So contrary to what I said in another thread, Splinter Cell Blacklist is a pretty easy game. I'm playing on Realistic (the second highest difficulty) and I'm doing a No-Kill run meaning, obviously, that I wont kill a single hostile.

Now, what I found is, that the game is only really hard when you try to avoid the hostiles instead of trying to knock them all out and you might argue "Well, but that's the spirit of the Ghost playstyle" which is a good argument, but for me the fun in stealth games is and was always to stalk the enemies and then knock them out one by one. Just sneaking around them is not that much fun for me.

Now, what makes the game so easy (at least for me) you might ask: Well see, in the previous Splinter Cell games, especially the first three, you only had a limited amount of what I call "distance knock out weapons". If I remember correctly (which I don't guarantee) you could carry about 3 sticky shocks and 3 plastic discs with you to stun enemies from a distance (with the plastic discs you needed a headshot to actually knock enemies out) but in Blacklist I'm carrying around 15 cartridges of sleeping gas, which can knock out multiple enemies at once, and 15 electric bolts. And I'm not even mentioning the drone that can shock enemies and the weird shock-mine. So overall with full ammunition I can take out at least 38 guys quietly. Furthermore, there are supply drops everywhere which allow you to restock ammo should you ever run out, which is never the case if you attempt to play stealthy cause you have to make sure that every shot hits.

I do realise that it is completely up to me how much I use these devices but it still kills a lot of the tention for me. I remember in the first games I was always scared to use one of my items because I thought I might really need it later so I used them really, really carefully and sparsely.

I'm not doing a "no-kill run" because I emphasize with all those lovely NPCs out there but because it would be far too easy to just sit in the dark and snipe them all one by one, which is exactly what you can do in Blacklist which is a shame cause the game is (despite all that) pretty good.

Last thing I want to say is, that I know that this sounds like an extremly elitist thing to say but if there is actually one thing where I would call myself an elitist it's stealth games so it's probably justified. So if you are a bit like me and love stealth, no kill runs etc maybe keep this in mind. Overall it's not a bad game (although the controls can be pretty bad sometimes. I've closed at least 5 doors when I actually wanted to take out the guy behind them cause the game handels multiple possible actions pretty bad) but it's also not really a very good stealth game. Still, a big step up from the mess that was Conviction.

Thanks for writing this. The last Splinter Cell I spent any real time with was the first one and it was a great game. I did try out the demo for Conviction on the 360 and was turned off almost immediately, so I'm glad to hear that sounds like it was an aberration. I think I'm going to wait until this one drops in price before I give it a try.

My thought exactly. Chaos Theory will always be the epitome of stealth-action for me.

Of course sneaking around undetected is harder than just shooting everyone in their damn face. The game is as easy or hard as you want it to be. No one's forcing you to use all those gadgets... Try limiting yourself. No one's forcing you to resupply at every case... Pass them by. Sorry, but it sounds like you're doing this to yourself. And saying its not a very good stealth game because its not exactly the game you wanted is doing the game a disservice, IMO. I, too, come from the days of ye olde Splinter Cell, and I'm having a great time with Blacklist.

I come from the original Splinter Cells and am also loving Blacklist and feel like you're trying to hard to make it bad.

I get where your coming from.

If your playing Blacklist Ghost/Panther Style on anything below Perfectionist then your doing yourself a disservice.

Of course it is easy. They changed the whole series to suit the casual players so the same level of difficulty as the older games in the series is not present.

So. Melee only no-kill run incoming!

Yeah they give you way too much ammo. And it's kinda silly once you max out the stealth bar (which you can do pretty easily early on), you can sprint right next to guys and they won't hear you.

Being able to change how stealthy the suit is makes it hard to learn just how receptive enemies are to you, in something like chaos theory you spend a lot of the game learning how far you can push the stealth and just how loud you can be but in this it can change every mission which can make the stealth hard to learn (the stealth is much simpler in this so it isn't as annoying as it could have been).

I don't like having to limit myself in games, I like to do things out of necessity. I want to have to use my limited supply of gadgets because i'm in a really tight situation that I can't see any other way out of. I don't want to stop myself using them because the game gives you so much it feels unfair. I really like The of us when it comes to something like this because in that you do have limited supplies and when you make and use a "gadget" it's because you are in that tight situation, you know you're losing a valuable resource but you still do it out of necessity.

I do really like the game but stuff like the silly customisation and over abundance of ammo dragged it down for me

I'd say the truly difficult challenge would be to not even knock anyone out.

Did you even read what I wrote? Here, let me repeat myself: "the game is (despite all that) pretty good."

All I'm saying is, that the game is too easy I never said it was bad. It's just not that great either. It's a solid game that's worthwile playing nothing more, nothing less. And I even pointed out that I know that this is rather elitist yet I still felt like I should write that.

I was expecting this answer and yes, limiting myself would be an option but it still (for me at least, as I said) sucks out the tention. Also in the older games you could be sure that every level was designed with stealth in mind, which is not the case with Blacklist and you can feel it. And if Stealth is only then challenging if you come up wih a bunch of limitations yourself it's not a very good stealth game. That's like saying "The game is only too easy if you play it like you normally would, if you try to dance around the enemies for three minutes before attacking them it can be pretty hard"

Tension, not tention FFS

Play on perfectionist, you do not get 15 sleeping gas canisters. You get a small reserve of ammo and getting caught means you will be shot to death, no way out.

Also if you want a bit of fun go into the options menu under HUD & UI and remove the radar and scoring notifications, it makes the game a lot like the older SplinterCells :)

I do agree however that the game is a bit easy, but only because of the generous checkpoints. Then again Chaos Theory had unlimited quick saves so....