Splinter Cell Blacklist

[Fuse 1]

Grabbing an old console is the best way to play anyways since Ubi appears to hate PC gamers with a passion.

[bonchie 39]

Doesn't look that bad to me. Fischer has always been able to scale walls (assuming there's a "ledge" going up or across) and you could blast your way through in Chaos Theory as well if you wanted. That'll be the gamers choice. Want to stay hidden and not get in a fire fight? Then stay hidden. Simple.

As for realism, there have always been questions about how Sam can wear bright green goggles in a shadow and not be seen or how an enemy can't see a sticky cam the size of quarter sitting on a white wall. At least the developer says that the enemy can see and react to the drone.

As long as the equipment is cool and the levels are well designed I'm sure it'll be fine. The problem with Double Agent wasn't the gameplay (it wasn't that different then Chaos Theory). It was the storyline and the fact that you didn't have all your cool crap to play with most of the time.

[max power 21]

Doesn't look that bad to me. Fischer has always been able to scale walls (assuming there's a "ledge" going up or across) and you could blast your way through in Chaos Theory as well if you wanted. That'll be the gamers choice. Want to stay hidden and not get in a fire fight? Then stay hidden. Simple.

As for realism, there have always been questions about how Sam can wear bright green goggles in a shadow and not be seen or how an enemy can't see a sticky cam the size of quarter sitting on a white wall. At least the developer says that the enemy can see and react to the drone.

As long as the equipment is cool and the levels are well designed I'm sure it'll be fine. The problem with Double Agent wasn't the gameplay (it wasn't that different then Chaos Theory). It was the storyline and the fact that you didn't have all your cool crap to play with most of the time.

The thing about making choices is that you have to have bad options for it to mean anything ;) Oh, you chose the right answer out of a selection of 5 right answers and no wrong ones. Way to be!

[chortles 263]

Re: bonchie: depends on what you mean by "storyline", considering that there were literally two different storylines with the Double Agent title. (Also, the official explanation re: the goggles was that that's literally a gameplay thing and that the goggles DON'T glow "in-universe".)

[stgn 39]

The goggles are only bright green from your perspective, a cosmetic choice, if you look in a mirror you will see that they are not glowing so the bad guys can't see em in the shadows.

STGN

[metalcraze 290]

Goggles could also be a part of 'feedback'. Since in the dark it can be hard to tell where Sam is facing.

[bonchie 39]

Re: bonchie: depends on what you mean by "storyline", considering that there were literally two different storylines with the Double Agent title. (Also, the official explanation re: the goggles was that that's literally a gameplay thing and that the goggles DON'T glow "in-universe".)

I don't even remember most of that game. I just remember there being a lot of sneaking around without cool equipment in the same "hideout", prison, whatever vs. all the awesome variation in levels of Chaos Theory (although Double Agent did have some cool, more traditional levels as well mixed in). It was also shorter I think then Chaos Theory. That was my main gripe with it.

I never played Conviction where they revamped a lot of the gameplay but I remember Double Agent not being that different then Chaos Theory in gameplay (i.e. this button does that, Fischer can do this, enemies react like this, etc.).

Point is, if this new one is back to the basics of you just being a bad*** with all this cool stuff sneaking around in well designed, varied levels, then I'll enjoy it.

---------- Post added at 08:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:22 AM ----------

The thing about making choices is that you have to have bad options for it to mean anything ;) Oh, you chose the right answer out of a selection of 5 right answers and no wrong ones. Way to be!

I think you are having a bit of Nostalgia vs. reality here.

In Chaos Theory, even in the Korean level with the masses of Army around, you could open fire and kill people, wait for things to settle down, and continue without much harm done except your score at the end. There's always been an option to fight your way through and the enemy have always been rather easy to take down assuming you aren't standing in the open.

Actually, Double Agent took a step back from that and forced you to sneak many times.

Watching that video, I don't see much wrong with the firefight. The AI responded well, Sam had good cover, and he was able to prevail. No different then any other SC game (no comment on Conviction).

My concerns are this:

A) How will they deal with health in these situations. If it's auto-regenerating, then that better be an option or it will affect gameplay. To me that's the single biggest thing that will promote stealth. If a few shots kill you then you'll want to not be shot at.

B) What made firefights few and far between in Chaos Theory was a lack of ammo to do it, not because they weren't easy to win. So ammo and resources in general need to be limited to keep gameplay the way it should be.

