Splinter Cell: Blacklist is terrible! Aviod.

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Flogger23m

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Got a copy of Splinter Cell Blacklist after skipping Conviction. I heard this title returned to its roots of being a stealth game, with the option of an action approach. That is nonsense. The game gives you no option of playing stealthily. The enemies, even on normal, can detect you even if they are not looking at you. In fact, they cheat so much they can see you more clearly than you can see them.

Bright maps, open day light. Linear set piece maps. The single free roaming maps of Chaos Theory are gone. Mission briefings are crap and gibberish cut scenes with no useful information provided. Regenerating health? Check. Ammo/gear pick ups randomly placed in foreign countries? Check.

The worst part is the control scheme. The button E does about 5-7 things. Have an enemy coming around the corner that you want to stealthily knock out? Too bad, because your character might attempt to close a door, or pick up a weapon instead. As an action shooter it is garbage, partially due to being 3rd person (naturally clumsy), but also because the controls are terrible and have significant overlap. The shooting mechanics and sounds are terrible and seem similar to a game from the 90s, which is pathetic seeing as this game is all about shooting.

Your best bet is to continue playing Chaos Theory if you want a "modern" Splinter Cell experience. Or hope another series comes along, because Blacklist isn't worthy of being called a spin off sequel.
 
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I disagree. It was one of the best games I played last year and easily the best SC since Chaos Theory.

I am at work and don't have time to elaborate which I've done in the other thread I started. It seems people either love it or hate it.
 
Play the game on Perfectionist. The wallhack and resupplies are all gone.

I agree about the controls, but they're symptomatic of the game being another Ubisoft console port (controls ported from console gamepads) rather than bad game design itself. Having said that, there is a dedicated button for stealth kills/knockouts so you shouldn't be accidentally opening doors when trying to take someone out.

I agree with TBC in that it's the best Splinter Cell since Chaos Theory and a pretty solid stealth game.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Play the game on Perfectionist. The wallhack and resupplies are all gone.

I agree about the controls, but they're symptomatic of the game being another Ubisoft console port (controls ported from console gamepads) rather than bad game design itself. Having said that, there is a dedicated button for stealth kills/knockouts so you shouldn't be accidentally opening doors when trying to take someone out.

I agree with TBC in that it's the best Splinter Cell since Chaos Theory and a pretty solid stealth game.
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Always showed up as E for me. And the issue is you can be looking right at a guy, press E, and your character will run into them instead going for the door. Entirely ignoring the enemy you run into. They should at least prioritize and maybe go for the object which is close to the player...

That is where 70-80% of the difficulty comes from. You know you've made a bad game when your difficultly comes from forcing the players to fight a randomized chance of "what will my key press really do?" mini games. Add it the key press lag and it is even worse.

Other wonderful ideas are the terrible camera controls, which are chunky and don't give much smoothing of panning. And of course, if someone gets close, they raise the camera above the player. Because not being able to see is just what we need. Makes the game "harder" and "longer" I guess.
 
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Flogger23m said:
Always showed up as E for me. And the issue is you can be looking right at a guy, press E, and your character will run into them instead going for the door. Entirely ignoring the enemy you run into. They should at least prioritize and maybe go for the object which is close to the player...

That is where 70-80% of the difficulty comes from. You know you've made a bad game when your difficultly comes from forcing the players to fight a randomized chance of "what will my key press really do?" mini games. Add it the key press lag and it is even worse.

Other wonderful ideas are the terrible camera controls, which are chunky and don't give much smoothing of panning. And of course, if someone gets close, they raise the camera above the player. Because not being able to see is just what we need. Makes the game "harder" and "longer" I guess.
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Have you patched the game through Uplay? One of the updates separated combat actions (E) with other actions like opening doors, which all got assigned to the space key.
 
TheBlueChanell said:
I disagree. It was one of the best games I played last year and easily the best SC since Chaos Theory.

I am at work and don't have time to elaborate which I've done in the other thread I started. It seems people either love it or hate it.
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I agree. I also echo the call to use perfectionist. I remapped a few keys and I was all set.
 
I never did finish this one. Picked it up awhile back on recommendations and found the "stealth" mechanics to be really lacking compared to previous games, even on Perfectionist. Many times when it is indicated that you are "hidden", enemies will still spot you and insta-kill you. I got frustrated and gave up at some point, haven't gone back to it yet.
 
