Following the reveal of a cooperative mode featured in the upcoming Splinter Cell: Conviction, and the fact that you can play it in split-screen, Ubisoft has announced new details regarding the cooperative play in the game, not least of which is that the mode acts as a prequel to the singleplayer storyline.

In Conviction’s cooperative mode, two players will need to work together across four exclusive maps (and over three difficulty settings) to track down four stolen Russian warheads before they’re sold on the black market, with a bit of tension introduced, story-wise, as players take on the roles of agents from opposing agencies Third Echelon and the Russian agency Oron.

Two players can play over Xbox LIVE or locally via split-screen, and play through the entire campaign that introduces brand new characters and settings independent of the singleplayer campaign, or play through one of four cooperative battle modes, also through Xbox LIVE or split-screen.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is definitely one to watch, and releases pretty darn soon on Xbox 360 and PC on February 26th in Europe and February 24th in North America.

As always, you should have a look over El33tonline’s previous coverage of Splinter Cell: Conviction to get up to speed, and browse through tons of screenshots and footage from the game.