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dkirschner's Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (360)

[January 4, 2017 01:45:48 PM]

I always like the Splinter Cell games because they provide reliable, fun, intense third-person shooter gameplay with heavy stealth elements. By this point, Ubisoft has essentially perfected their formula. Come up with some Tom Clancy story about military this and that and terrorism this and that. Sam Fisher is the only one who can save the day. Get a ton of fun gadgets and go mission to mission stealth killing terrorists until you foil their plot and save America. The story is always throwaway, the characters are always one-dimensional, but the gameplay is so awesome that the rest doesn't matter.

One thing I noticed in Blacklist that I don't remember in previous games is that it encourages replayability and multiple play styles. There are three: assault (loud run and gun), panther (silently stalk enemies and kill), and ghost (remain undetected, non-lethal takedowns). You get the most points for playing in ghost style because it's the hardest, and I spent most of the game in panther style. Each action earns points for whatever associated style (e.g., a non-lethal takedown will give you 100 points in ghost style, then when you shoot the next enemy after he sees you, you'll get 100 points toward assault style).

There are a million upgrades to unlock with all the points you earn from playing missions. I just played the main storyline straight through, no side missions or anything, so I didn't upgrade much. I did upgrade my base to max, but was using the same basic guns the entire game! On normal, you can still win like this, but I hope it's harder on the hard difficulty. I did unlock all the gadgets, but didn't use them all. There are various grenades and gas bombs, a drone that you can use to recon and shoot enemies, mines, cameras, goggles and goggle upgrades (oh yeah, I didn't unlock all the goggle upgrades!), and more random stuff.

I'm looking forward to buying Metal Gear Solid 5 at some point because that series has similar gameplay and I know that game is supposed to be amazing. So this is a good holdover till then! Though I hope there are fewer cut scenes than in MGS 4. I'm not sure which is worse--the infinite cut scenes in MGS 4 or the cheesy phone conversations Sam Fisher has with his daughter in Blacklist. Anyway, that's all! [shoots out the lights and fades into a dark corner]