Man of Conviction

So, it's been a week since Conviction launched, and I've avoided saying anything to anyone to give them time to experience Conviction for themselves, but this perfect metaphor is keeping me from a few precious hours of sleep, so here goes.

I want you to first imagine that Splinter Cell is a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. This cake is my favorite cake of all the other cakes out there (not really but for simplicity's sake it is). I love this cake so much that I've had all four kinds of each cake several times, no less than 30 times for the third cake, and I loved the fourth cake so much I own four copies of that cake, and have had that cake about 50 times. So, that's a damn good cake, right?

So, Ubisoft says 3 years ago that they are baking a fifth cake. Now, based upon the above statement, you can imagine how I felt about that. So, over the course of the next three years, they show the new cake for awhile, then they said that they didn't like how that cake was turning out and that they were remaking the cake. Now, I imagined that meant that they were going to make this cake a veritable magnum opus of epic proportions. This cake was going to be the cake that after enjoying, I would be able to die happy.

More time passes, and as cake day approaches, I put myself on a cake information lent, promising not to look at any of that cake until cake day was nigh upon me.

Then, a kind old lady at the Ubisoft grocery store asks me if I would like to sample the upcoming cake. Barely containing my saliva, I accepted. However, this is one o those samples that just isn't enough, you are salivating even more, but the nice sample lady says you can sample this piece of the cake as much as you like until the cake comes out. So I did.

Now I noticed there was something different about the cake, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. This was more of a spoon cake, where the last four cakes were a fork cake. But it's still chocolate cake with that delicious chocolate frosting.

A month rolls by and by Sam Fisher's goddamn goggles it's Cake Day. First, I ate the complimentary co-op cupcake that came with it. It's shorter than the cake, but is the precursor to the cake so should be ingested first. This was the most glorious cupcake I have ever had in my entire life.

Then... the cake. Anticipation roiled through me. Flashbacks of Johnny Cash and visual representations of the cake swam through me.

It was almost upon me.

That glorious chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting so close I could taste it.

And then, just as I had gotten to the last slice of cake, it hit me.

This was yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

It's still cake, and it's still delicious, and it still has the chocolate frosting, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't the chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

Whether or not that's a bad thing I've still yet to decide.