| Title | Tom Clancy’s Splinter cell: Black List |
| Platform: | XBox 360 via Series X |
| Available on OS: | 360, Series X |
| Genre: | Combat, stealth, military, action, shooter, third person |
| Date completed: | May 2024 |
| Notes: | Uplay login never worked, legacy xbox live login very spotty (Live doesn’t serve a purpose anyway since multiplayer doesn’t exist). |
Summary review: A game with a lot in common with Deus Ex while still being unique enough. Many scenarios and change-ups in style, an a very typical mid-2000s plot.
Graphics: For a 360 game I actually thought it was pretty good. I played it on my 4k TV and it didn’t seem stretched or skewed or anything. I have idea if there was some kind of “AI upscaling” involved.
Music: I like music for what it is – it ramps up when needed and stays out of the way when it’s not. If you’ve ever seen the show 24 it’s about the same level.
Controls: I got used the control eventually. It’s a standard weapon wheel/alt hand throwable item seen in almost all third person shooter type games. It’s Unreal engine actually so if you’ve played Gears of War this will seem remarkably familiar.
Replayability: As you play through the campaign and side missions there’s these also-items like dead drops, special laptop and capture-the-guy. And it’s kind of fun going back through those missions to get those things you missed. So I’m going to say yes, very high replay appeal.
Total score: 90 / 100 – The plot is about what you might expect a movie or season of 24 to be from 2006 or so. You’ll either really dig that or not like that. If you like these kinds of stealth games and replaying levels over and over again this is about as good you’ll find.
Introduction
This is my first adventure into the world of Splinter cell. And I don’t play games for the 360 that often. But some how I bought this game digitally anyway.
I’m familiar with these stealth games, of course. I attempted to play thief, I’ve played but still not finished the first Deus Ex and did finish Deus Ex: HR (the penultimate of the genre if you ask me) and I published a review of Dishonored.
This game has almost all the same mechanics: avoid attracting attention of enemies, evade enemies, dump bodies into conveniently located dumpsters or out windows, kill or knockout enemies as the preference. I think the things that set this game apart from others in the genre include: the special night/thermal vision, hanging from pipes, taking hostages turning the enemy detection into something of puzzle game. Though those last two may not be that unique.
Call your daughter
As part of the plot, the main character is supposed to call his daughter after each campaign mission. I think it’s supposed to demonstrate how “back home” is reacting to events. Offer some exposition from the man-on-the-street. As far as I can tell there’s no direct result or benefit for doing so, though. Or I missed it.
It’s a story element, for sure
It’s pretty obvious a lot of these missions are made for multiplayer co-op. Never is this more obvious than when you’re in charge of defending an embassy from wave after wave of enemies of increasing difficulty and types. I actually eventually came to enjoy those. Seems obvious it’s a multiplayer thing though.
There’s also parts of the campaign missions that are blocked off as they require a 2-person team to get through. I mean they’re just shortcuts from one part of a map to another.
Of gas and electric
I worked my way through the campaign, utilizing my reward money to unlock new and better and suits as well as different weapons that including sleeping gas or electric shocks. I’m just assuming the electric dart hand crossbow is an homage to Deus Ex. Unless Deus Ex got it from some place else. Still hilarious. Eventually I got a proximity mine that electrocutes and a sleeping gas gas grenade. Then sleeping gas darts. These things combined pretty much break the game.
I know having them all break the game because after finishing the game I can still go back and replay any mission with all that equipment. Missions that took hours of retries could be passed with relative ease once big groups of enemies could be neutralized at once.
Difficulty levels, plots and other notes
The learning curve and being new to the franchise might have had something to do with it but some missions took many, many retries. Over and over and over. And sometimes I would finally make it to a save point only to have to replay that part of it over and over. And some missions were three parts to them, each relatively long in their own right. Fortunately there is actually some randomness to how the AI acts. It’s like the enemies start in different positions or have slightly different personalities with each retry. It’s like the developer knew you’d be replaying it over and over and again
I’m not sure if a play synopsis is really necessary as it matters relatively little: a vaguely foreign guy of nondescript racial make up, political ideology and country of origin is going to launch a new terrorist attack on America at very specific time increments unless his demands are met. But surprise, those weren’t the reasons at all. It’s all up to you and your team to stop these attacks from happening and take down the terrorist’s network. A little bit bigger scale than something for Jack Bauer but still familiar enough. You also have to keep in mind 9/11 was still in recent memory when this game was developed.
The plot is fine or “serviceable”. To me it’s just an introduction to the next scenario that might force me to think creatively. One example: you have to break in to the facility on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. You don’t want to kill anyone as they’re all American soldiers just doing their jobs. And their job is to shoot to kill. So noise makers, sleep gas, electric darts but no kills. Then other scenarios all your settings are set to kill by default and can’t be changed. It forces a playstyle switch up in other words.
I did want to mention some things that seem mentionable but I haven’t mentioned yet: drones and breach charges.
The drone seems to have limitations. I ended up only utilizing it a few times. I found the drone seems to go out of range or otherwise refuse to function relatively easy. It just became easier to accomplish what I needed myself. That might change if I ever up the difficulty level.
The other thing is the “breach charges”. I saw them there the whole game but never unlocked them as I was going for a less lethal sort of a run.
Speak of which – some missions AI will actually revive the enemies that are knocked out. Which makes me want to switch to lethal. Or shoot them after knocking them out.
I’ll also mention dogs in this game. F*ck dogs.
Now some negatives…
I only have the typical complaints: trying to get the character to turn the right way while crawling along a pipe. Or finally realizing how to swap between the two modes of night vision goggles when there’s not much choice given the lack of light.
I would like to complain about the unlockable content of this game: I bought this from the Xbox store but the DLC is not included. Some items can be unlocked by playing some pre-smart phone mobile app (which doesn’t exist), some can be unlocked by redeeming Uplay points (no longer an option) and some only after playing all the co-op only missions. Maybe those items aren’t worth while, I don’t know. I kind of wish all of them would just unlock or just not be listed in the game, though. Why tease me with unlockable things I’ll never have a way getting? I mean maybe local co-op would do it for those. But you get my point.
Conclusion
If you love games like Dishonored, Thief and any Deus Ex then I think you’ll enjoy this. It’s lot more militaristic than those games, obviously. If it has Tom Clancy in the title that’s to be expected. Can’t exactly act surprised.
The equipment and weapon variety is really great, the play styles vary enough and the developer was decent enough to randomize enemy AI enough such that playing the same section of mission over and over again still has some variety to it.
Metadata
| Method of control used | Gamepad | ||
| Controllable via both one analog stick or digital four-way (“HAT”) | n/a | ||
| Hardware requirements: | Original 360 version | ||
| Supports 21:9 aspect ratio screens? | n/a | ||
| Device(s) tried on | XBox Series X | ||
| TV | 4k Sony | ||
| Initial setup required | none | ||
| Sound setup | Noise cancelling headphones | ||
| Total time to completion | ~25 hours (I lost track) | ||
| difficulty level | default difficulty |
Tildes on the side 