Tom Clancy games first came to prominence on the Xbox, in the form of the stupendous Ghost Recon and Ghost Recon Island Thunder, but no matter how slow paced they were, they were still military gunners at heart. 2002 though saw another Tom Clancy title hit the original Xbox. That title was Splinter Cell. The story about a Black Ops agent, Sam Fisher, became a massive hit and was to be one of the best ever sellers on the first Xbox. The stealth genre had never seen anything like it and gamers loved every damn second.
A couple of years later we saw the release of Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory, the latter amassing a pretty incredible 94% over on Metacritic. Both took all that was good with the original single player campaign mode to create two more stunning stories. However, the big thing that came out of, originally Pandora and latterly Chaos, were the versus multiplayer modes. Pitting 2 teams against each other, one as spies, the other as mercs, the gameplay was fast, fluid and downright addictive. I for one spent many hours learning the maps and honing my gameplay skills so that I was equally adept at both running around as a merc, or hiding in the shadows as a spy. With a decent partner, who was happy enough to chat away, you could become a full on precise killing machine.
Anyways, for one reason or another the multiplayer versus mode was then diluted down over the next few releases. Splinter Cell Double Agent never really hit our hearts (possibly due to the change from 2v2 to 3v3, and a bit of a boring old story seemingly concocted just to fit in the new co-op style), and whilst Conviction was good, it was much more of a single player experience, having ditched the versus mode completely and only offering a co-op campaign instead.
But listen up and listen up real good, because spies vs mercs is here again. And Ubisoft have brought it back with a massive Sam Fisher sized bang.
Now it may seem a little strange to speak about the multiplayer side of a game before even mentioning the single player campaign, but it’s so good it needs talking about.
Firstly, there is a full return of the spies vs mercs versus modes. This time round we are treated to 7 different versus game modes. Team deathmatch does exactly what it says on the tin. Uplink control sees 3 spies up against 3 mercs in a King Of The Hill style matchup. Extraction has 4 spies defending an intelligence point whilst the 4 mercs go all out to try and extract it. sVm Blacklist is a 4v4 game where the mercs defend whilst spies hack and sVm Classic sees a return of the 2v2 classic gamemode from Pandora and Chaos Theory. Throw in a hardcore mode and some training grounds to ease you in and you really do have more than you can shake a big old stick at.
As is always the case in the Splinter Cell versus games, the spies are pretty well under-equipped to take on the fully battled hardened mercs and instead need to use the shadows and their superior agility to nip around the tight well thought out maps. Each game is split into two halves in which you will get to play as both spy and merc. What on paper, looks like a total mismatch works extremely well and even if you see yourself more of a gunner than a runner, the halftime switchover period is a lovely time to start planning your revenge from the first period.
Other than a very steep learning curve which doesn’t particularly favour new players, the only issue I have with the versus mode is the same as in any game of this type. Private chat does not work when Splinter Cell is involved and if you find yourself paired up with 1 or 2 other players who either don’t have a mic or are in a private chat somewhere else, the game is pretty well up. Work together and things turn out lovely, don’t and you really won’t stand a chance against the other team. For this reason alone, Splinter Cell Spies vs Mercs works best when played with a friend or 3, so if this is your main form of gaming entertainment I advise checking out your friends list first to see who else has the game.
The multiplayer side of things is further enhanced by the addition of a rather brilliant co-op campaign. Whilst you can’t take on the full Blacklist from the single player campaign (more on that in a mo), there are numerous co-op missions available for you and a friend to tackle and plenty of achievements to rack up in the process.
That gets us on to the single player campaign. Sam Fisher is back and now taking on The Engineers, a terrorist group threatening to take America down in a series of events…..The Blacklist. As the commander of Fourth Echelon, a counter terrorism unit, Sam needs to track the Engineers around the world and ultimately stop their plans. Simple enough eh!
Base is a cargo plane, The Paladin, and this is where all missions are detailed and accepted. It is where you get to access the versus game modes and the co-op levels as well as all single player stages. You can also interact with your Fourth Echelon colleagues and upgrade your gear, gadgets or purchase new weapons. The Paladin is basically a fancy menu system which at first glance is more than a little confusing, but once you understand exactly what’s going on and who you need to speak to to action certain areas, works quite well. Personally, I would have been happy enough with a bog standard menu but this seems to be the way a number of games are going now so I guess we need to get used to it.
