There’s not much left on the console gaming front before everything starts showing up on next-gen systems. Many upcoming releases won’t be found on the Xbox 360 or PS3, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left for us to enjoy. UbiSoft has proven that with the recent release of Splinter Cell: Blacklist. In a series that’s been slowly degrading, the latest entry allows Sam Fisher to finish his time on current consoles on a high note.
The series returns to its roots while still allowing the few that were wooed by Conviction to enjoy what they found. This is seen by the way missions are scored. Players can take a stealth approach by avoiding any killing or the enemy. There’s also the “Panther” approach, which allows for the silent elimination of those that stand between the player and the objective. And when the player just wants to make a lot of noise and blow the terrorists away, they can embrace their inner Rambo and blast everyone. At the end of missions, players are scored by how much they used each approach so they can see if they were more Sam Fisher or if their efforts more closely resembled the storming of Normandy.
The story also is much better than the last entry in the series, Splinter Cell: Conviction. While Conviction felt like a Tom Clancy scripted soap opera, this feels more like a proper Tom Clancy storyline. Locations vary from Benghazi to cities in the US. The characters have depth, but it’s not to the point where it seems like the focus on the characters is taking away from the bigger picture.
The wonderful asymmetrical multiplayer mode of Spies vs. Mercs also makes a return. As someone who was woefully horrible at this game mode in previous entries in the series, this edition feels much more approachable. Perhaps it’s because everyone’s still relearning the game mode since it’s been about eight years since it was in a Splinter Cell game, but it hasn’t proven itself to be as intimidating. There’s still a learning curve, but it’s not quite as steep. It seems to successfully embrace the concept of “A thinking person’s action game” that makes Splinter Cell great.
The game is not without flaws. The graphics aren’t anything to write home about. They’re not bad, but they’re not great. But that could largely be due to the fact that current consoles have hit their limit on what they can do. The only annoying issue I came across was the fact that quite often when shooting out a light, there would be a minor but noticeable delay between when the light is shot and hearing the glass break and then the light actually going out. It’s like somehow, the light magically keeps lighting up an area after it’s been broken. But again, minor gripe. It never affected gameplay for me in any way. I was also annoyed by the fact that the 360 version has an “HD texture package” that is best to install to the hard drive prior to playing. Not only does it take up about 3GB of space, but it takes some time to install. Why don’t developers just put that sort of thing online for people to download prior to release? Then we don’t have to stare at a loading screen. But I digress.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a great game that I recommend to anyone who enjoyed the series in the past but was disappointed by Conviction. It does get back to what made the series great. For those moving on to other consoles as they’re released later this fall, this is a great game to end your time with the current console generation. The only heartbreaking issue is that it took this entire console generation for UbiSoft to get us a proper Splinter Cell game.
