Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a 2013 action-adventure stealth game developed by Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft. The game is the sequel to Splinter Cell: Conviction and the seventh installment of the Splinter Cell series. Players control Sam Fisher, a highly trained operative working for the Fourth Echelon, in a mission to stop the Engineers, a group of terrorists which is trying to coerce the United States into recalling all of its troops stationed abroad. The gameplay is similar to its predecessors, with players tasked with completing objectives and defeating enemies. Blacklist marks the return of the asymmetrical multiplayer mode Spies vs. Mercs, which was introduced in Pandora Tomorrow.
Blacklist is the first title developed by Ubisoft Toronto, a studio founded by Ubisoft in 2009. The game was directed by Maxime Béland, who had worked on Conviction. The game endeavors to combine elements of its predecessors, including the action focus of Conviction and the stealth focus of the older games. To prepare for this game, Béland studied reviews and feature lists of the latter. Eric Johnson provides the voice and motion capture for Sam Fisher, replacing Michael Ironside, who did so for the previous games. The later-announced Wii U version was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, which also developed the game's multiplayer.
Announced at E3 2012, Blacklist was released for PlayStation 3, Windows, Wii U, and Xbox 360 in August 2013. The game received generally positive reviews from critics when it was released, with praise for its level design, story, gameplay, combat, soundtrack and multiplayer mode. However, criticism was directed at its graphics, lack of challenge, and ending. Further criticism was also directed from some fans towards Johnson's casting as Fisher. The game underperformed commercially, selling two million units within three months of its release.
Gameplay
In Blacklist, players assume control of series protagonist Sam Fisher as he seeks to stop a terrorist group called the Engineers. The gameplay emphasizes stealth, and utilizes the third-person perspective. During the game, players can rotate its camera, run, crouch and leap over obstacles. Since Blacklist intended to continue the "aggressive stealth" of Conviction while retaining the traditional stealth features of the older games, it combines action and stealth, and allows players to use different approaches and methods to complete objectives and defeat enemies. Players can complete levels without being noticed by any enemy by methods such as taking cover or scaling ledges. If the player chooses to kill enemies, other enemies are alerted when they see their companions' dead bodies. To avoid this, players can hide corpses. Fisher can also create a strategically advantageous dark environment by destroying nearby lights, and is equipped with customizable night-vision and sonar goggles to detect enemies in darkness and see through walls. He also has the Tri-Rotor, a compact surveillance drone which can spy on enemies, create distractions, give electric shocks, and self-destruct to kill enemies.
Players can play a more aggressive run-and-gun game by using gadgets and weapons to eliminate enemies. They can interact with environmental objects, such as ledges and zip-lines, to navigate levels. Conviction mark-and-execute system returns in Blacklist, with refinements and additions to allow players to mark several targets. When they attack, they can kill all marked targets instantly. Improvements made the system work more fluidly. A variety of enemies (including soldiers and dogs) are encountered in the game, following the protagonist and alerting their companions. Players have the option to kill them, leave them untouched, or incapacitate them, and the game classifies their choices in one of three categories: Ghost (non-lethal, non-aggressive stealth), Panther (lethal, aggressive stealth), and Assault (loud, direct combat). Although the game has interrogation sequences involving questioning (or torturing) targets, it does not feature Conviction interactive torture scenes. Players can still decide whether to spare their targets or kill them after interrogation,
The Paladin is the game's hub. Between missions, players can interact with crew members on the ship and view the game's objectives. Crew members also offer the protagonist side missions to complete. Before a mission Fisher can deploy the strategic mission interface, allowing players to see enemy positions and plan attacks and routes. Players can also use the interface to access multiplayer modes and missions. When players kill (or avoid) targets and complete objectives, experience points named "Ghost Points" and money are awarded to buy (or improve) weapons, and upgrade the Paladin airship and Sam's suit and equipment; the upgrades improve efficiency in completing missions. Experience gained depends on the difficulty level and how the game is played; the greater the stealth, the greater the reward. According to Ubisoft Toronto, the system, known as "universal economy", was intended to satisfy players; every action has a corresponding reward.
Blacklist has platform-specific features, including voice integration with Xbox 360's Kinect peripheral which allows players to distract enemies before attacking them or to call in an air strike. In the Wii U version, the GamePad's touchscreen is an interface, accessing gadgets and other features from the protagonist's arm-mounted computer (OPSAT), and incorporating screen and motion controls to highlight enemies with thermal vision when using Killing in Motion. The Wii U version was not shipped with the game's cooperative mode.
