Well, my options for returning Splinter Cell: Blacklist have
complicated as of today, and I still have it.
What are my thoughts a week later?
…
If there is one thing about SC:B that I hate, it is the tone. Everything is urgent, urgent, urgent. I liked the original, which came with a
certain bit of levity in the face of imminent danger. Command must be wearing on Sam Fisher, as he
is turned hard and spends a lot of time looking serious and pouty for the
camera. I hate that!
Another thing that I strongly
dislike is completing missions for Charlie.
Charlie missions are tests of endurance, challenging Sam (and the
player) to survive in a complex arena against waves of the “Engineers,” aka the
generic bad guys. I like the idea in
principle, but five waves is too long by half, especially as the waves are
loaded with up to 17 bad guys hunting you. I also got caught mistaking the extraction
signal flare for the “let it ride” signal flare, a high risks gamble that
brings still more minions, including High Value Targets to battlefield. This broke it for me; I could simply “let it
ride” by not moving to the extraction signal and timing out the window of
opportunity, so why would I ever want a signal flare, looking just like the
extraction flare, to hurry the advent up?!
I rage quit right there! That was
so poorly designed, I swear the rules of the game were broken and simple
commands confused, and this after an hour and a half endurance fest in fierce
combat. I was not impressed, and more or
less swore off Charlie missions for life.
I should probably convey my
thoughts on combat next. Sam Fisher has
a good variety of new moves, and new problems to complicate those moves. Sam can now hide in any open doorway and wait
for targets to stroll past for a stealth knockout; trouble is, it doesn’t work
on heavily armored enemies. Sam always
needs to have a place to run to, and he needs to watch his back, keeping the
game in a constant state of tension.
Players can invest in armor to cut the risks a little, but tools seem to
be a better investment, as no armor helps for long when battles get really
loud.
Tools include the returning
Sticky Cams, which can be thrown at a wall, click to attract enemies, and spew
knockout gas. They are also superior
tools for finding and marking enemies. Knockout and Tear gas grenades also supplement
the arsenal, and I’ve found good things by investing in shock and proximity
mines (shock are non-lethal, but weaker against armored foes, while proximity
mines are only funny for me). Investing
in guns yields different options, but I’ve gotten mixed into the menus that I
thought promised me silencers but didn’t – woops!
Mark and Execute is revealed, not
just to be as game-breakingly automated as advertised, but instantly and
desperately needed. Execute can only be
used after marking three targets and taking out another, either by lethal or
non-lethal means, while it is critically useless against helmeted enemies, who show
up early and often, but are helpfully marked out compared to the normal
enemies.
Even with all this arsenal,
battles become desperate fast. Enemy AI
swarm and look for alternate exits or railings from which they can rain death
onto you, and are generally immune to darkness.
There is a form of nightvision enemy, wearing googles like Sam’s, but I
don’t know why these enemies should be there as enemies are generally incapable
of being fooled by shooting out lights anyway.
That doesn’t mean that stealth is right out, though, as they just as
often run right past Sam in full light too.
I should point out that this is the WiiU version with a weak internet
connection; if there was a patch, I’m unlikely to have it!
So as I said, winning fights
means planning ahead, having places to go that are out of sight (line of sight,
typically), or moving in unconventional directions; I am wonderfully pleased to
report that falling on enemies from above makes a triumphant come back. Sam may be getting too old for the
split-kick, though L. They do a good job of keeping up the pressure
on the player, and I’ve been able to completely baffle them at times, opening
the way for more stealth takedowns.
Levels are built with an eye to providing several ways to cross, and “fighting”
means bypassing enemies several times to wear down their numbers.
Of other modes
of play, there are the Grim missions.