MavericK96 said:
I never did finish this one. Picked it up awhile back on recommendations and found the "stealth" mechanics to be really lacking compared to previous games, even on Perfectionist. Many times when it is indicated that you are "hidden", enemies will still spot you and insta-kill you. I got frustrated and gave up at some point, haven't gone back to it yet.
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Some enemies have thermal-vision goggles, which allow them to see you in shadows.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Some enemies have thermal-vision goggles, which allow them to see you in shadows.
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These particular ones didn't, but yeah. Not saying it's a bad game, it just felt kind of arbitrary whether or not they would actually see you if you were "hidden".
 
MavericK96 said:
These particular ones didn't, but yeah. Not saying it's a bad game, it just felt kind of arbitrary whether or not they would actually see you if you were "hidden".
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This. Guys clearly without googles have eyes which can see you when you are essentially looking at their back. Its absurd. The overall mechanics are plain broken. Open a door, and sometimes you randomly point upwards. Getting yourself killed. And controls often fail to initialize. Nothing like an enemy running up to you while you frantically press the shoot button only for Sam to sit there like a dumbass while getting shot.

I don't see how anyone could give this more than a 6/10 when the core mechanics are so broken and the rest of the game is just uninspired. I think they put more effort into the overdone menu than they did the gameplay.
 
I have to disagree with OP. Playing Blacklist on Perfectionist was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've had in a long time. Co-op is a blast, as well.
 
TheGamerZ said:
I have to disagree with OP. Playing Blacklist on Perfectionist was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've had in a long time. Co-op is a blast, as well.
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Each to their own. But when you can not utilize equipment you have (drone), snipers can see and shoot through concrete that is thicker than a person, and when the drone does work, they can detect as soon as you launch it even though it is not in sight among other bugs is not something I call enjoyable. I call it broken. I must just have very high standards for bugs and crap quality. :D

To me, if you can't get the basics like controls, consistency, and your key presses registering, everything else you did in the game is worthless. Because no matter how good the graphics or story are, if you're dying because the games chooses to take control away from the player due to bugs then it is a piece of shit.

Edit: Stuck on a ledge. Got up via a pole. Now I can't go back down. I can either drop down onto the ledge, but can't drop to the floor (too high). I can't move sideways onto the pole, and space just makes me stand on the ledge. So I can either stand or hang off the ledge. Leaving me unable to continue with my mission. So I have to revert 20+ minutes because the developers/mappers were too dumb to allow players to get down on this certain map (Estonia map). Holy shit, the game is that fucking bad.
 
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Flogger23m said:
Edit: Stuck on a ledge. Got up via a pole. Now I can't go back down. I can either drop down onto the ledge, but can't drop to the floor (too high). I can't move sideways onto the pole, and space just makes me stand on the ledge. So I can either stand or hang off the ledge. Leaving me unable to continue with my mission. So I have to revert 20+ minutes because the developers/mappers were too dumb to allow players to get down on this certain map (Estonia map). Holy shit, the game is that fucking bad.
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I have never run into this problem. I personally think its the best SC next to Chaos Theory, I got this gaming expecting it to be way worse than conviction, I was pleasantly surprised that it was 10x better. I'll just go by this quote: "If someone looks for the bad, they will definitely find it".
 
*SPOILERS*

Just played through this. Granted, I started the SC series with Conviction, so my bias is blind from what the previous games offered.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a beautiful game in some parts as well, impressive given it's running on UE3. The maps are pretty linear, especially the story maps. The 4E side missions are a little bit more pissy, as you don't get checkpoints. First time I've gotten frustrated at a game (they're all pretty easy these days) in a long time, it was nice. The presentation was topnotch as far as cutscenes and interaction between gameworld and menuworld. I did like the upgrades, although not as flushed out as some other titles. It made trying to do your best important, so you could afford the next upgrade.

The First Person Shooter part surprised me. It was done well, but made me think they might be exploring that more which is kind of a bummer. I only encountered two map stopping bugs (the ones where you have to load a checkpoint). The train map where you go out the window had my guy just start jesus walking over the water away from the train. Another map had Briggs go full retard and just freeze up, making it impossible to continue on. As far as AI seeing you, I felt on Normal difficulty, they didn't see me (or a body/etc) enough. Speaking of bodies, they made it so you really don't have to worry much about them as you can basically just drop anyone in your path and get to the next checkpoint. The checkpoint reloads are always the developers preferred position (encase you took a different route) with everything behind them gone, so any left bodies don't matter which is also a letdown.

