 They don't have to agree with you, they just have to follow you.
A mysterious terrorist group called "The Engineers" successfully attacked a US military base. Now they are demanding that all US troops be recalled from overseas or else The Engineers will enact a series of devastating attacks that they refer to as "The Blacklist". Only one team can prevent these attacks and save America.
1. Gameplay
This is the most fun I’ve had in a stealth game since Dishonored. Out of all the games I have reviewed, only a select few have earned a perfect score, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist deserves to be in that group. It is a great action movie-style game with well written characters and twists that left me wondering what would happen next. It’s the perfect example of how shooter campaigns need to be written and how character interactions need to be developed. While the villain and the overall events in this game are fairly typical for a Tom Clancy story (surprisingly well funded and well organized terrorist tries to blackmail United States), it’s the details that really sell this game. 
Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.
Here’s an example. Sam Fisher and his team are trying to prevent the terrorist leader from enacting the “Blacklist”, a series of targets that are meant to extort the United States into pulling all of its forces back from overseas. Intelligence says that the next Blacklist target, codenamed “American Consumption”, is going to be in Houston, either the football stadium or the aquarium. A typical shooter would have you go to one of these locations, kill all the terrorists, and that would be the end. A typical Tom Clancy game (i.e. Rainbow Six: Vegas 2) would have you go to one of these locations and kill terrorists, only to find out that you’re in the wrong location.
But Blacklist isn’t even a typical Tom Clancy game. Instead, your tech analyst comes to your team just as you’re about to launch the mission and says “I’ve been keeping track of a bunch of guys we suspect to be part of the terrorist cell in America, and nine of them just got on a plane together heading to Chicago.” It’s a random piece of intel, but one that the tech analyst suspects means that the terrorists are actually going to Chicago, not Houston.
Getting information on the fly.
This concept is critical to selling the narrative. Intelligence work is an art just as much as it’s a science. Major leads can be completely wrong, minor hints could be critical. It takes a small amount of reading comprehension and a ton of inference to make the right call at the right time. Sam, despite his intelligence analyst’s open protests, decides to go with the tech analyst’s info and head to Chicago.
All of this happens in the space of a single cutscene, and it highlights exactly what makes Blacklist such an amazing narrative. The four key crew members hardly ever agree on everything, at times they don’t even like each other. They’re working together for a common purpose, one that requires each of them to be at their best at all times. They will openly disagree with each other, but in a way that clearly shows both sides of the coin. Is one small piece of evidence enough to change targets even if it means risking millions of American lives? Is the pursuit of intelligence worth the potential risk of invading a foreign country? Is Sam Fisher’s life worth saving if it means forfeiting an opportunity to kill the terrorist leader?
This game likes to dabble in "grey areas".
And all of my praise for the story doesn’t even begin to cover my praise for the gameplay. The player has the ability to completely customize their loadout. Weapons, gadgets, armor, goggles, and tons of sub-customizations are all available to choose. The player can upgrade their plane with additional abilities that have a direct effect on gameplay. And, on top of all that, I can save custom loadouts and switch between them depending on how I want to approach each level.
What I didn’t like about the previous Splinter Cell game (Conviction) was that it felt like a poor marriage between a stealth game and a third-person shooter. Blacklist solves that problem entirely. The game rewards players for playing in three possible styles. Ghosts (my preferred style) will approach the game silently and nonviolently. Panthers will approach the game silently, but violently, willing to quietly kill enemies and sow the seeds of chaos and fear without ever getting caught. Assaulters don’t care about being seen or heard, they’ll go in loud, draw lots of attention, and end up killing everyone.
This is a great stealth game with clear mechanics that can appeal to both the niche and the broad audiences. This is very rare in any game genre, so even if you don’t normally like stealth games I would highly recommend giving this a shot.
It took me around ten hours to complete the campaign, but the length can alter drastically depending how the player chooses to approach the game. I played silently, meticulously planning my moves so that I wouldn’t get caught. This required a significantly greater amount of time than if I had just gone through the game as loud and deadly as possible.
However, the campaign is only a portion of the overall content. The real meat of the game seems to be in the cooperative modes. The player can attempt a series of horde modes or other mission-like challenges. Each of these challenges can be attempted alone or with a friend. While I didn’t find these as interesting as the campaign, they could definitely provide some great extra content for fans of the game and its mechanics.
There are multiplayer modes to this game, but I had trouble with these since I didn’t find anyone else playing them.
For the most part this game was relatively straightforward and communicated its mechanics very well. There were some times when this was less clear. I found the heavy-armor enemy types to be a bit frustrating. These types wear gas masks that makes them immune to tear and sleeping gas, but somehow they’re also insulated from shock bolts. This means that the player is required to take them out either from behind, above, or with brute force from the front.