Edited March 27, 2013 by bonchie

[max power 21]

I think you are having a bit of Nostalgia vs. reality here.

I'm not nostalgic for the original SC or CT... LOL.

Firing at people then waiting for things to settle down is not jumping into a room full of bad guys, yelling 'boogie boogie', and then telling the computer to shoot 4 of them in less than a second.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Max Power

[chortles 263]

To be honest I actually saw the Mark & Execute mechanic as a gameplay abstraction of the character's ability to "room clear" (yes I know that you're not supposed to do room clearing by oneself) and taking advantage of an enemy being surprised -- that is, Sam having "tactical initiative"* -- despite the limitations of a controller for manual aiming. ;) See, that's what I had thought that Mark & Execute was abstracted around...

Though of course it could have been more tightly regulated, i.e. "marks" being removed whenever an enemy leaves line of sight (though you can reapply them when the enemy comes back into line of sight) or only being able to Execute surprised or unawares enemies instead of it having been a "get out of a pitched firefight" button, which is to me the real "biggest plausibility problem with Mark & Execute". ;) (As for "Sam Fisher jumps the room and kills four of them near instantly in CQB?" Bleh, Ubisoft will just say "Navy SEAL LOLOLOL" if they care enough to even explain themselves.)

Interestingly enough, I actually thought that Conviction had a case of "regenerating but low Health to begin with" going on: that is, you could do the "hide and recover" thing but even on Normal/easiest difficulty Sam could and sometimes did go down in one automatic burst if I messed up for whatever reason, i.e. charging at an enemy who wasn't as close as I had thought he was. Not a defense of "regenerating Health" per se, just noting that it never felt in Conviction like he had a high maximum Health threshold to begin with.

* For example, there's one segment where three guards are in a security booth with a skylight up top... if you melee'd a guard inside a guard booth at the start of the mission then you could open or kick this second booth's door and Execute all three guards without "oh hey my immersion!"... but I personally preferred Death From Above... I "imagined" that my Mark & Execute here was Sam picking a guard to land on but already planning kills on the other two while they were surprised from his "dynamic entrance" ;)

[bonchie 39]

I'm not nostalgic for the original SC or CT... LOL.

Firing at people then waiting for things to settle down is not jumping into a room full of bad guys, yelling 'boogie boogie', and then telling the computer to shoot 4 of them in less than a second.

If that's what you are talking about then yeah, I'd agree that's dumb. I didn't play Conviction so I never experienced that.

I was commenting on exactly what I commented on. What I saw on the video.

[max power 21]

If that's what you are talking about then yeah, I'd agree that's dumb. I didn't play Conviction so I never experienced that.

I was commenting on exactly what I commented on. What I saw on the video.

So was I. The marking target slowmo bullet time matrix takedown junk.

[bonchie 39]

So was I. The marking target slowmo bullet time matrix takedown junk.

Didn't see that as I didn't finish the video. I was responding to the complaints about the drone, movement, and firefights in this thread. I misunderstood you're complaint because I didn't watch enough of the video to see it. My fault.

But in relation to that, agreed it's dumb, but no one is making you use it either so does it really matter that much? I'm more worried about the gameplay mechanics that can't be skipped over, i.e. regenerating health and unrealistic equipment load outs.

[chortles 263]

I would say that it's optional, but if Conviction is anything to go by then its existence does affect the mission design and layout(s), i.e. the placement of enemy guards, which does affect its linearity and thus reduce replay value once the "optimal" solutions become obvious.

On the one hand, the Execute tokens require a melee takedown (marking doesn't) so at one point I perceived an "tactical" aspect in picking which to attempt to melee and which might need a distraction or an execute... on the other hand, in some levels it was quite obvious when a guard was in a particular spot more or less specifically to be taken down in melee so that one could have an Execute token for use against a specific later set of guards.

[max power 21]

Didn't see that as I didn't finish the video. I was responding to the complaints about the drone, movement, and firefights in this thread. I misunderstood you're complaint because I didn't watch enough of the video to see it. My fault.

But in relation to that, agreed it's dumb, but no one is making you use it either so does it really matter that much? I'm more worried about the gameplay mechanics that can't be skipped over, i.e. regenerating health and unrealistic equipment load outs.

that was an example of a broader problem I was complaining about: The loss of a game designer's ability to think critically about the gameplay mechanics they're designing.

