Another nice touch is the multi-directional sound for those with the set up to take advantage of it. There’s nothing light hearted or dance-y about the soundtrack here. The music, like many games these days, embraces some dubstep influences with heavy, synth beats and sounds, and it is always, ALWAYS serious. The Ironside faithful may never be able to accept the change, but it’s not a bad one. Eric Johnson, of Smallville fame, takes up the gruff voice and motion capture duties for Sam this time around, and he manages to do a decent enough sound-alike with a legitimately decent performance that most players will probably adjust.
Signature sounds like the night sight warming up are a comfort to fans, but the big change here is the loss of Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher. With the audio, Ubisoft has mostly played it safe. As to be expected from a Splinter Cell game, a lot of this hard work-particularly color-will probably go unnoticed as gameplay occurs largely in the dark, with the green tint of passive night vision goggles. As always with Ubisoft, the art team impresses, with some detailed environments that sport a lot of variety you’re never going to confuse a rundown tenement in the Middle East with a top of the line, hardened American defense bunker for VIPs.
If you’ve got approximately seven GB of free space sitting on your hard drive, it is HIGHLY recommended that you go this route as it brings the game more in line with the PC version that Ubisoft has wisely used to demo the game whenever possible at preview events.
For 360 owners, there’s also an option to do both a full install of the game (it requires two discs on the 360) as well a choice to install an HD texture pack. Screen tearing also rears its head from time to time but mostly in cut scenes. There’s still a bit of blurry texture pop up here and there, but it’s so rare that it really stands out on those occasions when you catch it. Ubisoft, having a LOT of experience with it by this point manage to do a good job of keeping its more irksome characteristics under control. Veterans of the scene know what this means since the quirks of this engine are well documented at this point. Still, for those that play these games for a sense of moral security in doing the right thing for the right people, there may be a nagging sense of discomfort from the thinly veiled criticism that Ubisoft Toronto is making about the political system as we know it today.Īs with past games in the series, Blacklist is still using the good ol’ Unreal engine. Bad decision-making, witch hunting paranoia, and even Sam Fisher himself constantly bucking orders to do what he feels is the right thing makes this fictional American government feel much like the real thing, which might actually be the point. It might simply be because the game is made in Toronto, and not beholden to automatic patriotism of the USA, but while Sam is fighting for America’s interests, the portrayal of the government doesn’t always feel like this is a government worth fighting for.
Over the course of the game, there are twists, turns, an egregious use of acronyms and a vaguely unsettling notion that perhaps America is not always in the right. America, of course, does not negotiate with terrorists, and so the jet-setting and light bulb shooting begins. This time Sam’s mission is to stop the eponymous Blacklist a terror campaign run by the Engineers, a highly trained group demanding America remove troops from all the countries (over 100) in which it has a presence. You’re The Manīlacklist starts things off with Sam Fisher officially back in the loving arms of the American government and put in charge of Fourth Echelon, the new special ops, off-the-books organization that replaced Third Echelon after it went corrupt in the last game. Blacklist returns to the old formula, but it’s still learned a few things from Conviction in the process.
Ubisoft tried something a little different with 2010’s Splinter Cell: Conviction, taking away Sam Fisher’s usual weapons and logistic support in favour of a “Rogue Agent” game. It’s been quite a while since players got a “traditional” Splinter Cell game involving stealth suits, shooting lights and proper big budget military operations that are strictly hush-hush.