Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist

Blacklist sees Sam Fisher and his covert posse returning to the series’ sneaky-happy roots in good form, and it’s easily one of the best stealth offerings I’ve delved into in a long time.

Fisher’s annoyingly sulky character, questionable controls when it comes to grabbing people next to doors, traditionally daft ending level and the buggy Uplay services – these are pretty much all the sins of Blacklist. They can be easily forgiven because the rest of the game is stealth action goodness.

Splinter Cell: Blacklist isn’t absolutely perfect, but there’s bags of quality content here that’ll keep stealth gamers happy on-and-offline.

Blacklist takes a big step back. And in a positive sense.

With Conviction, the Splinter Cell series seemed to be veering off course, but Blacklist thankfully grabs the wheel and gets it back on track.

Splinter Cell Blacklist is one of the better entries in the long lived spy-saga. It offers great gameplay choices and sneaking is heavily rewarded. On top of that the multiplayer is also confidently crafted. The one thing lacking is the banal story with flat characterization that hinders Splinter Cell Blacklist from reaching any narrative high points.

Though it lacks the subdued intelligence of Chaos Theory, there's still some cracking good sneaking to be had. [Oct 2013, p.92]

Still, whether this is your first Splinter Cell or your eighth, you deserve to give it a shot because while it’s not the best Splinter Cell, it is one of them.

Blacklist isn’t a revolution for the Splinter Cell series but a refinement of everything that came before, enticing new players and welcoming back those who enjoyed all of Sam’s previous escapades.

I still haven't got the multiplayer working, but the single-player is good enough to be worth the asking price by itself.

The level of ambition is close to insane as Ubisoft Toronto wants to prove once and for all that the world's greatest assassin isn't called Snake (or Corvo). The action elements tend towards silliness however, and the single-player mode doesn't fly as high as the co-op as well as the brilliant Spies vs Mercs.