all" the exact time they have re-spawned and has 45 seconds from then on to leave the base and hide. This is "Grace" and is suggested to be used to run and hide, not stay and buy.
• If you interfere while on "Grace" your "Grace" ends promptly, you are now free game to hunt.
• During the 45 seconds of "Grace" hunters may not intentionally follow hiders.
• If a hider fails to leave base within "Grace" they lose 1 life and they are immediately free game to hunt.
• Hiders may not intentionally/accidentally/subconsciously/figuratively/literally prevent seekers from backing.
• Rylais does not legitimize a hider's spell, but one may be purchased among the group.
• Teemo Mushrooms may not be "Stacked" and are limited to 2 per bush or bush-sized-map-space.
• Shaco boxes may not be "Stacked" and are limited to 2 per bush or bush-sized-map-space.

Final thoughts

The game type is a ton of fun and takes very little to get up and running. It’s also the best way to teach new players the finer points of mechanics and escaping on a lot of champions. It’s a good way to train yourself how to juke and take advantage of player movements and vision control. This is the first “for fun” game type I ever played and I instantly fell in love with it. If you're looking for something other than ARAM (All-Random-All-Mid) and the basic Summoner's Rift, I highly recommend giving this a try. It has a great community of die-hard fans and it just shows that players can make anything fun, even Dominion.

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My Time With FarCry 3

Apparently I’m on some sort of Ubisoft kick this summer as, following my play through with Splinter Cell Conviction, I decided to pick up a used copy of Far Cry 3 for a fairly reasonable price. 

I’ve never played any other Far Cry game, but I remember hearing good things about Far Cry 3 when the game first came out. After getting through the always fun patch updates I hit the loading screen and was prompted twice to activate a UPlay account...which was kind of annoying; but the game started fairly quickly after that.

The game’s opening cinematic is pretty decent: it’s basically a montage of a bunch of footage from a vacation trip a bunch of friends are on, all to the tune of Paper Planes by M.I.A. I always like it when games have a popular song in their opening credits. Borderlands rocked pretty hard with Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” and Call of Duty: Black Ops had a great scene featuring "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones.

As the opening cinematic concludes, it’s revealed to you that all the videos have been playing on a phone and they’re being watched by one of the characters. The phone is being held up by this mad man who’s got you (Jason) and another character (Grant) locked up in a makeshift bamboo cell. At this point I’m already praying that I get to destroy this man by the end of the game. After he leaves, Grant wiggles his way out of his shackles and frees Jason. Grant gets you to lure the guard over so he can take him out. It’s implied that Grant has some military training and you’re just a regular guy because Grant beats the guard to death and you freak out. After all that, the gameplay starts.

When I first heard about Far Cry 3 I thought it was a shoot ‘em up style shooter, but the core gameplay appears to lean more heavily on stealth. The first mission has you and Grant sneaking through this haggard compound trying to find your other friends. A few tutorials are introduced during the opening gameplay sequence, such as the “detection meter”. This meter allows you to monitor how aware the enemies are of your presence.  

I was really pleased with the fact that the game teaches you the mechanics as you play. Nothing drives me crazier than having to sit through an hour of mindless tutorials before actually getting to play the game. I’m looking at you Titanfall. After sneaking through this pirate compound you’re discovered by the jackass from the cage and he full-out murders Grant (who turns out to be your brother). This game starts going full blown Hollywood action/adventure movie in a hurry. I’ll try not to focus too much on the story to avoid spoilers (event though the game was released in December 2012) so I’ll try and stick to the gameplay from here on out.

After Grant gets shot in the face, you end up getting rescued and brought to a small village where you can buy weapons.  You’re prompted to buy a 1911 handgun and go to a radio tower. These radio towers have apparently been hooked up with some sort of signal scrambler and the shopkeeper wants you to disable it. By disabling these scramblers you start to reveal more of the map. Once you interact with a scrambler you’re shown a short clip of a bunch of different nearby points of interest. For example:  a lootable crate in the distance, a small shack with a nearby jeep and other random spots. After you’re done with the tower you’re introduced to the hunting and gathering mechanics in this game. By gathering different animal pelts and miscellaneous herbs you can craft different things for your character.

I really wasn’t expecting so many RPG-like mechanics from this game. Far Cry 3 feels a lot like a big blend of Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed and Red Dead Redemption. They’ve managed to blend a lot of my favorite game genres into one solid game. I had tons of fun exploring the island and running into little side quests here and there. If you’re somewhat of an achievement hunter this game is definitely for you. I tend to rush through my games and I rarely pick them up again after to try and get 100% but if you’re into that sort of thing there’s a tremendous amount of extra thing to do after you’ve completed the story.

The game isn’t perfect though. No game really is. Some of the animations for the hunting/gathering parts of the game get really annoying after a while. I found myself not wanting to put the effort in to craft all the items because of this. To craft the final weapon sling you need to harvest shark skin……No way….noooooope.  I never actually ended up killing a shark because I wasn’t sure how underwater combat would work and I got lazy.  Also, some major parts in the story are resolved in a very unsatisfying and anti-climactic way. I’m used to the end of my shooters to have some epic end scene where I get to exact my revenge on the pain in the ass antagonist. This was seriously lacking for me in the end of the game.

