Splinter Cell: Blacklist came to me by way of opportunity. I was buying a new graphics card and it was included along with a few other games in the bundle. It wasn’t a game I was specifically thinking about picking up, but I certainly welcomed it as a bonus. I hadn’t played any Splinter Cell games recently, but I remember the original game fondly. It was one of the earlier games to really nail stealth action. Unfortunately the formula didn’t change much from game to game and things got a bit stale. The series tended to move away from stealth and more towards action as well, which was definitely a mistake.

With Blacklist I had heard things were getting a bit back to the series’ roots, so I was cautiously optimistic. Now, having completed the main story campaign I can say this with confidence. It’s pretty good. I know that’s not exactly a quote that will be slapped on the box cover, but it’s the matter of fact truth. I had an enjoyable time playing Blacklist, and I would suggest it to others. It wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of my “Games You Should Play” list, but it would be on there.


Splinter Cell: Blacklist. 2013′s “Pretty Decent-est” Game of the Year!

We’ve (apparently) got a whole new Sam Fisher this time around. Series Die-Hards will obviously have stronger opinions, but I thought he was fine, not great. He was relatively monotone and emotionless, but then again that has become pretty much the norm for your standard issue gravel-voiced male protagonist with a buzz cut. For the entire campaign I got a constant vibe from the other characters that Sam Fisher is not exactly a pleasant guy to work with. He’s the best at what he does, but he’s pretty abrasive as well. From firing one of his operatives mid-mission for not killing him to pretty much flipping the bird to the President of the United States at every opportunity, Sam better hope his stealth and murder skills stay sharp, because he is not making any friends for a smooth transition to a desk job.


It’s almost like committing hundreds of murders in covert ops has an emotional effect on people.

It’s been a while since I played a Splinter Cell, and I definitely skipped playing the last several, but I fell into the routine with this one quite quickly. The controls and stealth mechanics all feel pretty good. The game is easy enough that I didn’t get badly stuck on anything, but challenging enough that I really had to think and be careful the entire time. It is certainly possible to get through an entire mission in a stealthy manner, and that’s pretty much always the way to go. Fisher does not bode well when out in the open. Your best bet if you are seen is to either get hidden again as soon as possible, or just stand up and let yourself get killed so you can try over.

In that sense, Blacklist felt a little like Dark Souls (stay with me) in that I treated my first trip through each encounter as a sort of prospecting run. I would hop right into the encounter with full knowledge that I might die on my first attempt, but it would be a learning experience for the next time. A few deaths here and there were acceptable in the process of learning and timing a good run. On the other hand, you couldn’t just corpse run your way through the game, because the missions were pretty darn long (about an hour) and the checkpoints were quite spread out in many cases. Dying was just costly enough that you wanted to avoid it, but not frustratingly punishing.

I appreciated the enemy AI as well. In many ways I thought it was some of the best AI I’ve seen in a game like this. You can do the old trick where you whistle to get a guard’s attention and then take him out from cover as he approaches you. You can even do this multiple times, but unlike in other games, you couldn’t do this if you’d been seen earlier in that area. The guards had better memory than usual. If you had been spotted, the guards would go into search mode. They would eventually relax back into patrol mode, but not entirely. If you tried to whistle a guard around a corner, instead of the typical “Hmm… what’s that noise?” response you’d get the much more realistic “Oh Shit! HEY GUYS! Remember that guy we were looking for a few minutes ago? I THINK HE’S OVER HERE!”


“He ran behind that gate and then whispered ‘Hey. Come here’. What do you guys think? Should I go?”

I didn’t play any any of the multiplayer and I was pretty bummed to find that local co-op was not supported, at least not on PC. There are many side missions that seem pretty geared towards co-op, but I didn’t do any of them during my solo campaign and I can’t see myself doing them online with any friends. Couch Co-op is definitely something that is coming back, but we’re not all the way there, and for some reason a lot of games are offering local co-op on consoles but not on PC. Stop that. PC Players are using their controllers and sitting in their living rooms more and more each day. Let us play together.

While we’re on the subject of extraneous factors that annoyed me, UPlay! This game is a UPlay joint, which at this point to me means it’s going to be a HUGE pain in the ass to get downloaded and running. Once I get it downloaded (and installed, which is a separate step for some reason) the game will begin the patching cycle. Instead of patching itself entirely it downloads each patch individually, one per time you launch the game. With Blacklist I had about four patches to install, and instead of applying them all right away, I had to sit through ten minutes of updates each of the first four times I played. Oh, also, this is the 3rd (3rd!!!!) of four UPlay games I own that I literally had to download the crack for to get running at first. Every platform has its downfalls, but come on UPlay. I understand the desire to take back your slice of the Steam pie like Origin is trying to do, but your service has to be at least in the same ballpark of quality to be even remotely considered. At this pace not only are you not helping yourself, you’re hurting yourself. I will seriously think long and hard next time I’m presented with an opportunity to buy a game that runs on the UPlay platform.

This is not specifically Splinter Cell’s fault, but it did almost stop me from playing the game entirely. It was a game I kinda wanted to play but wasn’t dead set on playing, and this ordeal almost caused me to quit on it entirely, forever. I’m glad I didn’t though, because Blacklist was a good deal of fun, and I will gladly play the next in the series, as long as it’s offered on a service other than UPlay, which unfortunately I’m not holding my breath for. Much like Fisher’s signature green-lighted goggles, Splinter Cell: Blacklist went inexplicably unnoticed in 2013, but now with the absolute lack of anything else to play in early 2014 I genuinely hope some people go back and check this game out.


Seriously, the lights turn on when he’s HIDDEN. It makes no sense.

So go pick up this pretty good game that was passed over in 2013, and seriously 2014, you are VERY slow out of the blocks so far.