Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
I have had a stealth hankering for a while now so a few weeks ago I decided to pick up Splinter Cell: Blacklist after reading some favorable impressions around these parts. I finally finished the campaign yesterday and I am pleased to say this game is really, really damn good.
Let me first start off with my experiences with Conviction. I hated Conviction. In fact, "hated" is too benign a word. I despised Conviction because it was an aggressive action game that masqueraded under the pretense of being a stealth game. The levels in Conviction were painfully linear and designed to be completely cleared of enemies before progress was granted. In a lot of situations the Mark and Execute feature was a necessity rather than an option. I eventually got so frustrated during the penultimate level that I pulled it out of my 360 and put it on my shelf, never to see the inside of a gaming system ever again.
Fast forward to 2013 and I'm pleased to find that Blacklist fixes most of Conviction's issues and is generally a very competent and, most importantly, fun stealth game. I initially wrote the game off due to its controversial E3 demo but Blacklist really does have strong stealth mechanics underneath all its dudebro bravado. The levels in this game are what's known as "wide linear" I suppose, in which there is a discrete entrance and exit to each area, but with multiple paths and secret passages in between. This allows you to really play your way: do you shimmy across ledges and make your way up to the rooftop where you can sneak silently into a vent? Do you stand behind a corner and whistle to attract guards to their inevitable doom? Or do you toss a flashbang and jump in with your assault rifle?
I generally played a mix of Panther and Ghost styles and found that the game was incredibly accommodating to both. Ubisoft really went out of its way to create alternate paths and gadgets that allow you to ghost areas if you really want to, and the grading system even gives the maximum amount of points for leaving enemies "undisturbed." The number of hiding spots, ledges, shadows, and vents in each level means you can easily call an audible and change your strategy on the fly if you run into unexpected resistance. I also found guards to be generally intelligent and unpredictable. Guards' patrol routes are not preset and can vary every time you restart a checkpoint, which adds replayability; I started a Perfectionist Ghost run last night and I am excited at the prospect at having to think on my feet if guards surprise me.
The AI also impressed me in other ways. If you leave doors open, or close previously open doors, the guards will get suspicious and will check out the room you're in. If you take out a guard on patrol, his friends will come looking for him after a while. Guards don't always react the same way to your actions: in one level I was infiltrating a mansion in South America and I was hiding behind a corner. I whistled to attract one guard, who swiftly got a knife to the throat. I hid his body away and returned to the same corner and whistled at another guard. Instead of coming over, he stared cautiously at the corner for a while before radioing his team to say he thinks there might be an intruder and that he was going to check it out, which put the whole level on increased alert. Blacklist also introduces dogs, which are annoying as they can sniff you out even if you're hidden out of sight. Later in the game you go up against "heavies," who can only be taken out from behind or above, and guards equipped with night vision goggles that can see you in the dark.
As far as the voice acting, I honestly think Eric Johnson does a great job as Sam. He's no Ironside that's for sure, but he maintains the grim seriousness that Ironside brought to the role, and after a while I didn't even notice that it wasn't Ironside making Sam's dry quips. The rest of the voice cast is great too, with Grim being particularly great as a foil to Sam. My favorite though had to be Sadiq, who is played by Carlo Rota and is completely mesmerizing whenever he is on screen.
The game isn't perfect though, and I do have a few serious issues with it. There are two levels in particular where I felt like I was playing Conviction again, and I came ever so close to hurling my controller through my TV. It doesn't help that these levels come one after the other. The first involves you infiltrating a high tech facility and at one point you are thrown into an ambush in a small, enclosed room. If you leave cover for even a second you are instantly spotted and killed, and I must have died 5 times in a row trying to stealth my way out before getting fed up and shooting everyone. There does seem to be a stealthy approach but I had to YouTube it and it's pretty obscure. This section also requires you to neutralize everyone in the room before you can progress, which gave me painful flashbacks to Conviction. The level also gives you a mini-boss fight towards the end, and closes out with a car chase in which you control a drone and fire missiles onto the enemy vehicles.
The second level involves you switching back and forth between Sam and Briggs, the latter of which is played from an FPS perspective and is one of the most annoying sections in the game for its lack of stealth combined with the lack of competent shooter mechanics and minimal checkpoints. There are two of these FPS segments, before you are given control of Sam and have to fight your way through a subway train. Let me say that again: you have to fight (i.e., the opposite of stealth) through a subway train (i.e., the literal definition of a linear level). It's not like you can even jump out the windows and flank the enemies - you literally have to fight through it car by car. It's as if someone copied Uncharted 2's train level and then threw out everything that made it fun.
Thankfully, the few levels that come afterwards and close out the game go back to the game's stealth roots and are fun and exciting, and the two bad levels can be completed relatively quickly and then summarily forgotten.
As a whole, I think this game is great and well worth picking up for anyone on here who is looking for a fun stealth experience. It's a shame Blacklist didn't do very well for Ubi because I think it's a definite step in the right direction after the disappointment that was Conviction. I actually think the reason Blacklist didn't do particularly well was because Conviction left a bad taste in people's mouths, and for that reason I believe more people should give the game a shot. It has solid stealth mechanics, gives you a lot of freedom in how you approach each level, and has a significant amount of replayability between different difficulty levels, playstyles, collectibles, and a ton of side/co-op missions (which I haven't really touched yet). I am very much looking forward to seeing what Splinter Cell is going to look like in its next gen iteration, because if it's anything like this then we are in for a treat.
