What exactly did blow you away
You know, I've been thinking about this and it's difficult to put into words. It would be easy, and probably rather crass, to say "the whole package", but in many ways that's what I felt. Now, of course it was only a small taster of the game and clearly one designed to specifically highlight a certain aspect of playing the game (focused more on action than stealth) so my impressions will be in no way indictive of the final game.
But anyway, I will try.
Firstly, one of the new features that seems to have created the most chatter on various boards is the "Mark and Execute" feature. I shared, and still share to a certain degree, some of those concerns. But what is apparent is that the ability to M&E has to be earned and cannot be pulled off at will. So performing certain gameplay tasks will add toward your ability to M&E, but once you've used it you'll have to build-up again before you can use it. This means that you cannot go through the whole game like that and will therefore be in a position to choose where you feel it will best aid you.
As for the graphics, very good. It's Unreal Engine obviously and it does look it, so if you're a UE3 hater you will possibly be a little less impressed. But being UE3 means that you get detailed character models and lots of environmental detail. The animation was particularly good, and as I said before the framerate in that particular demo was buttery smooth.
To try and give you an impression of the gameplay, I'm going to mention 2 games, Condemned and Mirrors Edge. This doesn't mean that Conviction is anything like those titles, but if you've played them it'll help to get across some of my meaning.
Condemned was one of the first games I played where I really "felt" the action. The hand-hand combat felt brutal, visceral. That's how Conviction felt to me. The shooting, hand-hand and interrogations had a real visceral edge to them. Think the Bourne films, or Casino Royal. The animation, along with truly stellar audio, really immersed you in the game and character. This isn't the cartoon violence that most games deliver, and like the Bourne films are credited with re-invigorating the spy/action film genre, I can see more games in the future building on the foundations that Conviction will bring.
The Mirrors Edge link is with the smooth gameplay and movement through a world. When it gets it right, ME has an almost balletic edge to it. In the Conviction demo, even though there's a lot more shooting than ME
, there was a kinetic flow to the whole thing, where one movement led onto the next, where one action moment was integrated into the whole without breaking the flow. Now clearly, the Ubi rep demoing the game had played it many times and knew his way around, but this was another positive for me as it's clear that this is a game with immense replayibility as you attempt different approaches, or just try to refine certain approaches.
I'd also like to add that, even though it was the same level as seen before, the AI characters didn't seem to behave the same and it looks like they choose different routes, actions, cover, etc depending on the situation.
There you go, my impressions. In two words?
"Brutal Ballet"
