Here are a few problems with Splinter Cell Blacklist.
First off, the game tries to pull off this overly-serious 24-esque feel (even going so far as to employ 24 cast member Carlo Rota). Normally, overly-seriously 24-esque feels can be made to work in action-espionage games, but given that Ubisoft went with the semi-open world approach, it kinda fails in places. The game tries to remove as many menu elements as possible putting gameplay where it doesn’t belong. When you start a mission, ANY mission, the motion-captured characters move around dramatically and spew military jargon before you get to choose if you want to go ahead with the job. It’s nice that they tried this, but when you’re given the option to delay or go ahead with something, you get an awkward close-up of the main character, brooding and shifting his eyes between his workmates thoughtfully. This sort of drama doesn’t work in video games because
First off, the game tries to pull off this overly-serious 24-esque feel (even going so far as to employ 24 cast member Carlo Rota). Normally, overly-seriously 24-esque feels can be made to work in action-espionage games, but given that Ubisoft went with the semi-open world approach, it kinda fails in places. The game tries to remove as many menu elements as possible putting gameplay where it doesn’t belong. When you start a mission, ANY mission, the motion-captured characters move around dramatically and spew military jargon before you get to choose if you want to go ahead with the job. It’s nice that they tried this, but when you’re given the option to delay or go ahead with something, you get an awkward close-up of the main character, brooding and shifting his eyes between his workmates thoughtfully. This sort of drama doesn’t work in video games because
a) you can just keep starting up the mission and aborting it, and the characters go through the same scripted scene again as though the last 3 minutes only happened in an alternate universe,
b) if you don’t choose either option, the main character just continues to shift his gaze between his colleagues for an unrealistic and painfully long time,
c) the same exact gaze-shifting motion-capture of the main character is used for EVERY mission. When every mission gets the same amount of tension, it’s difficult to see if there are stakes at all,
d) gamers are a twisted bunch of people who like to test the limits of whatever fictitious world they’ve been put in. That’s why you get people naming their Metapods “Penis” in Pokemon. Sometimes we just want to know if the developers considered if “Harden” was really what they wanted as a power in a children’s video game.
d) gamers are a twisted bunch of people who like to test the limits of whatever fictitious world they’ve been put in. That’s why you get people naming their Metapods “Penis” in Pokemon. Sometimes we just want to know if the developers considered if “Harden” was really what they wanted as a power in a children’s video game.
Despite this, the singleplayer campaign was gratifying, and it’s nice to see that in an age of stapled-on stories, Ubisoft at least made sure the staples went on right. I’m sorry, but as well put together as it was, Sam Fisher isn’t exactly great for stories. The main appeal behind the character was Michael Ironside’s excellent voice acting, and they went and replaced him with some Canadian. Now he’s just a stealthier, angrier Jack Bauer.
Honestly, this could have been a turning point in the series. He was already in his 50s when it started in 2003. He has gone through at least 3 make-overs and 2 voice actors since then and trying to convince everyone that he learnt parkour in his 60s for this new game isn’t exactly keeping with the gritty, realistic feel the franchise is trying to go for. There was an under-developed side-character that you get to control every so often but under-developed here ought to be underlined and capitalised. He serves as nothing but a token black character since the last black character (voiced by Dennis Haysbert, also from 24) got killed.
Even if they didn’t kill off Fisher, they could have at least made him more of a desk-man, especially since he’s now the head of the whole operation. It would have been someone new on the field and instead of force-feeding drama down our collective brain-throats, they could’ve made it so that Fisher was only playable at the end, when everything went to shit and the main character you played as the entire time died. That would at least made playing Sam Fisher for the 6th time in ten years a bit more meaningful.
Another complaint I have is that while I’m all aboard the weird white-male fantasy train of shooting up brownies and Ruskies in games like these, it does get a bit ludicrous in the side missions. The ones that have you fight off waves of them usually end up with body counts in the hundreds, and there are a few missions involving knocking out OR killing all hostiles for no apparent reason. The decision is up to you, but there’s nothing but the scoring system that factors into that choice and that really makes it a bit sickening.
The game also does an effective job of forcing the player to kill or beat up as many dogs as they can. And the difference between killing a dog and knocking it out sometimes isn’t visually noticeable. The animation for either is Sam giving the canine a firm kick in the gut. I know it’s just a game, but are we really supposed to believe that he’s got enough control of his thigh muscles to measure out the difference between a kick that will kill and a kick that will knock out a dog? Someone messed up, Ubisoft.
But really that’s about everything I have to say about the game that is negative. Truth is I’ve spent more time on this game on both the Xbox and the PC than I have on nearly any other game in the past 2 to 3 years. The run-and-gun formula works so well with the stealth elements and the customization options really give you a lot of freedom to play any way you want and still be satisfied. Difficulty options are tuned perfectly to always be just challenging enough to be fun and both sound and visual design is great. They’re not breaking new ground with how it looks, especially since it looks just like an Assassin’s Creed game, but there’s really nothing wrong with reusing things that work (unless you’re Call of Duty, in which case, DIE ALREADY).
Honestly, this could have been a turning point in the series. He was already in his 50s when it started in 2003. He has gone through at least 3 make-overs and 2 voice actors since then and trying to convince everyone that he learnt parkour in his 60s for this new game isn’t exactly keeping with the gritty, realistic feel the franchise is trying to go for. There was an under-developed side-character that you get to control every so often but under-developed here ought to be underlined and capitalised. He serves as nothing but a token black character since the last black character (voiced by Dennis Haysbert, also from 24) got killed.
Even if they didn’t kill off Fisher, they could have at least made him more of a desk-man, especially since he’s now the head of the whole operation. It would have been someone new on the field and instead of force-feeding drama down our collective brain-throats, they could’ve made it so that Fisher was only playable at the end, when everything went to shit and the main character you played as the entire time died. That would at least made playing Sam Fisher for the 6th time in ten years a bit more meaningful.
Another complaint I have is that while I’m all aboard the weird white-male fantasy train of shooting up brownies and Ruskies in games like these, it does get a bit ludicrous in the side missions. The ones that have you fight off waves of them usually end up with body counts in the hundreds, and there are a few missions involving knocking out OR killing all hostiles for no apparent reason. The decision is up to you, but there’s nothing but the scoring system that factors into that choice and that really makes it a bit sickening.
The game also does an effective job of forcing the player to kill or beat up as many dogs as they can. And the difference between killing a dog and knocking it out sometimes isn’t visually noticeable. The animation for either is Sam giving the canine a firm kick in the gut. I know it’s just a game, but are we really supposed to believe that he’s got enough control of his thigh muscles to measure out the difference between a kick that will kill and a kick that will knock out a dog? Someone messed up, Ubisoft.
But really that’s about everything I have to say about the game that is negative. Truth is I’ve spent more time on this game on both the Xbox and the PC than I have on nearly any other game in the past 2 to 3 years. The run-and-gun formula works so well with the stealth elements and the customization options really give you a lot of freedom to play any way you want and still be satisfied. Difficulty options are tuned perfectly to always be just challenging enough to be fun and both sound and visual design is great. They’re not breaking new ground with how it looks, especially since it looks just like an Assassin’s Creed game, but there’s really nothing wrong with reusing things that work (unless you’re Call of Duty, in which case, DIE ALREADY).