Towards the end of the game there were also instant-fail sections involving laser beams. I didn’t have a ton of trouble with these sections, but they felt a bit unfair at times, especially when the checkpoints could be considerably far back in the mission progression.
I ran into a bug where, on skipping a cutscene, the enemy AI would not run along his assigned path. Because he was invincible (the story required him to reach a certain point before the player caught him), this meant that I couldn’t complete the chapter. Eventually I discovered that by letting the cutscene play out, he would run along the correct path, but it took me a while to figure this out.
2. Parental Notices
Violence is a factor in this game, but the level of violence will change depending on how the player chooses to approach each scenario. For example, I chose to approach each scenario as non-violently as possible, subduing and knocking out my enemies rather than killing them. However, the player can just as easily kill every enemy he comes across. In most cases, killing an enemy is by far a much simpler method of eliminating a potential threat than trying to take him out non-violently. Enemies who are knocked out can be woken back up if an ally finds them, while enemies who are dead stay dead. 
Double tap.
The player will have access to a wide variety of firearms but all have the same effect. Hits will result in some blood but it isn’t very significant. Since most kills happen from short range, it will be visible for almost every kill, but its transparency and short lifespan worth together to make it disappear quickly.
He was just doing the laundry.
There are a few non-lethal weapons that the player can use as well. The ones that I used the most were the tri-rotor and the tactical crossbow. Both of these weapons have a sticky bolt that can stun enemies with a mild electrical shock. It has a visible effect (they seize up briefly), but no permanent damage seems to be caused by the attack.
Sleeping gas can also be used against enemies. The effect is exactly what you’d expect.
The player can also use melee takedowns to subdue or kill enemies. The player can choose whether to use lethal or non-lethal takedowns. Lethal takedowns involve blood and stabbing enemies, non-lethal ones do not.
Nobody saw that, of course.
The game rewards the player equally for being lethal and non-lethal. The greatest rewards, though, come from consistency. If the player switches between lethal and non-lethal mid-mission or goes from being quiet to loud mid-mission, he will likely lose a significant amount of the potential monetary award granted upon completion of that level. This means that if a player starts out being lethal, he will likely remain lethal throughout the mission (and vice versa).
BOOM! Headshot!
There is one scene where the violence gets a bit more graphic. There is no gore (there is never any gore in this game), but the player watches as the main antagonist slits the throat of a captive US soldier and bleeds out.
I wasn't a fan of this scene.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
I attempted to play this game online but was unable to find any other players in the servers. Since it seems as if there is no online community left, it is not a factor in this game.
Sam Fisher is the ultimate covert ops agent, and this goes for more than just his gadgets. The things that he does in this game aren’t impossible, they can be done by the right person under the right conditions. However, the idea of the “right person” and “right conditions” are thrown out the window. Sam Fisher never seems to tire, never runs out of strength, and never misses a step. 
I wonder if this would actually work.
He can jump up ten foot walls, crawl along pipes while hanging upside down, and hang on to a ledge with just his fingers for an infinite amount of time. Like I said, none of this is impossible (just search Youtube for some of the ridiculous things people can do with ease), it’s just highly improbable that someone would be able to do this while wearing all that gear without getting tired. And, on top of all that, he somehow does it while remaining completely silent.
While I'm sure climbing pipes like this is doable, I wouldn't want to be the person to try it.
Sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous. Like, for example, when he jumps out of the back of a moving plane, possibly without a parachute.
Anyone on the ground is in for a big surprise.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Interrogation Sam interrogates a number of people in different missions in order to extract information about the blacklist and its targets. These interrogations are fairly mild. However, at the end of the interrogation, the player can choose whether to kill the individual or spare him. 
Torture never gives you the information you want, just the information you want to hear.
One character, an arms dealer with a history of run-ins with Sam Fisher, is being interrogated and electrocuted when Sam saves him.
Why shock him on the outside of his jacket?
Weapons of Mass Destruction
A number of the blacklist targets involve using weapons of mass destruction to kill as many American civilians as possible. For example, one attack involves dumping gallons of bubonic plague cultures into Chicago’s water system. 
That's probably not safe to drink.
Another involves using nerve gas to kill civilians in Philadelphia’s transit system. Sam inhales some of the nerve gas and is temporarily hospitalized.
Nerve gas and tear gas are not the same things.
Suicide
The player can choose to spare or kill certain key enemies. However, this doesn’t always go as the player plans. If the player chooses to spare one enemy, the enemy grabs Fisher’s gun and kills himself. 
You can't save them all.
1 Comment
John
8/14/2016 02:49:46 pm
Hey Carmine there actually is a gore in this game. In one cutscene near the end of the game, the engineers are trying to get codes off the secretary of defense. They torture him by taking off his fingers and eventually his whole hand. While brief, it is quiet graphic Leave a Reply. |
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