Due to many commitments and an ever-growing backlog of games, this writer has not been able to spend as much time as he has wanted to on Splinter Cell: Blacklist. Even though I have not spent most of my free time playing Blacklist, I have put in just under ten hours into the game. Funny enough, I have only finished two story missions outside of the intro mission in those ten hours. A ton of my time has been spent on playing the optional side missions, trying out the co-op missions with my brothers and dying multiple times. It has been well over three years since yours truly has played Conviction. Due to the long time away from this series, it is taking some time to get back into the intricacies of Splinter Cell's mechanics. Blacklist does an admirable of making the tutorials scattered throughout the first few hours as unobtrusive as possible. Every mission in Blacklist supports three types of play styles: Ghost (stealth approach by using non-lethal takedowns), Panther (stealth approach by using lethal takedowns) and Assault (guns-blazing approach). After each mission, you are shown the amount of points gained in each play style to see which one you lean towards and to post to leaderboards for bragging rights. During my time with Blacklist, I have personally leaned towards Ghost with a little Panther mixed in every once and a while. There are so many options to dispatch enemies from plain takedowns to guns to gadgets to the Killing in Motion system, Blacklist's version of Mark and Execute. Speaking of Killing in Motion, it is the natural evolution of the Mark and Execute system. While I have not pulled off anything as smooth and slick as what Ubisoft has shown off, it is a lot of fun to take out one enemy with a takedown and in a few quick button presses mark and execute a few other enemies in the immediate vicinity. It is very smooth and incredibly empowering. Apart from the sonar googles, there were not many gadgets to use to dispatch foes in Conviction. Things are much different in Blacklist with Sam Fisher's new placement as the leader of Fourth Echelon. There are tons of gadgets for you to use against the foes that guard your mission objective. My personal favourites are the shock mines, sleeping gas and Tri-Rotor, but each gadget offers tons of options to tackle missions. Aside from the story missions, which are all great so far, there are a number of side missions to complete. Each of these side missions can be opened up from the SMI, Blacklist's centralized mission select screen, or by individually talking to each character on the Paladin, Fourth Echelon's mobile base and Blacklist's hub. Grimm's missions focus on infiltration, Charlie's missions focus on wave-defense, Kobin's missions focus on taking out all enemies and Briggs' missions are a combination of all of the above. These missions can be played solo or cooperatively both on and offline. The side missions serve as great diversions from the main missions and allows the player to sharpen their skills solo or with a friend. The Briggs and Kobin missions are the ones I have been spending the most time playing as I have not tried a Charlie mission yet and the only Grimm mission my brother and I tried was a two hour disaster.
Personally, I can dissect every little piece of Splinter Cell: Blacklist, but this post would go on for far too long. In conclusion, Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a great game so far. The pacing of the story is not the greatest especially compared to Conviction's campaign, the Grimm side missions can be unnecessarily unforgiving and Sam's new voice is quite jarring. I have not run into any glitches or problems that hinder Blacklist in any way, but I have only played a little slice of the entire game. I am hoping to put up a full review of Splinter Cell: Blacklist in the near future.
Rent, borrow or buy it. Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a game that deserves some of your attention especially before the holiday flood of games sweeps it under the rug.
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