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Splinter Cell: Blacklist – prior to this entry, I’d only played the first game in the series, on the Xbox, and I didn’t quite get it. It had some issues that made it pale in comparison to Hitman 2, one of my favourite games at the time when it came to stealth titles.
And so, because I’m not really au fait with the plot from previous games, a lot of the preamble for Blacklist doesn’t mean an awful lot to me, but for those who’ve been paying attention before now…
The events of the last game, Splinter Cell: Conviction, saw President Patricia Caldwell shutting down the corrupt Third Echelon and, putting a new CTU in its place named… wait for it… Fourth Echelon. Snappy, huh? It’s run by the best of the best and is led by you, Sam Fisher, who was in charge of the Third Echelon.
However, the problem this time round is that there’s a dozen terrorists calling themselves “The Engineers” who initiate a deadly countdown of escalating attacks on United States assets called “The Blacklist”, and it’s up to you and your team (well, mostly you) to stop it all kicking off.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist also introduces a new experience to the series: “Killing in Motion”. This allows you to mark targets individually as they get close to you, then when they come into range, press Y to ‘Execute’ and you can bump off multiple targets quickly and efficiently. This feels like a bit of a cheat, but it’s more stylish and effective than simply firing off a load of random bullets in their direction and causing rather a commotion. And if you really want to avoid this option, you can select the ‘Perfectionist’ difficulty… but I won’t be doing that. Normal is fine for me!
All that said, this new addition is a bit odd because sometimes the marker will go red (to indicate that ‘Execute’ is available), except that they’re some distance from you, whereas at other times a marker will still be white, yet they’re at a much closer distance from you.
Go to page 2 for some random observations about the game.
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.
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
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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
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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