[Tonci87 163]

Oh look what I found

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7387414272/hB309466A/

Edited April 30, 2013 by Max Power

[chortles 263]

Hey, it's the "it's stealth in the sense that no one is left alive to report your position" technique! :lol:

My position from earlier in the thread stands: everyone's so attached to the prior Splinter Cell trilogy (original, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory) that you don't all seem to be really wrapping your head around the clear fact that Ubisoft has for years not been interested in traditional stealth games -- when the producer of Conviction was referring derisively to MGS-style as "grandmother stealth" and Ubisoft clearly cribbed ideas from Arkham Asylum for both here and the Assassin's Creed series, you should have seen the writing on the wall.

Perfectly good reason not to get Blacklist -- whereas in my case, the plot alone is enough to drive me away and its presentation is somehow even more obnoxiously myopic than usual for a Tom Clancy-branded game -- but now the "STEALTH" jokes almost feel silly when applied to a game which Ubisoft isn't even trying to market as a stealth game and about which Ubisoft devs act almost contemptuously towards the complaints about stealth gameplay.

The worst part is that the GIF actually would have made a good case for Mark and Execute from an "immersion" POV... were it not for both of the guys that Sam executes with the grenade still facing away from him as if they hadn't reacted to the grenade. :rolleyes: (Unlike the two hapless mooks that he does kill with the grenade's explosion, that is.)

[krycek 349]

Hey, it's the "it's stealth in the sense that no one is left alive to report your position" technique! :lol:

Hah I used to do that in Hitman games,silent assassin my ass,no witnesses left anyway so job done.:p

Perfectly good reason not to get Blacklist -- whereas in my case, the plot alone is enough to drive me away and its presentation is somehow even more obnoxiously myopic than usual for a Tom Clancy-branded game.....

Tbh the plot in past games was nothing to write home about either,with silly stories like uber hacker Masse crippling the States in SC1 or some nutcase japanese general trying to provoke WW3 and no one suspecting a thing but only a small cell in NSA.What kept me hooked in the past games was the gameplay but that's about all.They really knew how to make a stealth game,simple as that.

[Smurf 12]

wazzup with the invisible thing?

[metalcraze 290]

If you will look closely there's more stupid stuff there but invisibility. Like the ability to see through walls.

Well I guess that's not surprising considering that kids nowadays think that stealth is about pressing magical stealth button and everybody dies around you.

[max power 21]

My position from earlier in the thread stands: everyone's so attached to the prior Splinter Cell trilogy (original, Pandora Tomorrow, Chaos Theory) that you don't all seem to be really wrapping your head around the clear fact that Ubisoft has for years not been interested in traditional stealth games -- when the producer of Conviction was referring derisively to MGS-style as "grandmother stealth" and Ubisoft clearly cribbed ideas from Arkham Asylum for both here and the Assassin's Creed series, you should have seen the writing on the wall.

I'm not contesting the legitimacy of your idea, but for me personally, I really don't give a rats ass what Ubisoft thinks, nor do I try to predict the future when it comes to what kinds of games will be produced. At least this way I get some entertainment value out of watching some terribad promo videos that depict a great frachise being flushed down the toilet. Watching all these studios chase Arkham Asylum is pretty sad.

[chortles 263]

Hah I used to do that in Hitman games,silent assassin my ass,no witnesses left anyway so job done.:p

If the boss ain't complainin' it's less explainin'!

Tbh the plot in past games was nothing to write home about either,with silly stories like uber hacker Masse crippling the States in SC1 or some nutcase japanese general trying to provoke WW3 and no one suspecting a thing but only a small cell in NSA.What kept me hooked in the past games was the gameplay but that's about all.They really knew how to make a stealth game,simple as that.

Honestly I think I got fed up with "Tom Clancy plots" after reading The Bear and the Dragon (man I knew something was wrong the moment I read that) and The Teeth and the Tiger (the most-obvious post-9/11 and post-Afghanistan/Iraq cash-in), found out Rainbow Six: Vegas 2's plot (TL;DR: The only plausible explanation is that Ding Chavez is clearly not as good as John Clark at vetting selection candidates) and the last straw was playing Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and lately I've become more concerned with story quality so I don't care as much about the "stealth game" part.

I mean, when the plots are worse than those of the Dynasty Warriors franchise despite that series literally recycling the same overall plot for over a decade, and yet that same plot sucks less than the "average" Tom Clancy game plot... :p

wazzup with the invisible thing?

