Review: Tom Clancy's Spinter Cell: Conviction

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction is set a few years after the last Splinter Cell game, and agent Sam Fisher is mad. His Third Echelon agency forced him to assassinate his best friend, and a drunken driver has killed his daughter.

Sam is out of the spy business, but when he hears that his daughter's death might not have been an accident, he hunts down her killer.

Environments are in color when Sam is moving around overtly, but they switch to a darkened black-and-white mode when he's stealthy.

Walls can double as video screens for clips to provide background story or message boards showing helpful commands such as "climb," "cover" or "interrogate."

And if you're moving Sam around between those spots while shooting, the game leaves a silhouette to mark his last known position. That'll be where the enemies are most likely targeting, which allows Sam to sneak over to a different cover spot and gain a better angle for kills.

Splinter Cell: Conviction offers a completely different game in co-op mode, putting players in the characters of Agent Archer, an American, and Agent Kestrel, a Russian, with a mission to find weapons. The two can team up in split-screen, multiple Xbox 360 systems or online.

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

RATING M for Mature

PLOT A fast-paced, cinematic adventure with few breaks in the action

DETAILS Xbox 360, $60

BOTTOM LINE A great stealth shooter