14 DAY TRIAL // After being delayed several times and even going through some major facelifts, it seems like Splinter Cell: Conviction will be, this time, released without further complications. To reassure us, several aspects of the game's co-op multiplayer modes have been made available by Ubisoft to the Official Xbox Magazine and are discussed at length by the publication. The character line-up, in true Ubisoft fashion, a multicultural one, is made up of two agents, the Russian Kestrel and the American Archer.
The co-op campaign will feature four levels and is estimated that it will take around six hours to complete. For a stealth game where most of the time is spent waiting for patrols to go about their business while you wait silently in the bushes, that might not seem like that much, but then again, this is what stealth games are all about. This prologue co-op campaign will feature plenty of the game mechanics already unveiled for the single-player mode, like interrogations, "marking and executing" and the "last known position" stealth concept.
The Official Xbox Magazine also mentions some specific "tag-team" moves, designed especially for the co-op mode. One such mentioned maneuver is executed when one of the characters is caught off guard and grabbed from behind, at which point the victim can elbow the AI attacker, leaving him opened for the co-op partner to take him out. Other team-based activities will require each player to plant a set of charges in order to get past an obstacle or resuscitate their fellow player when he's incapacitated. While on the ground, the downed player can choose to "play possum" and wait for a stealthy resurrection or go all out and provide covering fire from the ground.
Still, those six hours of co-op gameplay won't focus so much on sneaking around and being completely undetected, because, since you're not alone anymore, it's only natural that you'll have more confidence in the outcome of a potential battle. As such, Patrick Redding, the co-op designer at Ubisoft Montreal, said that, "Gameplay is a lot more about bursts of intense action swinging back into stealth and using stealth as a tool. It's less about being invisible and more about being predatory." Another big teaser released by the Xbox magazine is that co-op will feature some incentives for more than one playthrough, with missions awarding players special points to spend on upgrading weapons and gadgets.