Btw, CT had free-roam? That sounds incredibly fun. I'd hope a more powerful engine (UE4?) would give them a more open-world style going forward. Basically drop you off, say "the intel is located there, go get it" and it's free-roam from there. This type of game is kinda silly with the linear approach, as you literally take 50 actions sideways to get to the other side of the fence (example). You'd think Sam Fisher would be smart enough to bring some bolt cutters for the chainlink fence. Btw, this is what they did with the R6/GR series as well - took it from a more open-level design to a linear design and then blended 3rd person eliminates in. With this, they're blending FPS eliminates in. I loved what RSE used to do with R6/GR until Ubisoft bastardized the series, so I understand the frustration from seeing what Ubi has done to SC - I don't have the same expectations as you, as I joined the series late, so it'll explain why I enjoyed it a tad more.

From a development standpoint, you'd think a more open level design would be easier. They seem to map a lot of the levels, but funnel you through them like a rat in a maze. If they just let the player do their own thing, it's literally just dropping objectives and objects (bad guys, etc) in to the maps and let them play out naturally. That would seem easier to me instead of coming up with creative ways to force you down every corridor for that piece of cheese.

Ubisoft definitely has a formulaic approach to the Tom Clancy games.

*EDIT 2*
Also, I played this on PC with an Xbox controller.
 
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Maybe you're just bad at this type of game. I'm sure you can find a good deal on Peggle or something.
 
TheGamerZ said:
Maybe you're just bad at this type of game. I'm sure you can find a good deal on Peggle or something.
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It is a bad game. Its okay if you like it. I assume you picked up Call of Duty 28 to? ;)

Even Double Agent was better.
 
Flogger23m said:
It is a bad game. Its okay if you like it. I assume you picked up Call of Duty 28 to? ;)

Even Double Agent was better.
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Nah, I haven't touched a CoD game since CoD4. That said, sorry you didn't enjoy it. I think it's safe to say the internet can move on, now.
 
I hated the game as well, until I read some forum posts and retried it on Perfectionist. After that it became the most played SC game of the series for me. Chaos Theory is still a fav, and the controls in BL could use some tweaks, but after the patches I'm still enjoying this game, both alone and with COOP.
 
I have this game but never played it. Just what is perfectionist? How does it improve things? Just wondering.
 
this was GOTY for me .. refreshing game from splinter sell series after bad taste from anything after Chaos Theory/
 
I guess you just don't know how to play this game... Other than that i haven't heard other complaints like yours..
 
I'm about 1 hour in, pretty fun so far.
Never really played a Splinter Cell game before I must say.
Was trying to take care of my MGS fix and on the pc, this was the closest I found, and the price was good.
This is no MGS, make no mistake, but it's certainly not as bad as some might make it out to be IMO...
 
Gigantism said:
I'm about 1 hour in, pretty fun so far.
Never really played a Splinter Cell game before I must say.
Was trying to take care of my MGS fix and on the pc, this was the closest I found, and the price was good.
This is no MGS, make no mistake, but it's certainly not as bad as some might make it out to be IMO...
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You should definitely hunt down Chaos Theory.
 
I've played a few missions at the beginning of the game & I really don't care much for it. Would Perfectionist mode help alleviate this?
 
Seems like Flogger and Maverick are naturally game haters. Puts on a list to not take their comments seriously.
 
I agree that it's too easy, the resupply and crazy goggles are cheap.

I stopped caring about the story very early on, but running the game at max settings was pretty and I genuinely enjoy beating the campaign.... I uninstalled it thr minute I finished the campaign. Lol
 
chronic9 said:
I agree that it's too easy, the resupply and crazy goggles are cheap.
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About the goggles - there are only two modes for them. I know the more you progress them the more functions they can do, but I found it interesting that there are only two modes total. Seems odd that the goggles still have the signature 3 settings physically though. I kind of miss the traditional 3 settings.

The game also throws a whole lot more enemies at you, though you get more gadgets to quickly disable them. Not something I liked - too actiony, and it made the actual sneaking and lining up kills less important. More emphasis on killing large numbers of enemies with lots of gadgets.

And no interrogations? Sad. A good way to give hints to the player, as occasionally done in the previous games. Also rewarded doing something other than killing them up front.
 
KickAssCop said:
Seems like Flogger and Maverick are naturally game haters. Puts on a list to not take their comments seriously.
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Dude, don't even go there...I've read some of the ridiculous comments you've made about games in the past.

I never even said I hated this game, but there are definitely issues with the shadow/stealth mechanic.
 
Flogger23m said:
The game gives you no option of playing stealthily.
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Couldn't be further from the truth if you tried.
 
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