Overall, Far Cry 3 is a great experience; and I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to grab a AAA-calibre game for bargain bin pricing. You have the option of blowing through this game fairly fast or taking your time with all the side quests, achievements and collectables. I beat the game in roughly 12-15 hours but there is a guaranteed 25+ hours of gameplay for those with a greater attention span. I highly recommend this game to any RPG/FPS fans or just Ubisoft fans in general. Thanks for reading.

Later days.

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Naughty Novices

This week’s board game is one of my favourites, and it's called Nuns on the Run. Nuns is a competitive game for 2 to 8 players but I find it's more fun if you play with at least 5 players; the game feels better and it’s more fun for the abbess and prioress player(s). The game takes place in a convent and the players are either novices or the head nuns and each has their own objectives and goals. The game setup is pretty simple: lay out the board, deal a secret wish card to each novice and a blessing card to each player.

The goal of a novice is to sneak around the convent and try to collect their secret wish. First they must find the necessary key, which is somewhere in the convent. Its location, along with your secret wish, is marked on the secret wish card. The first novice to collect both and return to her room wins. The abbess and prioress are patrolling the halls looking for any novices out after dark—if they catch enough novices equal to the number of players in the games, it's all over and the nuns win.

One of the interesting and fun aspects of the game is that it’s primarily stealth based and uses a pen and paper log system to keep track of the players' movements. The game works like this, the novices have 4 options of movement: running, walking, sneaking and standing still, each having a pro and con which is illustrated on the cards. Each turn you choose which card you want to use and play it face down, then you mark on your log what card you used and what coordinates you ended your turn on and then when everyone is ready you all flip the cards and roll a die. The die roll is to figure out how much noise your shuffling around in the dark has made; more noise means your easier to find but being sneaky and quiet means you’ve made less headway towards your goal. If you make too much noise the nuns might hear you, allowing them to veer of their path and find you.

The prioress and abbess each move along predetermined paths chosen by the player(s) from the guard path deck. The nuns see everything in front of them in a 180 degree arc, so when they patrol their predetermined paths, they can only deviate if they hear or see a novice. Any novices in their line of sight get revealed and are forced to place their player token on the board allowing the nuns to see their movements, making them easier to catch.

Once a nun catches a novice, the novice must return to her room. If she was holding her secret item, it’s confiscated and she has to run to the room and collect another one before she can win the game. She also has to keep her player token on the board until the nuns lose sight of her, at that time she can choose to remove her piece from the board or leave it and continue on her way but as soon as she does, she’s vulnerable to being caught again. It’s not always a good idea to pop out of sight and run as soon as you can.

The last mechanic are the blessing cards, these are one-time use only and give each player a slight edge—they can be used to trick a guard or to escape from one—but the guards can also use them to their advantage.

The game’s stealth mechanics are really what makes the game as fun and challenging as it is; using line of sight and the different hiding places across the map keep the game interesting and it's fast, so you’ll usually be able to knock a few rounds out in an evening pretty quickly.

I recently thought up some drinking game rules for Nuns which can also incorporate any designated drivers you may have. The rules are simply: if one of the guards sees you, take a drink; if you have to place a scritch or a vanish token, take a drink; and if a guard catches you, take a shot, but if you place any of these tokens and a guard can't see and/or catch you, they have to drink as well. If you win the game, all other players have to finish their beverage of choice. As for the driver variant, have your drivers or all around sober living friends play the role of the nuns and remove their drinking rules.

I don’t think I can recommend this game more highly. Most of the games I play are difficult for most people to pick up initially and daunting but this game is really the opposite, it's quick/easy to learn and it's tons of fun overall. It’s definitely worth picking up even if you’re not a big fan of board games.

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It's Zee Germans

Holy shit...I turned my PS4 on for the first time in about a month. This wasn't from a lack of enthusiasm, but because there just isn't enough time in the day—that and sleep is way too appealing sometimes. In any case, I've recently found some time to game. I picked up Watch Dogs when it came out a month ago, and I had every intention to play it this weekend, but instead I bought Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Over the last number of weeks I've heard a number of things and did quite a bit of thinking. If you remember me talking about Wolfenstein a little while back, my main gripe with picking it up was that it was an arcade shooter without any online multiplayer. When I originally saw it a number of months ago, it looked really cool and that is again what I've been hearing lately after its release. Then I thought about games like Bioshock, where you play it for the story and the atmosphere—the second one even had online multiplayer and no one cared about it—so all that mixed together pushed me over the edge and I picked it up.

Wolfenstein starts off with a bang: you and your squadron are raiding a Nazi stronghold in an attempt to kill a very influential general, and then the story goes off in an area I didn't expect (I did not read up on the story before picking it up). Personally I really enjoy when people use an alternate history sort of scenario. A number of games have used this sort of tool in their stories and settings before— Homefront and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty come to mind—and if done right it can be a lot of fun. I won't delve too far into the story, but I do urge you to check it out if alternate history is your thing, as there is some solid stuff here.

