This past weekend at the last day of the Eurogamer Expo Ubisoft decided to give gamers a little love. We got a quick demo of Splinter Cell: Conviction at maximum volume. It was the first look since the walkthrough at E3 and it drew a big crowd.

While it was the same scene from E3 on show the Ubisoft team decided to do things slightly differently than was displayed at the E3 preview. Instead of sneaking Sam around all those civilians he pulled out a gun and sent all the innocents scrambling for cover. The screams and cries peaked the curiosity of the guards at the gate who went to investigate, allowing Fisher to scale the wall. A half cry in alarm and a few headshots later Fisher is breaking through a window and taking on a few more baddies. This walkthrough presented a little more of a directly combative Sam Fisher than the stealthy Sam we saw in the E3 demo, allowing the game to show it offers a little more freedom in gameplay styles this go around.

One of the key features the Ubi team were eager to show was the infamous “mark and execute” maneuver. A feature that has caught a lot of flak to date being labeled as “auto-headshots”. After seeing it in action, that is definitely not the case. In the midst of a fairly intense firefight Sam racked up a good number of kills in various brutal methods earning him the ability to “mark and execute”. So Fisher took some cover and “marked” 2 baddies to “execute” on. The first baddie caught one to the head, the second caught two to the chest. It’s not auto-headshots. It’s letting a man do what he does best. Trust Sam’s judgement, he wouldn’t be there today if he didn’t know what he was doing.

It was a good demo, very cool to see it off the rails compared to the E3 trailers. Big thanks to Ubisoft team for showing a little love.