There weren’t many games on the
Xbox that I enjoyed greatly, but I’ll count Splinter
Cell: Stealth Action Redefined and Splinter
Cell: Pandora Tomorrow among them. The
series has gone through a lot of troubles in the intervening games, becoming
redefined by cutting edge gritty storytelling and a big focus on acting. I’ve waxed nostalgic about the rubber polygon
puppets of yore before, and I’m returning to Splinter Cell today after a long
absence.
I’ve hated the unveil of Splinter Cell: Blacklist, fearing that the Mark and Execute
commands would ruin the stealth game that I remember. I’ve followed the game long through its
development and witnessed it launch on the WiiU alongside other consoles last
year, before I had any console to play it.
Well, I’ve got one now, and I’ve been racking my brain trying to
determine which of 2013’s WiiU titles to snap up. Blacklist won out over several other high
profile releases.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist is developed by Ubisoft Toronto, a studio that
prides
itself on the precision of their acting and voice acting skill and
technology. It launched just after Mr.
Tom Clancy, the man whose name is one the box in the position of writer’s
credit. The Internet Movie Database credits him as writing it in
2010. I guess that I go into this game
expecting another project that focuses heavily on acting and writing, but I’ve
long held the point of view that such things shouldn’t displace gameplay from the
center of the experience. SC:B is
notorious for its torture scene, which screams out to me that there are Quick
Time Events, which I loathe! I’m buying
this mainly for its name and a little bit for nostalgia, weary that modern
games may quickly be morphing into something very alien to me.
On playing to prologue chapter:
I can say that I am pleasantly
surprised. The chapter ramps up the
difficulty fast, but retains the beating heart of a stealth game where players
find their own way forward. The Mark and
Execute commands, long feared, are fully ignorable. The ability to mark up to four targets for
quick take downs adds a lot of raw combat to the game, but marking has another
welcome function: the levels are visually busy, going as they are for
realism. Marking provides a spy’s
valuable new addition, to see a potential mercenary, and not lose track of him
while trying to a) knock him out b) stealth away.
I was able to experiment with display
options: SC:B supports off-TV gameplay, making it easy to play in front of the
news, but can also move the display to the TV, freeing up the Gamepad for
inventory slots. It’s pretty clever
overall what Ubisoft has worked out for it.
On Playing Chapter One:
The stages are very long! SC:B has several ideas in play. Stealth take downs not only recharge the Mark
and Execute functions, but they also reward Fisher and the Fourth Echelon team
with dollars, presumably to be used in upgrades later. High profile targets also appear mid stage,
and challenge Fisher to move him carefully to the extraction point, which is a
high risk prospect considering that it compromises Fisher’s ability to stealth
and draw his sidearm.
Most of the areas of this first
level are pretty good at presenting one choice repeatedly: to use brute force
or to stealth. This tension underlines everything
about SC:B. Although I appreciate the available choice, I
have to recall the origins of this game: in Splinter
Cell: Stealth Action Redefined, the first stage was a long favored obstacle
course through the streets of Tblisi, and much the same of level one of Pandora Tomorrow, a learn-the-ropes
introduction at the US Embassy in East Timor.
If I can offer fair criticism, I catch myself checking the menu for the
action-map repeatedly, because I haven’t ducked, dodged, bobbed, weaved and
squirmed through all manner of traps yet.
As I said above, the stage is
long, with a final zone introducing the series most dreaded moral choke point,
the guard dog. Nobody wants to hurt the
dog if they can help it, but after being stuck for over an hour, I’m pretty
sure I can’t here. Even being willing to
kill the dog (it is a valid target for Mark and Execute) only reveals Fisher’s
position to the enemies, so there is certainly no escape from moral crunch
here.
I have yet to pass the last area
of this first stage, and I’m pretty sure I closed it without saving. The stages buck the trend at upwards of an
hour each, so playing two stages is beyond the kind of time I can afford to
invest in one sitting. This remains a
hard lesson to learn, but I’ll remember it for next time! While I can still take the game back for an
exchange in a week, I figure that this game deserves more time to make itself
likable. I also can’t speak to upgrades,
as I haven’t yet had the full tour of the aircraft base.
Stay tuned for more.
