Just bought Splinter Cell: Conviction. AWESOME.

and the coolest part is that i bought in on the money that Abyss & Apex payed me for my short story back in November that i had stashed in my PayPal account

Screw you and your 1.8mb/s

I just bought the entire Call of Duty collection (minus MW2) for $29.99.

And I was doing so good at not buying games...

Yeah, but there's -78% on that one, so you shouldn't blame yourself too much.

Thats tempting

and I bought the latest COD just a couple of days ago ><

I couldn't resist and I bought the call of duty series, also Trials 2 (GREAT GAME, Trials HD on XBox) and counter strike for this steam account.

The package doesn't include MW2, so buy it and you'll have them all

33% off an Ubisoft game isn't nearly enough to make me pay to use their crazy DRM platform.

That's a relief!

I'm extremely broke now though, so that's not gonna happen =p

It's a shame that Splinter Cell Conviction is by far the worst Splinter Cell game.

Disagree entirely, Double Agent was by far the worst

I don't remember Double Agent (I only played it a bit, and then my computer crashed and had to reformat or some****) but Conviction is not that great. It's too much shooting **** and I hate the black/white to color system they use to tell you if you're in cover.

Splinter Cell is about sneaking through a building on the ceiling, snapping everyone's neck, and getting out without a single alarm. Not shooting **** all the time.

Actually, I'm enjoying it quite a lot (and the Co-Op is great). The only problem is that the game occasionally crashes to the desktop time to time, but a restart seems to take care of that and then it again starts running smoothly.

You know, the Serious Sam HD pack was 7.50, and I considered purchasing it, but... I don't think I NEED that graphic upgrade, even though it's probably look quite swank... I just think it really wouldn't change or benefit that particular game, and gameplay type, enough... what say you, those who have it?

I agree on all points. I do like that the stealth parts are a bit more actiony, but I severely dislike when action is your only choice and your basically playing an extremely poor man's gears of war. Also I definitely dislike the b/w system, for one thing it looks crap, and another thing is you have a much harder time telling whether the area you are about to sneak into is lit up or not. It's still a billion times better than Double Agent though, and I've heard great things about the co-op... I just haven't had the oppurtunity to try it for myself yet.

I, for one, like the more action-y elements. And I think there's been only one mission in the game so far where action was the only option - the Iraq flashback mission - the other levels usually offered plenty possibilities for stealth.

And I like the new art direction. The b/w system that you guys seem to dislike so much, the objectives projected across walls, the interrogations, the animations (especially the animations)... And co-op is great, although it's annoying that you apparently can only communicate with the other player by voice without a text chat option unless I've overlooked it.

But all in all, this is so far the best game I've played this year, even if it does crash once in a while for no good reason whatsoever.

The worst is yet to come.

I don't understand the hatred for Double Agent, my only issues were that it was quite short and that the hideout bits between missions were repetitive.

The problem with Conviction is that it's easier if you just flip out with grenades, mines and heavy weaponry. Playing stealthily actually makes the game harder which kind of defeats the point of Splinter Cell.

The thing they were trying to do is letting you choose your playstyle, if you wanna play explosive berserker, then that's your call, I played it stealthy the whole way and enjoyed the challenge (actually, even playing all out stealth Conviction is much easier then previous games).

The whole point of being stealthy is that being spotted is dangerous, the previous games understood that. The game shouldn't be harder if you use stealth, it's completely counter-intuitive.

The AI in Conviction is terrible, by giving you the means (and through the challenges actually encourage you) to play loudly and violently it makes the poor AI even more apparent. If I flip out with mines and grenades, the enemies shouldn't decide that 'it was nothing' 30 seconds later.

I absolutely agree with you on that point. There also seems to be times when the AI never gives up, it seems quite random.

I don't understand games like Conviction. Have all game producers just completely lost all sensibility? It's probably sold well, but is that due to design choices or marketing and the success of the series? It's not even like they're cutting corners to reduce costs and drive profits. It's just worse without a good reason.

I think this one appeals to a wider audience by being more actiony. I liked a lot of the improvements, like the cover-to-cover system and the artsy way of showiing tips and goals. It just feels a bit too much run and gun is all.

That's just it though. Ubisoft has plenty of games that appeal to wide audiences. It can't be good for business to fracture your product lines like that.