Splinter Cell: Blacklist Preview of PS3

A New, Old Kind of Splinter Cell
by Angelo M. D’Argenio

During PAX East 2013, we had a behind-closed-doors sneak peek at Splinter Cell: Blacklist, the game that puts renowned spy Sam Fisher in a leadership role. After walking away from the demo, I can say one thing for sure: Sam Fisher is a horrible leader. He’s impulsive, emotional, reckless, and far more at home on the battlefield than in a leadership role. Thankfully, Splinter Cell: Blacklist actually recognizes this, working this quirk into both the story and the gameplay.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a half-step back in the right direction for the Splinter Cell series. Its gameplay settles nicely into a middle point between Splinter Cell: Conviction’s action-centric murder-fest and old school Splinter Cell titles that punish you the second you break stealth. There is a huge focus on letting you play the game exactly as you like. You can run through each stage with guns blazing, you can sneak through each stage without ever confronting an enemy, or you can use your stealth to murder enemies selectively in a sort of hybrid fashion. For players committed to stealth, we were told that you can literally go through the entire game without ever killing a single enemy, boss battles included.

The game also adapts itself to your own playstyle. You can earn three different types of XP for each of the playstyles I described above. XP is awarded every time you pass a significant challenge in the game, and, at the end of every mission, the game tells you which playstyle you utilized the most. You can then spend this XP to buy upgrades and items that fall in line with that playstyle.

For example, stealthy gameplay (or “Ghost” style) will give you better stealth suits and scopes to help you sneak by enemies unnoticed. Hybrid gameplay (called “Panther” style) will get you sniper rifles, knives, and other silent means of dispatching enemies, while gun maniac gameplay (called “Assault” style) will generally give you new weapons that are more at home in your standard military shooter.

The other way to upgrade Fisher’s abilities is by actually by upgrading your HQ. Your HQ is separated into different stations, such as medical, intel, so on so forth. Upgrading one of these stations gives Fisher a bonus that lasts throughout the whole game. Upgrading intel, for example, will give you more information on your heads-up display, while upgrading medical will make you harder to kill.

The stages in Splinter Cell: Blacklist are incredibly well designed. It’s clear that the dev team kept this “three-style” gameplay in mind when building them. You can always tackle situations in multiple ways, and these aren’t obvious choices like “go right for Ghost style; go left for Assault style.” Instead, the choices are all made through interaction with the environment.

One level we tried, which took place on rooftops, could be beaten by marking every single enemy and simply shimmying around the sides of buildings out of their line of sight. The same level could be tackled by going from cover to cover, stealthily executing enemies, sniping them from afar, or knocking them unconscious and hiding their bodies. Or you could just parkour your way through the entire level before enemies can shoot you. Nearly every piece of the environment is intractable or traversable, much like Assassin’s Creed.

Speaking of the game’s environment, there are tons of ways you can use your surroundings to your advantage. For example, you can turn the lights off to surprise enemies before you execute them. You can throw items to make noise in different directions. Every time there is an environmental interaction available to you, it shows up on your HUD. So always be on the lookout for new ways to snap your enemies’ necks.