Splinter Cell: Blacklist
by madman19
The past few Splinter Cell games have not impressed many people it seems (myself included in some aspects). My biggest complaint was the lack of the Pandora Tomorrow or Chaos Theory spies vs mercs multiplayer mode. To date that has been my favorite multiplayer game so when I heard Blacklist was bringing it back I was really excited. In addition the campaign was supposed to be a blend of the fas...
The past few Splinter Cell games have not impressed many people it seems (myself included in some aspects). My biggest complaint was the lack of the Pandora Tomorrow or Chaos Theory spies vs mercs multiplayer mode. To date that has been my favorite multiplayer game so when I heard Blacklist was bringing it back I was really excited. In addition the campaign was supposed to be a blend of the faster Conviction with the previous stealth.
I just finished the campaign last night and have to say I had a ton of fun with it. The story was interesting and led to a good variety of mission locations. I thought they were able to provide a good sense of tension while playing through the game knowing the next Blacklist attack was coming. One thing I was upset about was the replacement of Sam's voice actor, Michael Ironside, with Eric Johnson. Johnson and the rest of the characters did a fantastic job with the voices. The game did provide plenty of options for stealthy gameplay but also allowed you to change your loadouts to focus more on fighting if you wanted. The gameplay was pretty good although jumping down from ledges was sometimes a little cumbersome with having to drop to ledge before dropping to the ground. Other than that the controls were fine and the game ran great.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory had the best version of spies vs mercs. later iterations of the game mode removed what made it so fun. Blacklist brought back spies vs mercs and "call of dutified" it by adding levels and different equipment and similar things. To be honest I didn't enjoy it much when I first started. I soon found out that there was a "Classic" matchmaking option which is locked loadouts (similar gear to pandora and chaos theory) with dark environments and flashlights for mercs. This is the mode I have played the most and have to say it lives up to the spies vs mercs name.
Overall this game exceeded my expectations with a great single player campaign and multiplayer game mode.