Friday, June 15, 2012

Splinter Cell isn't about stealth?

I'm starting to get quite angry about everyone going on about how Splinter Cell: Blacklist has lost the stealth the series is renowned for. Is this simply because of the E3 demo? But it's an E3 demo, its always going to be big and loud. While it does show Sam Fisher running out into the middle of the bad guys guns ablazing. that's not all it offers. Just before Mr Fisher gets a little gun-happy he's quietly sneaking along the outskirts of the enemy camp, opens up the back of tent with a knife and takes out the first guard without a single person noticing. THEN he jumps out and murders four people in the blink of an eye, but it's an active choice of the player rather than the only move available to him.

Later on Sam runs up a wall and kills a guard on the balcony above, now this is pure Conviction style stealth, but whoever is playing this demo is going for flashy in order to please the audience. Instead of being careful with the body he drops it straight into water directly in the path of the other enemies and shit kicks off. It was immediately apparent that this was a speed-run and I could see how to do it better if he just paused for a second or two, but that's not the nature of standing on stage in front of the large crowd demonstrating a game.