Multiplayer The "Spies vs. Mercs" competitive mode introduced in Pandora Tomorrow again appears in Blacklist. An asymmetrical multiplayer mode, it pits two teams (with different gadgets, playing as spies or mercenaries) against each other. Spies, in third-person perspective, are equipped with smoke grenades and flashbangs and are tasked with hacking computer stations heavily guarded by mercenaries. Spies have more versatile movements as they can also climb onto rooftops, hide inside air vents and scale ledges. Mercenaries, in first person, can access lethal and longer-range weapons despite being unable to stealth-kill enemies or move very fast. The mode has two varieties: Classic, supporting teams of 2v2, and Blacklist, supporting 4v4 action. This mode features a progressive leveling system, allowing players to customise and upgrade the two character classes.
Blacklist also has a co-operative multiplayer mode, where each mission can be accessed by talking with the crew of the Paladin. Crew members offer a variety of missions and requirements for completing them, and players play as Fisher or his colleague Briggs; both have the same abilities. The mark-and-execute system works slightly differently in the cooperative mode, with enemies wearing helmets require both players to mark them before they can be killed. The cooperative mode has a total of 14 missions, with split-screen play supported. In addition to co-op and Spies vs. Mercs, Blacklist has other multiplayer modes including Uplink control, Team Deathmatch, and Extraction.
The game's multiplayer functionality was set to be shut down on September 1, 2022. The date was later delayed to October 1, 2022.
Synopsis
Characters Blacklist again features Sam Fisher (Eric Johnson), a former Third Echelon Splinter Cell agent who is now the spymaster and commander of the newly created Fourth Echelon. The game also sees the return of Fisher's old ally, Anna "Grim" Grímsdóttir (Kate Drummond), and new characters such as Isaac Briggs (Dwain Murphy) and Charlie Cole (David Reale). Several supporting characters from Conviction reappear, including Victor Coste (Howard Siegel), Patricia Caldwell (Mimi Kuzyk), and Andriy Kobin (Elias Toufexis), as well as Sarah Fisher (Victoria Sanchez), whose voice is heard in phone calls.
Plot
Two years after Third Echelon is dissolved, Sam Fisher takes up work as a mercenary contractor with his friend Victor Coste. While working at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, a highly organized force assaults the installation, destroying the base and killing hundreds of American servicemembers, including the base's commander. Coste is heavily injured in the attack. A faction known as the "Engineers" publicly declares their responsibility for the operation, announcing it will launch a "Blacklist" of attacks on the United States until it recalls its troops deployed abroad. In response, U.S. President Caldwell puts Sam in charge of "Fourth Echelon", a new top secret black-ops unit which operates out of a command and control aircraft known as the Paladin. The units members include tech specialist Charlie Cole, CIA operative Isaac Briggs, and analyst Anna Grímsdóttir.
Fourth Echelon traces the weapons used in the Guam attack to arms supplier Andriy Kobin, a former target of Sam's in Benghazi. Through him, the group traces his buyers to Iraq, whereupon Sam learns that the Engineers' leader is Majid Sadiq (Carlo Rota), a former MI6 agent who defected after he was involved in an American drone strike. Deducing that the Engineers are targeting Chicago, Sam breaks into the site of the operation and prevents a biological attack on the city's water systems.
Intel from Kobin connects the Engineers to mercenary broker Reza Nouri (Sam Kalilieh), whom Sam extracts from his estate in Paraguay before a team of Iranian Qods Force commandos can kill him. In London, Sam finds that the mercenaries Nouri hired out to the Engineers have been preparing VX nerve gas for their next attack. Sam also finds more evidence linking the Engineers to Qods Force, which is subsequently released to the public, causing anger in the US that brings America and Iran to the brink of war. Sam seeks to verify the Iranian connection by infiltrating the Qods Force headquarters in the former embassy of the United States in Tehran, where he finds intel exonerating Iran. Afterwards, Fourth Echelon successfully stops the next Blacklist operation, a chemical attack using the Philadelphia metro network.
After Nouri is captured by the CIA, Sam and Briggs infiltrate Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where they learn that Nouri has been providing false information to reignite American hostility towards Iran. Through interrogation and torture of Nouri, he reveals that Sadiq sought to distract the US government from an imminent assault on the Gulf Coast's fuel infrastructure. The Engineers use a modified Stuxnet virus to infect energy infrastructure and the Paladin, which disables fire systems and nearly crashes the plane. They have also captured the Sabine Pass LNG terminal. With the help of Navy SEALs, Sam successfully saves the terminal, preventing a chain reaction that would have ignited more facilities.