Splinter Cell: Blacklist on Xbox 360 – The DVDfever Review

Splinter Cell

Some random observations:

  • While Sam’s in-mission and showing some CGI inbetween controllable aspects, it looks cool the way the game displays his team back at HQ against the walls of his current location. Similarly, brief task descriptions will also be done in this style, eg. “Rescue Kobin”.

  • The easiest way to get about, without being discovered, is to hug a wall where you’re currently standing with B, then go to your next cover point by pressing A. Occasionally, amongst all the gunfire, I got a bit confused about whether he’d arrive at the new place crouching or standing up, so found him going up/down/up/down as if someone had asked him if he was the real Slim Shady, and he was standing up, sitting down, standing up again…

  • Get a bit too close to a baddie and you’ll find a bit of fisticuffs will easily take them down, although it’s pretty much a ‘press X and job done’ rather than any kind of battle.

  • You can also capture high value targets to reap extra rewards, as opposed to killing them. The first one I came across wasn’t any biggie. He tried to come at me, as I entered the room he was in, but I could practically stroll across at my leisure to knee him down to the ground.

  • When installing, there’s an option to install the HD Texture Pack. I did this anyway, so don’t know what the graphics are like without it, but note that it takes around 30 minutes to do this, and takes up 3Gb, so I had a lot of sitting about, waiting for the world to turn… I wish the game had explained this in advance.

  • One thing I wasn’t used to is that you can customise Sam’s gear and his outfit before you take him out for a spin in the first level proper. Yes, you can get various gadgets to use, but a lot of the time I fell to my default behaviour of just creeping about, shooting those in the head who I could easily do without being spotted, and creeping up on other baddies – so, just like any other stealth game. I realise I’m not using this game to its fullest advantage, but I enjoyed doing this anyway.

  • And if you’re wondering what the ‘ghostly’ image of your body is, that appears from time to time, it’s your position as per the last time the enemy saw you. Hence, it’s best to move away a bit, before they toss a grenade your way.


Splinter Cell: Blacklist – Testing out the spy camera (720p HD)


Note that if you have a Kinect, you can use the voice feature in that to say something to distract the baddies prior to bumping them off. Also, it will allow you to control Sam Fisher instead of using the controller but… while I have a Kinect, I played a few games on it and haven’t been back since. When it comes to controlling something, it feels more natural to use the controller itself.

There is also online multiplayer for 2-8 players, but for me, I’m a single-player campaign kinda guy!

If this game had any downsides, it’d be that it’s still a fairly linear experience, and while it’s good fun, it’s not as engaging as, say, The Last Of Us, but then any videogame released this year has a tough row to hoe against that one.

Overall, you get a feeling that Splinter Cell: Blacklist is very good fun indeed.

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Important info:

  • Publisher: Ubisoft
  • Players: single player campaign, co-op: 2, multiplayer: 2-8
  • HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
  • Features: Leaderboards, Kinect
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: English


Splinter Cell: Blacklist – Tri-rotor plane (720p HD)


GRAPHICS
SOUND
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT
10
10
8
9
OVERALL 9

Director: Dave ‘Foots’ Footman
Producer: Jade Raymond
Writer: Matt MacLennan
Music: Kaveh Cohen, Tony Hajjar, Michael Nielsen and Mike Zarin

Cast:
Sam Fisher: Eric Johnson
Anna Grimsdottir: Kate Drummond
Isaac Briggs: Dwain Murphy
Charlie Cole: David Reale
Victor Coste: Howard Siegel
Majid Sadiq: Carlo Rota
President Caldwell: Mimi Kuzyk
Reza Nouri/Arabic Soldier 1: Sam Kalilieh
Andriy Kobin: Elias Toufexis
Secretary of Defence: Peter MacNeill


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