Funny thing here, but it's actually consistent (gameplay-aside) with prior Tom Clancy games -- I'm not sure where Future Soldier or Blacklist fit exactly in the overall Clancyverse "canon", but Future Soldier had the "invisibility camo" while Conviction had the "wall hack" sonar goggles, so it's not completely out of left field in the "if Blacklist treats both games as prior canon then why wouldn't those technologies both be in Blacklist?" way.

That doesn't mitigate the "power creep" problem at all, of course...

At least this way I get some entertainment value out of watching some terribad promo videos that depict a great frachise being flushed down the toilet.

The best reaction I've seen in this thread, really. ;)

Watching all these studios chase Arkham Asylum is pretty sad.

I don't find it sad since sometimes it seems like "chasing a winning formula", but other times it seems like envy that they didn't come up with the idea first. Mind you, that belief of mine comes from my interpretation nature of so many COD-wannabe shooters having built with a "why didn't we think of it first?" demeanor...

Mind you, those other studios not having the Batman license to begin means that they were never in the running to begin with, buuuuuut... :p

Disclosure: I've been admittedly so disgruntled with Ubisoft over the Assassin's Creed series (since Revelations was such a massive letdown and story-derailing) and executive attitudes towards PC gaming (just look at how Ghost Recon Online was revealed) that I don't even mind this because I think so badly of their prior games before Blacklist... I already have enough against Ubisoft besides gameplay. :lol:

[max power 21]

That doesn't mitigate the "power creep" problem at all, of course...The best reaction I've seen in this thread, really. ;)I don't find it sad since sometimes it seems like "chasing a winning formula", but other times it seems like envy that they didn't come up with the idea first. Mind you, that belief of mine comes from my interpretation nature of so many COD-wannabe shooters having built with a "why didn't we think of it first?" demeanor...

Mind you, those other studios not having the Batman license to begin means that they were never in the running to begin with, buuuuuut... :p

Well, I mean, they substitute batman for some other established franchise. I can't really say that Raiden was a very successful spin off from Metal Gear Solid, but I would really rather they do something like that. I think it would be better to have a spinoff action game than to make Sam Fischer into a thoughtless killing machine, and his enemies into morons. In my opinion, the whole reason why a stealth game works is because there's some tension. The only way you can have tension is if you respect your enemy. Making the main character super OP and the enemy really stupid removes any tension at all.

[chortles 263]

Keep in mind that apparently the reason Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance turned out like it did was because Kojima initially scrapped it in the first place after his devs not only were unable to implement his intended gameplay (the stealth and high-speed action mix) but didn't even believe in his vision thereof -- when he turned to Platinum Games, apparently they conditioned their help on being allowed to go "full" action game, and he had to agree because he was essentially the indebted party. Notably, unlike Kojima Productions apparently Platinum Games delivered on time too...

Well, I mean, they substitute batman for some other established franchise.

Which they'd then also need the license for... and I imagine that we've both heard of how the industry is risk-averse (read: new IP-averse) as hell?

As far as 'making the main character super OP and the enemy really stupid' to remove tension... think of mainstream gaming this way...

Hypothetical 'casual' gamer: "I didn't show up to be challenged, I already get too much of that outside of gaming!"

Funny thing is, Dynasty Warriors 7 found a neat formula for making the main character(s) super OP and the enemy really stupid yet the game not suck... have a coherent plot, that's already better than any Tom Clancy game. :p Unfortunately, unlike the previous games, they didn't lock the "highest end" (i.e. most Attack Power) weapons behind a difficulty wall, so there's no in-game incentive to play on anything above Beginner. (In DW3 through DW5, to unlock each character's best weapon you would have to play a specific stage on the highest difficulties and fulfill certain conditions, which would then cause the item or a unit to spawn on the map, then get to the item or defeat the unit to acquire the item or weapon after stage completion.)

[max power 21]

Which they'd then also need the license for... and I imagine that we've both heard of how the industry is risk-averse (read: new IP-averse) as hell?

What I mean is they are taking their own franchise and moving it from something to something else, like turning Sam Fischer into GI Joe to chase dem Arkham dollaz instead of doing a spin off. Instead, they basically spun off and replaced everything that made splinter cell what it is, including Michael Ironside, but kept the same character. It is a bit puzzling.

[chortles 263]

In fairness, you're nowhere near the only one to notice the oddity of "Fisher without Ironside", and whoever it is doing his voice in the most recent trailers... ehhh.