If you're ever curious to see how much the gaming industry has changed and what they think gamers want, the Splinter Cell franchise is a great series to play. From the slow, methodical, gadget-driven pure stealth gameplay of the early games, it turned quickly into more of a generic third-person cover-based shooter with minimal gadgets and more shooting. Stealth has remained part of the series throughout, but with Blacklist, it is the least significant of the lot.
Blacklist is not a bad game at all, even with its poorly designed side missions that can either be played solo or co-op. That was always going to be tricky to balance given they'd need to make it so the missions aren't too easy playing co-op, but aren't too difficult playing solo. Such missions here are all over the place. Some feel adequately balanced while others don't even come close. It's especially frustrating that completing these missions unlocks access to some of the better equipment in the game, which sure does come in handy with the main campaign.
However, it does miss the mark of being anywhere near a good Splinter Cell game. Blacklist is fun at times, but isn't consistent. The big promise of the game that they remind you of at the start and finish of every mission is that, hey! You can play however you want! The game allows customized equipment load outs that players can design to fit their preferred play style. So, if you're more of a stealth person, you can arm yourself with quieter armor and more tech gadgets. If you're anticipating getting into more firefights and playing more akin to Conviction's style of move, shoot, and hide, you can equip heavier armor and more lethal weapons and devices.
Great in theory, of course, but not really in practice. At the end of each level, you are awarded points for actions you took that fit a particular play style. There's Ghost, Panther, and Assault. Ghost, as it implies, is a style for which you simply avoid everything. Panther style sees similar stealth tactics, mixed with more enemy interactions. Instead of avoiding enemies, you try to take them out, Alien-style. And Assault is, as you'd imagine, is more of a head on confrontation style.
The problem is that the game constantly tells you that it's up to you, and that you can decide how you want to play. You get monetary rewards for your style, as well as achievements. They make recommendations during the load out to give you an idea of what to expect, but it's hard to know exactly what's coming. Despite regularly telling players that they can decide how they want to play, they actually wind up removing that freedom. Sections of the game require you to run and gun. Other parts require you avoid any and all detection, whether that Ghost style is how you have been playing or even like to. Early in the game, you're put into a situation where you have no choice but to dig in and engage in a shoot out. And at one point, you control another character and the game changes over into a pure first-person shooter.
Giving players a taste of each style might have been a good design decision in early stages of the game, but it's frustrating to have your freedom removed randomly throughout the entire game. There have always been missions where you are restricted in what you can do. However, those missions didn't totally change the way you play. Being denied Fifth Freedom just means you have to use nonlethal means to take people out, but otherwise you can still play those sections the same way. In Blacklist, they occasionally force you to play it outside the style you feel most comfortable with.
Which wouldn't at all be a bad thing if they didn't do so much to push the idea that players have ultimate say.
The structure of the game appears to be weirdly influenced by Mass Effect. Players control a Sam Fisher who is now in charge of Fifth Echelon, the new super spy agency born in the aftermath of Conviction. As such, Fisher is given the authority to put together a team who operates in a giant airplane that's always in motion. In between missions, you control Fisher around the plane, talking to team mates. When you're ready to select a mission, you go to the center and access the SMI which displays a world map with mission locations. You've got your campaign missions that advance the story, and then you've got co-op and solo side missions as well as online play options. Essentially, it functions like the Normandy in Mass Effect.
The story, of course, has gotten completely off the rails. Remember the days of actually compelling, grounded geopolitical stories that required the skills of the aging super special forces agent Sam Fisher? And remember when Fisher was always sort of begrudgingly doing things and was regularly irritated with Lambert and Grimsdottir and endeared us to his amusing sense of snark? Yeah, those days are long gone. The new voice actor does an ok job, but he seems completely absent of anything resembling a personality. Maybe they under-appreciated how critical Michael Ironside was to actually injecting personality into the character, because Fisher went from one of the coolest action heroes in video games to a wholly generic and boring one.
Instead of anything remotely grounded, we get yet another comic book type of story. The villain's motives are never explicitly clear. It feels a little bit like they thought they had just come up with a modern James Bond villain and thought that was good enough. Except modern Bond villains aren't that memorable, and it really isn't "good enough." There was a time where Splinter Cell villains made sense, in part because the stories were relatively grounded. Now, everyone is such a one-dimensional, nonsense villain who exists simply to be the menacing super villain to match Fisher.
They also take the super easy approach of using Middle Eastern characters as the public terrorists. It's not that that doesn't make sense or shouldn't be used ever. In fact, Splinter Cell has actually largely avoided the Middle East entirely. This game marks the first time featuring an Arabic villain. It's just that almost every military-driven shooter at that time was doing it. The over-villianizing of Arabic people further makes it feel stale and uninteresting. We've seen the Middle Eastern terrorist over and over and over and over and over and over and over. So it's a little disappointing that a franchise that has largely avoided that trap fell head first into it here.
As for the game itself: it's fine. It plays very differently from the classic games of the series, but it's hard to tell if it plays better than Conviction. Things are smoothed out (even though they do that thing I hate - arbitrarily swapping control layouts from the previous game), but it's definitely more interested in shoot outs than even the last installment was. It's still ultimately fun to play on the most part. The inclusion of secondary targets that provide cash, which you can then use to purchase upgrades is a welcome addition.
It's just that most of these parts don't truly connect particularly cohesively. And it might just very well be the least Splinter Cell-like game of the franchise.
REDUCTIVE RATING: It's Fine.
(Scale: God Awful, Pretty Bad, It's Fine, Pretty Good, Incredible!)
So, with the series retrospect concluded, I will reduce nuanced reviews and opinions to an oversimplified ranking list, going from best game to worst in the series.
1. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
2. Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
3. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (PS2/XBox)
4. Splinter Cell: Conviction
5. Splinter Cell
6. Splinter Cell: Blacklist
7. Splinter Cell: Double Agent (XBox360/PS3)
That first game doesn't exactly hold up, and certainly all of the PS2 games are noticeably dated. But the last three actually do play pretty well. It's a different style than what they became. It would be nice to see Ubisoft eventually get back to the series' roots.
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