Grímsdóttir
challenges Sam to plant intel bugs in out-of-the-way places, noting that if
ever Sam is found, they would pull up stakes and cut the data. These stages tend to be much better, allowing
Sam to bypass enemies (if he can), while usually hiding laptops and other file
systems to interact with. Also
contributing missions is arms dealer
Andriy Kobin, who
apparently has a history with Fisher that I haven’t had the pleasure. Kobin’s missions challenge Sam to eliminate a
whole source of resistance from an arena, and if Sam can’t do it quietly, he
could find his troubles triple in a heartbeat. Both are reasonable challenges,
making use of lethal force to advance while pushing the player to do the best
possible haunting.
Main scenario missions
run a strange gamut of content. The second
stage, the Insurgent Stronghold in Mirawa, Iraq, seems altogether too much of a
Call of Duty clone, as I was
definitely not impressed by the Arial Drone camera sniping, as that not only
made questionable use of the motion controls (full disclosure, NintendoLand’s
controls work fine, I am disputing implementation) in a high stakes difficult
scene. A well planned stealth op gives
way to cut scenes and torture in the scene with former MI6 agent Jadid, and
just when you think we’ve left that behind for more well implemented stealth
scenes, more cut scenes appear with yet more critical plot information,
striping control away and leaving Sam (now back under player control) with
seconds to run to safety.
Stage three,
American Consumption, was much better, and carried loud echoes of the franchise
which has its name on the box. Sam
navigates twisting corridors of a shopping mall and sewer, leading to a water
plant, where the Engineers are busy spreading weaponized viruses (smallpox? I
don’t remember!) into the water supply.
If this were the focus, I would be very happy indeed, but there seems to
be more and more posturing, more camera work focusing on the face, and more
tense scenes of Sam standing around looking pouty before giving the mission the
go ahead, with our without player input.
Now, hold
on. Yes, I knew about this going in, as
Ubisoft Toronto’s pride and joy is its motion capture department. Still, I am not impressed. The long plot dumps, the angry back and forth
pacing during cut scenes, the inclusion of so many cut scenes, the focus on
acting and not playing. I wanted to drop
into the triple A game productions and see what I was missing, and well …
…I just want
Splinter Cell 1 back!
So, yeah, I
said it. Blacklist isn’t bad by any
stretch, and its additions in gameplay are for the most part welcome. But this is a big product, with major motion
picture appeal-factors crowding the star of the show, me! As SC:Blacklist continues to gorge in the
ideas of its own story, it fails to address the main actors hesitations about
all of this … it assumes that I will go along with it and make a success of its
convoluted plot hops. Which I do, because
there isn’t much else to do here, except get rid of it.
Perhaps this
too needs review. When I saw Splinter
Cell: Stealth Action Redefined on the Old Xbox, I was quite impressed. Here was a franchise that focused on an
elaborate, and high stakes, obstacle course.
Darkness mattered. Skill
mattered. Every stage was greatly
replayable. But the story also mattered,
perhaps because of the recent events.
2001 saw hostiles, still presumed Islamists from Afghanistan and the end
of the world, take America by surprise and kill thousands of people without a
care. November 19, 2002 saw Splinter
Cell released, but the Operation Desert Storm came about just afterwards (March
19, 2003). While we were getting our
heads around fighting a war against non-state actors, Splinter Cell resonated
perfectly.
Today, Splinter
Cell’s, and I supposed Tom Clancy’s vision of America against the world
conflict feels forced. “Freedom for whom”
is a theme used to cover over the conflicts of rich and poor nations; America
is always depicted as indolent and vulnerable, in need of protection, while the
wider world is depicted as eager to break America, to shake off her shackles
and prevent her interference, her preventing something terrible happening
absent her protection. Nasty business happens
in the shadows, and Sam Fisher has to perpetrate the nastiest to save the
world. It isn’t wrong, but it feels …
foreign. Is this my viewpoint changing with
the passing of time?
Am I keeping Blacklist? Yeah, yeah, the game isn't bad by any stretch, it just feels a little off, but I figure it will be okay. Once I get used to it.
