Great Characters . Sweat Campaign Design . Good Presentation . Few Issues . Find more in th

User Rating: 8.5 | Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist X360
Splinter Cell Blacklist Review (PC) .

Story :

After the events of Splinter Cell Conviction , US government shuts down third echelon and puts Sam as leader of newly formed 4th echelon right after the first attack by group of terrorists known as "Engineers" . Engineers launch series of attacks on USA known as "Blacklist" . During the single player campaign you see both new and familiar faces and all of those characters are done really well , specially new character "Charlie" . His character and voice acting perfectly match with each other which makes him compelling character . Sam's former handler Grim's character is done very well just like others . However it seems that the writer's point of view in the game is pretty biased and you never get some answers if you know what's going on in real world , you will also not get clear vision behind terrorist attacts . In short , you are good and they are bad . Don't expect any huge twist that you as player may expect from very start of the game . Everything is pretty straight forward and idealistic .

Design :

The game features Single Player offline and Multiplayer both offline and online . Splinter Cell Blacklist features over 10 hours of single player missions and all of them are different from one another . Real star of the game are the missions that you do during night time and luckily there are plenty of those , in fact most of them . Blacklist brings back most anticipated spies Vs Mercs mod back in multiplayer , that wasn't present in previous entry of series . The game's world is not huge on single player side and in some levels it feels very linear and breaks your immersion when invisible walls don't let you take alternate path you wanted to take to flank your enemies . Game builds or at least tries to build the character of Sam during entire game but somehow fails to fully achieve that unlike Conviction , specially in the final moments . Though some of the scenes in the game are done very well . Difficulty in the game is quite satisfactory of die hard Splinter Cell fans and game features variety of enemy types which keeps the game fresh and interesting right till the end .

Gameplay :

Game pretty much plays like Combination of Chaos Theory , Double Agent and Conviction . You have three ways to play Splinter Cell Blacklist . Ghost , Panther and Assault . Playing as Ghost involves reaching your objective without disturbing anything or by disarming enemies while remaining in the shadows and not getting detected . You can disarm enemies by using non lethal take downs , sleeping gas , EMP shocker , Special Weapons etc . Playing as panther is similar to gameplay of Splinter Cell Conviction , you prepare in shadows , kill your targets and vanish back like a hunter . Assault style is pretty much American cowboy style , kill anyone who comes in your way with lethal take downs , frags , Mines etc . Game features in game credits that you achieve by completing missions or performing different tasks . Non Lethal take downs give you more credits , similarly avoiding direct contacts or exploring alternate paths give you extra credits . You can also earn more credits by performing side missions that you can get by talking to your crew inside your HQ called "Paladin" or by capturing important targets and by finding hidden intel on blacklist during campaign missions . You can spend these credits on upgrading or unlocking new weapons and gadgets including your goggles . Yes Sam's goggles are back and now you can switch between Sonar Goggles and Nightvision Goggles and upgrade them as well . Different sections of the game also introduce new gameplay mechanics like calling airstrikes or killing foes in first person combat .

Presentation :

Graphically Splinter Cell Blacklist looks good but nothing revolutionary . Game runs on updated Unreal Engine 3 and features very good light and shadow effects . Game sound quality is very well done , soundtrack and User Interface is similar to Splinter Cell Double Agent , which is good thing . Character models are done very well and motion capturing is very impressive . Voice acting of all characters is excellent , that includes new voice of Sam Fisher but as expected doesn't feel as good as voice Ironside . PC version of the game also comes with exclusive features like DX11 effects . Game runs fine even on low end systems , Blacklist is more CPU heavy game and will need mid range CPU to work great when things get messy however low end GPUs do the their job really good . Video card from 2008/2009 with decent processor will do more than OK . Unfortunately Blacklist have optimization issues , expect mouse lag problems , experience by lot of users . PCs with old onboard sound hardware may also experience sound stuttering in lot of sections of the game . These kind of optimization issues are to be expected from most of UBISOFT titles because they rarely do the justice to the platform . Overall , presentation is good but nothing revolutionary or benchmark for other games .

Verdict :

+ Characters + Gadgets + Gameplay
+ Voice Acting
+ Multiplayer
+ Enemy Variety
+ Campaign Design
+ Runs better than consoles even on lowest end systems

- Story
- Optimization Issues
- Being Linear at some places
- Lack of Quick Save/Quick Load
- Inputs are laggy

8.5/10