Let me first start off with my experiences with Conviction. I hated Conviction. In fact, "hated" is too benign a word. I despised Conviction because it was an aggressive action game that masqueraded under the pretense of being a stealth game. The levels in Conviction were painfully linear and designed to be completely cleared of enemies before progress was granted. In a lot of situations the Mark and Execute feature was a necessity rather than an option. I eventually got so frustrated during the penultimate level that I pulled it out of my 360 and put it on my shelf, never to see the inside of a gaming system ever again.
Fast forward to 2013 and I'm pleased to find that Blacklist fixes most of Conviction's issues and is generally a very competent and, most importantly, fun stealth game. I initially wrote the game off due to its controversial E3 demo but Blacklist really does have strong stealth mechanics underneath all its dudebro bravado. The levels in this game are what's known as "wide linear" I suppose, in which there is a discrete entrance and exit to each area, but with multiple paths and secret passages in between. This allows you to really play your way: do you shimmy across ledges and make your way up to the rooftop where you can sneak silently into a vent? Do you stand behind a corner and whistle to attract guards to their inevitable doom? Or do you toss a flashbang and jump in with your assault rifle?
I generally played a mix of Panther and Ghost styles and found that the game was incredibly accommodating to both. Ubisoft really went out of its way to create alternate paths and gadgets that allow you to ghost areas if you really want to, and the grading system even gives the maximum amount of points for leaving enemies "undisturbed." The number of hiding spots, ledges, shadows, and vents in each level means you can easily call an audible and change your strategy on the fly if you run into unexpected resistance. I also found guards to be generally intelligent and unpredictable. Guards' patrol routes are not preset and can vary every time you restart a checkpoint, which adds replayability; I started a Perfectionist Ghost run last night and I am excited at the prospect at having to think on my feet if guards surprise me.
The AI also impressed me in other ways. If you leave doors open, or close previously open doors, the guards will get suspicious and will check out the room you're in. If you take out a guard on patrol, his friends will come looking for him after a while. Guards don't always react the same way to your actions: in one level I was infiltrating a mansion in South America and I was hiding behind a corner. I whistled to attract one guard, who swiftly got a knife to the throat. I hid his body away and returned to the same corner and whistled at another guard. Instead of coming over, he stared cautiously at the corner for a while before radioing his team to say he thinks there might be an intruder and that he was going to check it out, which put the whole level on increased alert. Blacklist also introduces dogs, which are annoying as they can sniff you out even if you're hidden out of sight. Later in the game you go up against "heavies," who can only be taken out from behind or above, and guards equipped with night vision goggles that can see you in the dark.
As far as the voice acting, I honestly think Eric Johnson does a great job as Sam. He's no Ironside that's for sure, but he maintains the grim seriousness that Ironside brought to the role, and after a while I didn't even notice that it wasn't Ironside making Sam's dry quips. The rest of the voice cast is great too, with Grim being particularly great as a foil to Sam. My favorite though had to be Sadiq, who is played by Carlo Rota and is completely mesmerizing whenever he is on screen.
The game isn't perfect though, and I do have a few serious issues with it. There are two levels in particular where I felt like I was playing Conviction again, and I came ever so close to hurling my controller through my TV. It doesn't help that these levels come one after the other. The first involves you infiltrating a high tech facility and at one point you are thrown into an ambush in a small, enclosed room. If you leave cover for even a second you are instantly spotted and killed, and I must have died 5 times in a row trying to stealth my way out before getting fed up and shooting everyone. There does seem to be a stealthy approach but I had to YouTube it and it's pretty obscure. This section also requires you to neutralize everyone in the room before you can progress, which gave me painful flashbacks to Conviction. The level also gives you a mini-boss fight towards the end, and closes out with a car chase in which you control a drone and fire missiles onto the enemy vehicles.
The second level involves you switching back and forth between Sam and Briggs, the latter of which is played from an FPS perspective and is one of the most annoying sections in the game for its lack of stealth combined with the lack of competent shooter mechanics and minimal checkpoints. There are two of these FPS segments, before you are given control of Sam and have to fight your way through a subway train. Let me say that again: you have to fight (i.e., the opposite of stealth) through a subway train (i.e., the literal definition of a linear level). It's not like you can even jump out the windows and flank the enemies - you literally have to fight through it car by car. It's as if someone copied Uncharted 2's train level and then threw out everything that made it fun.
Thankfully, the few levels that come afterwards and close out the game go back to the game's stealth roots and are fun and exciting, and the two bad levels can be completed relatively quickly and then summarily forgotten.
As a whole, I think this game is great and well worth picking up for anyone on here who is looking for a fun stealth experience. It's a shame Blacklist didn't do very well for Ubi because I think it's a definite step in the right direction after the disappointment that was Conviction. I actually think the reason Blacklist didn't do particularly well was because Conviction left a bad taste in people's mouths, and for that reason I believe more people should give the game a shot. It has solid stealth mechanics, gives you a lot of freedom in how you approach each level, and has a significant amount of replayability between different difficulty levels, playstyles, collectibles, and a ton of side/co-op missions (which I haven't really touched yet). I am very much looking forward to seeing what Splinter Cell is going to look like in its next gen iteration, because if it's anything like this then we are in for a treat.