When it comes to the gameplay, you're really just getting an arcade shooter; but the controls are tight, so no worries there. They have a flexible cover system in the game: basically you hide behind stuff (so none of that "hit a button and glue yourself to a wall"). Once in cover, you can hold down a button and it allows you to lean in any direction you want. It works very well. You can also dual wield any weapon, even the knives, but I'm not sure why you would ever need to...it does looks cool though.

Style wise, you can go in guns-a-blazing or you can take a more stealthy approach. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, so for the most part I try to take a stealthy route. The system works pretty well and gives you a number of options to take enemies out—stab them, throw a knife at them, even use a silent pistol—the game even gives you some bonuses for doing your killing the silent way. The bonus is pretty much map information, which is cool. The rationale is when you stealth kill someone, you interrogate and get information out of them (this is all inferred mind you but who cares).

All-in-all I'm having a lot of fun with Wolfenstein and I'm pretty glad I didn't let the lack of multiplayer deter me from investing some time and money into it. I'm not too far in (chapter 4) and I don't really know how long it's supposed to be. However, if you're a fan of shooters and like alternate history/killing some Nazis, I would recommend giving it a chance as it's a lot of fun.

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Changing My Convictions

Throughout my gaming life I've never been a huge fan of stealth-based gameplay. With the exception of playing a thief in Skyrim, shooters, sports/racing games and RPGs have always been more of my forte. Recently however, I've been whistling a different tune. 

Having played the Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 DLC I found myself wanting for a taste of something comparable. The NHL season is slowly coming to a halt so, with minimal hockey on TV, I've had some time to dig into my backlog and finally popped in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction for my 360. The game has been around for about 4 years now but, to me, it looks brand new. I have played games from the Splinter Cell series before, and I've enjoyed a few of them, but none were very memorable—I couldn't tell you any of the other games’ story lines if my life depended on it. I just remember being frustrated at my inability to shamelessly go on a murderous rampage when stealth got boring. Conviction changed that.

In this chapter of the series you are no longer working for anyone in particular, meaning you don’t have the restraints of pacifism like in the older games. You still play as the infamous Sam Fischer, but the game starts with you trying to enjoy your retirement until certain events pull you out of it. Straight from the get-go you’re thrown into a combat situation that doesn't require you to fully rely on stealth abilities. This is where the “Mark and Execute” mechanic of the game is introduced. After performing a hand-to-hand kill you gain the ability to mark and execute. As long as you have a visual on the target you can mark him by pushing the right bumper and once you get close enough you can take him out quickly and efficiently. In the beginning you only have the ability to mark 2 targets but as the game progresses you get upgrades and newer weapons that allow you to mark up to 5 or 6. This feature is perfect for taking out larger groups of enemies instead of having to sneak around the whole damn map for half an hour just to get past a meaningless section of gameplay.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this game, so far, is the awesome visual effects. The scenery and ambiance seems to have a big Noire style influence with a lot of heavy shadows and minimal colour, sort of akin to the movie Sin City. Whenever Sam is hidden to enemies your whole screen goes black and white. I thoroughly enjoyed the way that was handled. On the topic, the game’s entire design philosophy seems very minimalist. For instance, there are very few menus to navigate through, and all of your weapon selection can be done with quick lists on the D-Pad. Additionally, whenever you get a new objective during a mission it is displayed in a big wide white font on a wall nearby—however if you want to view it again you just press Select and it will appear on whatever surface you’re looking at.

The gadgetry you come across also adds a good deal of different ways to neutralize your enemies. Besides your basics like flash bangs and frag grenades, you get things like the deployable Sticky Camera. The camera is a throwable device that sticks to walls and allows you to get a look at what might lie ahead of you. The camera has a noise maker to distract enemies and if they get close enough you can detonate it to take them out. I had a lot of fun luring unsuspecting foes to their untimely demises.

The game isn't perfect of course: there were a few things that got on my nerves. At one point in the game you’re given a pair of sonar goggles to detect enemies and laser security features. Shortly after that you have to go through a series of rooms guarded by this laser system and the whole thing just seemed tedious and didn't contribute much in the way of gameplay. I’m all for a good puzzle but the story was so enticing and I really disliked wasting 20 minutes trying to figure it out. Furthermore, there are several instances where, if you die, you have to repeat a cutscene that happened at the last checkpoint. One particularly problematic level had me dying over 15 times and I had to rewatch this 30-second cutscene each time. I found myself lowering the difficulty just to ease past it to avoid the scene again. The worst of it is: it was a really great and powerful scene and its repetition really ruined it for me.

All in all I highly recommend Splinter Cell: Conviction to anyone who hasn't played it yet. The game also has a multiplayer option which I haven’t taken advantage of. From what I understand it’s the same story but you can play with a friend on the same TV. I haven’t fully finished the game yet but I intend to in the near future and I’m hoping to buy the next installment, Splinter Cell: Blacklist. If anyone has any recommendations for similar games please leave me a message in the comment section.

Thanks for reading.
Later days.

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