Quick Look: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist

that's a pretty inefficient usage of space on that plane. :/

It's not about how they are able to play the game, it's about the wrong class of people being able to enjoy something that's supposed to be so tedious only a tiny fraction of people can stand playing it.

People feel superior over the weirdest shit.

@sinkwater: it's a bummer that all "stealth" games are now expected to accommodate the whole dumb action play style but nobody expects straight up action games to accommodate stealth all of a sudden. There are people who still really enjoy more classic stealth.

@drewbert@vinny The recent videos on Giant Bomb seem to be a lot quieter than older videos. Did something change in the way things are recorded or uploaded?

I seem to have to crank up the volume for every video I watch on Giant Bomb and then have to turn it down again when visiting other sites or listening to music.

Fuck Uplay. It's worse than Origin. You have to PAY them to download your game for six months or pay them to get a "backup CD" so you can re-install your game in the future if you want. Once again, Steam for the win. Also Uplay tends to crash a lot.

Luckily this game has a setting that cranks up the AI, turns off mark and execute and feels very much like classic splinter cell. It's like bitching about instinct in Hitman when you can just turn it off. Pointless.

This seems a lot like The Last of Us but with unlimited ammo and regenerating health.

Remember when games didn't have gigantic neon light signs showing where to go, what to do, where enemies are, what to pick up, everything?

Motherfucking master race for having survived those years of gaming, we are.

12:17 - Adam Jensen?

Jeff seemed to enjoy this. Looks great! I actually might get it while I wait on GTAV.

Back then you had to press (a) or (x) while bumping up against every corner of the geometry (if you were stuck and had no clue).

Watching Jeff sift through pistol customisation nonsense in a Splinter Cell game makes me sad. I disagree with @brad that it's awesome - it feels to me like unnecessary bloating. At this point almost every AAA game is rife with feature creep that does nothing but dilute the central gameplay, or cover up the inadequacies of said gameplay.

How many years has Sam Fisher been Splinter Celling? Does he need to level up his gear? If you can use the "mark and execute" command to drop guards with autoheadshots, why should the player have ANY trouble hitting a headshot manually?

I'm probably overthinking this and projecting a bunch of other gripes I have with videogames overall at the moment onto this game, because it seems perfectly serviceable/good/whatever.

"We're on to execution."

"Yep, so am I."

Top notch one-liners from Agent Gerstmann.

Uh oh, is this something I'm going to have to get?

This actually looks pretty good, probably gonna wait until its $20. Too many games to play right now, GTA 5 is right around the corner.

Younger look, younger voice, but this is still a sequel... So, Sam Fisher is basically like James Bond now?

Super low-res textures all over the place in this. Reminds me of Skyrim's 360 launch.

ugh

man the longer I watch this, the longer I think "Mark of the Ninja Director's cut is for 5 bucks on steam right now."

Pretty damn good Quick Look, nice and meaty. I might pick this up on the cheap somewhere down the line, it looks like it might be better than Conviction, and I liked Conviction.

I appreciate how a good portion of this video is Brad being uncomfortable with the game. Does this series play the "yeah the NSA are good guys and Sam Fisher is a total badass for murdering all these foreign peoples" as straight as it seems? Because yikes, man.

@amafi: but the fundamental design of the game has been changed to accommodate that different playstyle. Core level design and enemy placement and this and that have all been changed to suit this thing that just shouldn't be there. The game has no focus because it's trying to appeal to all these different people. Can you imagine if call of duty or saints row or whatever decided they were going to start accommodating stealth play? It would no longer resemble the old cod and saints row because the core way the game was designed would have to be altered, it's not something you can just fix by turning up the difficulty or messing around in the options some.

The new hitman was designed with the instinct mode in mind, turning it off doesn't all of a sudden make it like classic hitman, it makes it like new hitman but with a feature missing. And there was a lot more wrong with the new hitman than just instinct mode

Also I did really enjoy conviction and am getting this, I expect to have an even better time

Seeing that your equipment can affect your stealth rating, how easily you die, the lack of sonar goggles, and that a guy can block your melee if he spots you has actually gotten me more excited for this game. I guess I'm getting this somewhere down the line.

fixed

It seriously weirds me out that Splinter Cell seems like the best of the 3 major games that came out this week

Hey man, this looks great! Haven't played a Splinter Cell game since Chaos Theory.

The stealth doesn't look satisfying. The shooting doesn't look satisfying. It seems like this is yet another case of "jack of all trades, master of none" trying to please everyone bullshit.

Either make a stealth game or don't. I've been done with this series since Double Agent, so I personally don't care which direction they would choose at this point since I wouldn't buy it anyway, but they should just be honest with themselves and their audience and make the next one a straight-up shooter. They could probably market it more effectively to the audience they really want and sell way more copies if they didn't have one foot stuck in stealth.

This seems to demonstrate that Jeff is not the sneakiest of the Press Sneak Fucks

I like to think of my stealth play style as tactical threat neutralization.

Jeff's "any stealth game is gonna need to have some of that," comment regarding instant-fails on detection just makes me that much more disappointed that Patrick's the only one who gave Dishonored a fair shake.

It's just weird to hear Brad complain about bad stealth game mechanics, and Jeff justify them, when they had so little interest in a stealth game as great as Dishonored.

Come on Splinter Cell, Its UAS now, not UAV... tsk, tsk.

Man this game looks like SHIT on the old xbox. Actually this game just looks like plain shit to me.

sometimes watching the guys play stealth games is painful.

I was worried they weren't going to even bother with this.

I have played like 7 hours on the PC version. It looks great and I think this game is incredible.

Tried the original and it never clicked. As an older/wiser/more patient gamer, where do fans recommend I jump back in with this franchise?

Man, maybe it's because I'm paying very little attention whatsoever but I don't see the appeal of this game. It's a game where you run around in shadows and shoot dudes? I don't get it, what's the draw? Does this game have one? It seems super plain.

I doubt anyone will read this, but this game is worth buying for the multiplayer alone. It is so good. The campaign has also been surprisingly good so far.

Why wouldn't anyone read it? Cool to know the game's good. I've never been much of a Splinter Cell guy but I like the faster, more accessible pace that Conviction and this game have taken. Some of the stuff I've seen for this game looks pretty sweet. There's too much stuff coming out right now, so I think I'll wait for a price drop.

That's a pretty respectable Wolf Blitzer impersonation around 10:55

Game looks decent enough. I am a little bit dismayed that this game has the Terrorists yelling out combat orders to each other... in english. "He's flanking! Get ready to yell-out your combat directives in English! Don't speak any of the other languages we almost certainly know, only use English when being invaded by most-probably English speaking Commandos!"

as someone who played though that mission as ghost its painful and funny to watch Jeff play this mission,

Looks OK. Maybe when it drops in price.

This actually doesn't look that bad. I mean, everything surrounding the gameplay looks about as generic as you can get, but the open area stealth looks like fun. I'm not in a hurry to pick this one up though; Conviction dropped in price faster than any other game I have ever seen

I like that when Jeff fucks up in a game, it's no big deal for him to go "I fucked that up back there"

@yinstarrunner: I agree, Jeff is not the best SC player. I wish he would show off more than just shooting - there is gadgets you know?. Oh well, it's just as painful as watching Brad during platforming sequences.

I'll guess without watching the video first that this probably isnt even close to a STEALTH game

Completely loving the game so far, from Single Player to Spies vs Mercs. Overall a really solid stealth game to me.

Thanks guys, enjoying now.