Splinter Cell: Blacklist Preview

Ubisoft has announced Splinter Cell: Blacklist, which is slated to be the newest title in their stealthy franchise. This time around it’s Sam Fisher who goes into the war as the head of the company, and it’ll be Fisher that is going to be able to call the shots in this title. There is going to be a lot of buzz around this title simply because of a few of the big changes Ubisoft has made. Splinter Cell: Blacklist promises to to be a lot more action packed and looks to shy away from the conventional style of stealth and lean more towards silent killing… by the dozens.

At E3 the development team behind Splinter Cell: Blacklist showed us some great footage showcasing Sam Fisher in a terrorist outfit quickly disposing of 2 targets and then interrogating a third. Once the cut-scene was over we see him back in his normal body suit with the iconic thermal/night vision goggles. Ubisoft has taken a step forward with the current affairs of the world and made this story about the war in the Middle East. The story follows a group of evil-doers putting together a project to take the war to the United States, called Blacklist.

In the gameplay demo Ubisoft showed off how simple it can be to take out four enemies without having to think twice about being detected. They make it seem as easy as marking your target and enjoying the massacre. You will become a one man army as soon as you engage enemy mobs leveraging the tactics taught to you in the game. You mark your target and then you will jump, slide, duck, and dive your way to slaughtering enemies. You will mix shooting people and stabbing people while pulling off multi-kill executions. While mixing in these elements of combat, they have simultaneously made platforming much more fluid.

When you are moving though the world of Splinter Cell you are going to be able to do all the same things from past games like scale walls and crouch around objects. Since Ubisoft apparently went for more of an action feel, you are going to be to smash though windows and doors which proves to be helpful when in the heat of battle. Ubisoft shows this off in the trailer, as gamers will begin a fire fight and cover is being destroyed – suddenly your troop smashes though a front door and leaps though a window to get a different view of the enemy and dispatches them with little effort. Sam Fisher is going to get support since he was runs the company as he can call in airstrikes when he needs the added support.

Hopefully the dev team behind Splinter Cell Blacklist can smooth everything out by release date spring 2013, but at this point things are looking very promising. One interesting bit to note is that this is the first production from the Ubisoft Toronto team. They are looking to make there footprint in this series with an action packed, yet stealthy Sam Fisher. Even though he has aged he is still as lethal if not even more so in this title. Let’s hope all this goes well in the upcoming months and let’s hope to see more stealth related aspects of the game.

Stay tuned to Gaming Illustrated for breaking news in the gaming world.