10 Skill Upgrades That BROKE Video Games
3. Mark & Execute With The Five-Seven - Splinter Cell: Conviction
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction introduced a number of new mechanics and skills when it first released back in 2010, however, were few were as overpowered as Mark and Execute.
In Conviction, the 'marking' part of the mechanic sees players place a red arrow above the head of enemies or objects, and the 'execution' part allows for a player to perform an insta-kill. Different weapons in the game have a different amount of execution tokens, with the silenced pistol carrying a whopping four points.
Sam Fisher could refill their execution points by performing hand-to-hand takedowns on enemies, but that wasn't enough to balance out the feature, with plenty of players able to exploit 'grab and hold' mechanics and wipe out entire hordes of enemies at a time. The ability also has the handy feature of players being able to perform executions through solid objects, even if marked opponents are taking cover.
In fact, the mark and execute mechanic would prove to be so overpowered that Ubisoft removed the '4-mark' ability of the Five-Seven weapon in Splinter Cell: Blacklist, also removing the ability entirely in that game's Perfectionist difficulty mode.