Nivea has snuck its way into Sam Fisher's heart. The two have teamed up to bring you in-game advertisements! What better way to escape your everyday dreary and tedious world than to get pelted with ads for real companies while breaking someone's neck in a bathroom? Ubisoft's Splinter Cell: Double Agent will offer a fine array of Nivea and Philips Norelco products set along bathroom sinks in hotel rooms. There are also billboards specifically designed to talk to you, the gamer, not you, the Sam Fisher, saying such game-related teasings as "The 'Good Guy' almost never has a beard," and "There are many faces of evil. Don't let yours be one of them."

If you want your ads to be subtle, use real ads. Ads in the real world. Don't make ads that are trying to talk about the game that's being played. That's like a movie stopping suddenly and listening for the audience to laugh, or if something unrealistic happens in a movie, a character cleverly snaps out the one-liner "Only in the movies!" Please. Game advertisements may be lucrative, but they're still lame. As much as the phrase itself irks us, we're tempted to say "sell-out", but it's becoming all too common in the "Realistic Gaming" world. Sam Fisher... you can be pretty stealthy, but you're not too good at dodging corporate advertisement offers. Hmm... it sounded a tad bit better in my mind.