Blacklist
Splinter Cell Blacklist marked a long-awaited and triumphant return to the classic Splinter Cell formula. This time, instead of tossing out everything that came before it and going old school, the developers at Ubisoft Toronto decided to blend the multiple play styles that Sam had adopted over the years into one big package. Blacklist no longer punishes players for not conforming to their idea of stealth, but instead rewards the players for tackling the missions the way they want. Gamers are rated for playing one of three ways, dividing their actions into the Ghost, Panther, and Assault categories for playing stealthy and undetected, stealthy and lethal, or for just going in guns blazing, respectively.
Experience points and cash are awarded, which are used for purchasing upgrades for your flying, mobile base, or for more gear for Sam. Like playing stealthy? Buy some gear that decreases your chances of getting detected. Like going in loud? Buy some gear that increases your armor. The game let you play how you wanted, and it was the best decision in years.
Blacklist adopts a 24-style story approach, and picks up after the events of Conviction with Sam and a small group of operators running Fourth Echelon, the successor to the now defunct Third Echelon. The story picks up with the Engineers, a terrorist organization, attacking a military installation as the beginning of a host of attacks that are planned every 24 hours, unless demands are met. This gives Sam, Grim, and company a small window as they race against time to discover intel and track down who is behind the attacks, as well as try to diffuse them before they happen. It’s a cool approach that I still feel holds up pretty well.
This time around, multiple game play styles have been grouped into “missions” by several different members of Sam’s team. These missions are usually played a specific way, and while they all offer bonus gear and incentives, they are optional to the main story.
For example, Grimsdottir’s missions are pure stealth, and being spotted means instant failure. These missions don’t have checkpoints and must be done all in one go. If you’re a stealth nut (and if you’re not, why would you be playing this?) then these missions are for you.
If you’re a fan of shoot-outs, then Charlie’s missions are up your alley. His are horde-style combat missions loosely wrapped in a “dead drop” mission objective. These missions take place after Sam does whatever he needed to do, and is attempting to extract. The shit has already hit the fan, and you’re to survive waves of enemies until the chopper arrives. You can extract after five waves, but can stay longer for bonus cash and experience.
If co-op is your thing, then you can hit up Briggs for some missions to play with a friend.
Unfortunately, all of these missions inter-twine with the main game, so if any of these things aren’t your cup of tea, or you can’t find a buddy, then you do miss out on a bit of what the game has to offer.
Analysis
While many consider Splinter Cell Chaos Theory to be the best Splinter Cell game, Blacklist gives it a run for its money. Blacklist sees Sam at his most versatile, both in terms of flexibility in combat and it terms of the responsiveness of the controls. Perhaps the best aspect of this game is that a lot of the cumbersome controls of past SC’s have been streamlined, and the level design has been refined to offer multiple paths, options, and solutions. Rarely did I experience the frustrations of past SC’s such as Sam failing to grab a ledge, or being a terrible shot. The mark and execute function carries over from Conviction and works better this time around, not always requiring a melee takedown to trigger.
Sam can also take out bad guys from around a corner, when they get close enough. While this seems like a game-breaker, he will eventually encounter armored and shielded soldiers that can’t be taken out so easily. His stockpile of gadgets has expanded as well, including new additions like the sticky noisemaker, which automatically makes a noise when thrown. It’s a lot like the sticky camera, but without the need to actually activate it. These gadgets in addition to Sam’s newfound fluidity makes a world of difference. When everything comes together and you’re using Sam’s abilities and weapons effectively, Sam comes off as a graceful, lethal machine, and it’s very satisfying. Sam is finally the badass he was always meant to be.
There are still a couple of funky button assignments you’ll have to get used to, especially if you’ve been playing them back to back, like I have. The B or Circle button is now used as Sam’s prompt to take cover, while the A button is to jump, climb, and hop over railings. For whatever reason, I kept wanting to press A to take cover, and that led to many instances of Sam leaping over a barrier into a group of enemy guards. It was a bit frustrating, but to those coming into this one fresh, it shouldn’t be an issue. The game holds up well and seems to run better using Xbox One’s backward compatibility than it originally did on the Xbox 360, but I can’t speak for the online component, due to my personal lack of co-op options (which I will get into in a moment.)