Once in game, you quickly notice a similarity to the Splinter Cell Conviction campaign with regards to the cover system, but you now have 3 distinct ways to attack the play. YOU decide exactly how you wish to take on the Engineers, and those familiar with the series will no doubt try and stealth it as much as they can, and that is more than viable. There are numerous routes into and around every scenario and if you are prepared to wait whilst the guards do their thing, you’ll be able to work your way around with little to no killing needed. If you choose this plan of action, you’ll gain additional ‘ghost’ points at the end of the level and will feel at one with the stealthy way of life. There is also the chance to go in as a ‘panther’. This sees you treading carefully, keeping in the dark as much as possible and taking out the engineers without them seeing you. Or finally you can play the game as you would Call Of Duty and gain extra ‘assault’ points. Ammo is not really much of an issue in Blacklist and so this way of play is more than possible, even if it is a little against the Splinter Cell etiquette. Like I say, how you play is totally up to you and the replay value of the single player campaign is very high as many may wish to play in all 3 scenarios and experience all 4 difficulty levels. Myself, I gave the ‘perfectionist’ difficulty level a miss, if only for my own sanity!
Whichever way you decide to play, you WILL need to hide any bodies in helpfully placed bins. Unless of course, all you run and gunners wish the other guards to find them. If you decide to go down the non lethal route then other guards will be able to revive downed colleagues, so you’ll really be needing to hide them pretty well. I personally found throwing them out of a window a pretty decent alternative to the skip, although this method was a little hit or miss. It sometimes seemed that the good old invisible wall was back and your despatched foe would just end up in the corner of a room all crumpled up!
Before each mission you get to choose your loadout and any upgrades. From the start the majority of it is unlocked but the better you do in taking down each stage on the blacklist, the more money you earn and the more you get to unlock and buy. What weapons and gadgets you buy all depends on which of the 3 playstyles you are aiming to hit. Explosive grenades are next to no help if you wish to acquire a ghost rating whilst the sticky noisemaker won’t really be much good if you are the all guns blazing type. Even your goggles can be upgraded to include such things as a sonar pulse, footprint tracking or new integrated optics but possibly the greatest ever addition is that you can equip Sam with different coloured lights. Pink googles anyone? Throw in some extra armour or a stealthier suit and the upgrades will keep you busy for a fair amount of time.
One thing I failed to mention is that the game comes on two discs. Not because it’s such a big game that it couldn’t be squeezed onto one DVD, but because the second disc houses a rather massive HD texture pack. You have yourself a choice to make, but to me it’s a bit of a no brainer. Install the 3072 mb of visuals and take the best possible visual experience, or don’t and slum it. Without the texture pack, things are still great but with it, my god, some of the visuals are mindblowingly good. As with previous Splinter Cells (and any stealth game worth it’s salt), it’s very much a game of dark and light, but the graphic detail on a) Sam and b) some of the outside scenery is outstanding. The rest of the visuals ain’t half bad either. Yes, graphics don’t make a game, as my Saints Row IV review attested to, but if you have the room on your hard drive, PLEASE install this extra pack. If you don’t have the spare space, make room for it. You won’t be disappointed.
ShadowNet has also been brought in for Blacklist. Think RaceNet and the suchlike, this is where you can view your progress, stats and completion percentages. Challenges are also shown in there and so you can work towards completing these throughout the gameplay. Also shown are full leaderboards and a very interesting social feed. This shows all your friends and what they have recently accomplished in game. Whether that be in the spies vs mercs multiplayer or the single player campaign stuff. It’s most certainly the place to throw some game challenges out to friends and let them try to beat your scores.
Another rather superb little addition is the option to record your own sound for use with the sticky cam, noisemaker or tri-rotor (drone) gadgets. With the power of Kinect you can record and preview any sound you wish to use to distract those troublesome guards. It’s a little thing, but it’s this type of concept that pushes Blacklist right up there with other AAA titles. You can also use a quick shout or whistle from yourself, which is easily picked up by Kinect, for the guards to quickly come investigating. It didn’t take me long to switch this option off though as even the smallest noise in house was enough to get the guards running….normally when I didn’t want them to!
So what we saying? Anything a bit rubbish or annoying? I guess the game does hold your hand a little too much for my liking, and that I’d prefer to only have the option to be covert rather than see the assault side of things, but that’s just down to my own personal preference. The fact that you HAVE to play through a number of cut scenes and tutorial before you can even look at the single or multiplayer modes is also a little bothersome, but at least you only have to do that once. Oh and whilst you have quite large areas to explore, there are some horrid invisible walls dotted around. I don’t understand why these are still in games. If the designer doesn’t want you to go a certain way, put something in the way that you can’t possibly cross, don’t just leave it open as an invisible wall to annoy the hell out of me!
Splinter Cell Blacklist, where does it stand on the big list of Splinter Cell chapters? Well, as you’ve probably deduced, It’s very very good. The single player is possibly the best and with the greatest sense of feeling since the original game, but despite your best efforts, it is a little easy to resort to pulling out the big gun throughout. The multiplayer is second in my eyes only to Pandora Tomorrow. If the old chat issue wasn’t a stumbling block then it would be right up there alongside PT as one of my favorite multiplayer titles ever. I honestly can’t wait to see what Ubisoft manage to bring to the next gen Splinter Cell party, but seriously hope Sam Fisher is a big part of our futures.
So buy it, end of. You’ll love it.
