Couple of things; first, mark and execute needs to actually be unlocked by stealth kills, it's not as if they removed the element completely. If you tried to blast your way through a level, you would still need to manually aim. Secondly, I personally hated the fact they gave you a powerful arsenal and didn't let you use it in prior games. Gadgets don't particularly appeal to me. The whole point of Conviction is that Sam Fisher is a beast gone wild, and you aren't restricted to being stealthy anymore, although it will prove to be more advantageous in certain situations. Example, in the demo, you hit this one section after you go down the elevator shaft, and on my first run, I immediately shot at 4 guys, which alerted several more, putting me in a tough firefight. On my second run, I decided to go sneaky, silently killed a guard, marked 2 of them and had just one guy all to myself without alerting the base and without taking damage.
Let me explain why Ubisoft chose to go with Mark and Execute. In prior Splinter Cell games, if you had two guards conversing with each other and you tried to take them out with your weapon, you may get the first guy alright, but the second one will respond long before you can train your sights on them. Your only option would be to wait for them to split up or sneak around them. Mark and Execute obviously simplifies this situation, so as long as you have Mark and Executes *hint hint, you don't have infinite M&Es*, you can take them down rather easily. The other primary adaptation to this is that Ubisoft can finally put 5 or 6 guys in the same room and have it considered average difficulty, where in most other Splinter Cell games, unless the room was really large, it would be considered a nightmare for players. Truth be told, how many bad guys have a straight, linear path to them consisting of single guard patrols? Conviction aims to get the army effect down pat; you're facing an actual organization with lots of members, something the games beforehand failed to grasp.
Besides this, I still don't see how people can be complaining once you learn it is harder to get Mark and Executes on harder difficulties, and players will learn to save them for crucial situations. I also presume stealth kills will be factored in better to the point upgrade system Ubisoft has with SC:C. Yes yes, doing stuff in missions earns you points that you can use to upgrade your equipment, they have a basic progression system. An idea they no doubt took from Alpha Protocol.
So to everyone who claims the series is going away from stealth, realize this; Splinter Cell was never intended to be a pure stealth game. They started out with one and ever since then, they've been trying to get the series back to the genre it was always intended to be, which was action-stealth. The whole idea of the action stealth genre is simple: in an action-stealth game, players can either use pure stealth, pure action or most commonly, a combination of the two to progress in the level. Every game in the Splinter Cell series has been moving towards the middle, Conviction just being the largest step. That said, about 85% of the game should be able to be completed without having to resort to violence. If you're still not convinced, think of it this way; getting through the new challenges without using the new tools the game gives you to complete these challenges is definitely satisfying.