The graphics unfortunately seem to be a mixed bag. The story missions look great, but some of the side missions are a mixed bag. The original game came on two discs, with the second disc also offering an option “HD” texture pack that could be installed on the Xbox 360’s hard drive. The download file size for the back-compat version I played here was large enough to assume the texture pack was included, but that’s just an educated guess. I should also note that I’m playing on an Xbox One X with an image upscaled to 4K, so I may be seeing additional artifacting and aliasing that isn’t noticeable at a native resolution.
One source of contention with fans of the series was that Michael Ironside did not return to voice Sam Fisher. I have to admit, I really liked Ironside’s work but I wasn’t as put off as others. I felt the actor they used in his place did a pretty good job, considering. The fact is, Ironside’s voice was pretty unique, and anyone else’s would’ve just sounded generic by comparison. It wasn’t an enviable position to be in by any means, but I felt his voice-over was good, even if it wasn’t the Sam we were used to. Perhaps a bigger change was that Sam’s character model itself was re-worked from previous Splinter Cell’s to look a bit younger. Maybe it was because he sounded younger, or maybe (as evidenced in Ghost Recon Wildlands) it was because Sam is getting pretty damn old now. He was supposedly pushing 50 in the original Splinter Cell, and that was over 15 years ago. As much as I want a new Splinter Cell sequel, I do believe Fisher should now be in a leadership role and perhaps mentoring a younger operative. I’m okay with Sam taking a backseat and handing the keys over to a younger generation.
Does it hold up?
It does, but the more complex and detailed the environments became over the course of the Splinter Cell series, the more texture work and anti-aliasing is required, and while the game still looks really good, the simpler level designs of past SC’s feel almost… cleaner? Does that make sense? The game looks, plays, and sounds just fine, but if you’re playing an upscaled version like I am, the aliasing and shimmer can be a bit hard to ignore, especially in an outdoor environment where there are chain link fences, powerlines, grates, railing, and all those other thin vertical/horizontal lines that love to flicker. It plays great, and if you’re enjoying it through back-compatibility on Xbox One, you have the added luxury of not having to swap out discs, which was a major pain on last-gen consoles.
Is it worth going back to?
Absolutely, but there’s a caviat. My one major complaint, that I hinted at earlier, is with the way co-op play was integrated into the story. It was really cool at the time, but now, several years since the game released, finding a co-op buddy to play online with you is near impossible, unless you’re lucky enough to be a part of an active community. Finding a random person online through matchmaking was a fruitless attempt, as there is virtually no one playing the game in a multiplayer capacity anymore. If you have a friend, by all means, enjoy. If you’re like me, then those missions are effectively locked off to you. In the past Splinter Cell games, co-op was its own self-contained game mode and ignoring it was easier, but this time around you’re very much aware of what you’re missing and are also locked out of enjoying whatever gear and benefits completing those missions makes available. That just sucks.
If you’re heading in with that in mind, there is still a very enjoyable single-player story there. I would recommend checking it out, because it’s some of the best gameplay the series has to offer.
Conclusion
Whew! I honestly never thought I’d finish this feature. That’s a lot of gaming. I will admit, I didn’t play through the entirety of Double Agent, and I only played through about half of Blacklist before doing the write-ups for them, respectively. Conviction was completed because I could swear I never finished it, though apparently I did. In any case, they were recent enough where I still remembered quite a bit about them, I just needed to play them for a bit to confirm whether or not they still held up, and also to test their backward compatible functionality on Xbox One. The original trilogy were played through in their entirety, and man, that was enough of a task for the whole thing, and it was only half. If anyone ever wanted to really appreciate the gameplay in Blacklist, all they have to do is boot up the original Splinter Cell. So many quality of life improvements have been made over the years, and that’s why I’m genuinely excited to hopefully get another one this generation. I feel like the series hit this magical note with Blacklist, and then they just.. stopped. One of the main reasons I did this feature, aside from enjoying the SC series the way I do, was that I hope it gains a little bit of popularity and shows Ubisoft that there’s still a fanbase out there for good ol’ Sam Fisher.
If you liked this, and are just coming into my feature series, be sure to check out the previous entries below:
Part 1: Introduction to Splinter Cell
Part 2: Splinter Cell
Part 3: Pandora Tomorrow
Part 4: Chaos Theory
Part 5: Double Agent
Part 6: Conviction
