SG Gaming Info takes a look at the stealth focused shooter, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

First and foremost this review will not be comparing this game to any previous Splinter Cell games, because honestly I don’t remember playing any of them.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a good game. If I was to judge the game solely on its gameplay I would say the game was close to perfect, but while the gameplay is fun other aspects of the game do let it down.

The story of Splinter Cell: Blacklist takes place after 3rd Echelon and with Sam Fisher joining a PMC with his friend. But everything changes when a group of terrorists calling themselves The Engineers attack a US air force base in Guam. The terrorists have one goal. Force the United States to bring all their troops home or else they will perform more attacks in an ultimatum called the Blacklist – a deadly countdown of escalating attacks on US interests. With this attack, the US president, Patricia Caldwell creates a new special operations & counter-terrorism called 4th Echelon, a unit under the direct command of the president of the United States of America.

The unit is led by Sam Fisher with new and old characters joining the team. The main members include: Anna ‘Grim’ Grímsdóttir (an old ally of Sam), Isaac Briggs (former CIA officer), Charlie Cole (computer hacker and the team’s tech support) and Andriy Kobin (a returning character from Splinter Cell: Conviction). 4th Echelon’s mission is to find the leader(s) of the Engineers and stop the Blacklist attacks.

Honestly the premise of the story isn’t half bad, and honestly at times it did feel rather close to reality. There was this feeling at the back of my mind that something like this could honestly happen. What really struck me was that at one point chemical weapons were involved in the plot. If I had played this game a month or so ago I would have said that such a thing would have been stupid and that no one in real life would even think about using chemical weapons, but I guess the Syrian civil war proved me wrong.

There were of course moments that felt farfetched such as a mission that takes place in Tehran, Iran. The farfetched moment for me were when the president of the United States blamed Iran for the Blacklist attacks with only minimal proof and at the end of the Iran mission with the US telling Iran that the drone strikes in their capital city were caused by a drone malfunction.

My overall impression of the story was that it was at times believable, but at times unbelievable. But the biggest problem with the story was the fact the tension between the members of 4th Echelon was the best part of the entire story.

As I stated earlier the gameplay in Splinter Cell: Blacklist is pretty close to perfect. What makes it so good is fact the game offers you three types of play styles: stealth, panther (lethal stealth) and lethal. All three of these styles worked extremely well, and if you were forced to change your style mid mission you could do so easily. Personally when I played through the game I focused on stealth, mainly because there is nothing more fun than sneaking past a facility full of enemies and them not knowing you where ever there. To make your play style work, the game offers you an array of gadgets from games traditional night vision goggles to micro-trirotor drone. These gadgets will help you complete your play style to the best of your ability.

A few things did let me down with regard to the gameplay. One obvious let down was the restrictions on where you could go during a mission. For example I saw some rather obvious stealth paths with some ledges that I could usually grab with no problem, but I was not allowed to grab them because the game didn’t give me a prompt to climb up and grab the ledge. This issue made missions feel rather linear and it was rather annoying when you realize the game rewards you for exploring the map.

Another issue was the enemy AI. I played through the game on normal mode and honestly the enemy was easy to outsmart. At one point during the game I managed to accidently alert two heavily armed/armoured enemies and two normal enemies. To get away I ran straight into a duct which brought me back around behind the enemies who were looking at the duct I entered, and so to escape I simply walked up the stairs in front of me and moved on.

There were no other major gameplay issues.

However I do want to mention the cover mechanic and mark/execute mechanic. These were rather good. Cover worked via prompt based system, where once you entered cover you simply looked at the next location and pressed the button the game asked you to press to move cover. However this system did have a flaw. In pressure situations switching from cover to cover did become rather annoying, because to get the prompt to switch cover you have to target the edge of cover. Doing this while making sure the enemy didn’t see you was at times very stressful, especially if the enemy was one of the heavily armoured characters.

The mark/execute mechanic on the other hand had next to no flaws. This mechanic worked well for tracking targets, especially before you unlocking radar tracking. Marked enemies can also be executed, once you gain the ability to activate the prompt. Executions are great for clearing rooms, but unfortunately you can only execute/ mark three targets at a time.

There is an upgrade system in the campaign mode. The upgrade system is for your plane ‘Paladin’. This unlocks radar tracking, quicker health regeneration etc. Sam can also upgrade some of his gadgets, armour and weapons.

As you can tell, Blacklist is a decent game with some flaws that are definitely subjective. Things that I disliked might be things that other people might enjoy. But these issues that I’m about to bring up aren’t subjective.

So, I played this game on the Xbox 360, which required two discs, the second is for the latter missions and to install HD textures, which honestly didn’t make the game look at better. The issues that are not in dispute happen during the downtime between missions on the Paladin. These issues include: lip synch issues (the voice can be off by several frames at times) and major frame rate drops (the frame rate while on the Paladin seemed to take a nose dive at times and all because I wanted to walk around and talk to people). There is one major issue outside of Paladin and that is characters phasing through objects, at one point I phased through a staircase and got stuck.

Before I go I will mention that there are several modes on offer in the game apart from the campaign. Other modes include: co-op/solo missions with other 4th Echelon agents and an online multiplayer mode called Spies vs Mercs. I’m not really a multiplayer person, so I didn’t get a chance to play these other modes.

Conclusion

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a decent game. While the story isn’t always stellar the gameplay is fun and enjoyable. The game also offers a decent amount of replay value with extra missions and online multiplayer mode. However, the Xbox 360 version of the game does appear to have numerous minor bugs.

SCORE: 80%

*This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360*

Splinter Cell: Blacklist review

• Developer: Various Ubisoft studios
• Publisher: Ubisoft
• Genre: Third person shooter
• Rating: 18+
• Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U and PC
• Release date: out now
• Website:http://splintercell.ubi.com/blacklist/