YMMV / Splinter Cell: Blacklist

• Complete Monster: Former MI6 agent Majid Sadiq is the leader of the Engineers and the mastermind behind the Blacklist attacks. He introduced his group to the public by blowing up an Army base and kidnapping one of the soldiers, later cutting the man's throat while recording a video message. Future attacks involved trying to poison the water supply of Chicago with a deadly biological agent; an attempt to unleash nerve gas into several trains in Philadelphia and setting the largest gas terminal on the gulf coast on fire. He also tried to goad the U.S. government into declaring war with Iran by creating false evidence that made it look like they were behind his attacks. While he publicly claimed that the terrorist attacks would stop as soon as the USA called back all their troops stationed abroad, this was just another ruse. His true goal was to cause so much chaos that the government would enact an emergency protocol and transfer all their sensitive data to a secure bunker beneath Denver International Airport. Once that happened, he and his men stormed the bunker, where Sadiq had his men torture the Secretary of Defense until he would give them access to the data. Notably he only became a terrorist after an US drone strike wiped out the Iraqi village he was stationed in, yet he himself never mentioned the villagers even once or showed any kind of sadness about their deaths. In the end his atrocities outweigh any justification he may once had.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Heavy Infantry. You can't knock them out from the front and you can't gas or shock them, sneaking up on them from behind is risky, taking them out from above or using an execute with the gas function of the crossbow are the most reliable ways of taking them down. If you go Assault, they like ambushing you from around corners and typically carry either shotguns which will kill you in 1 or 2 hits (Usually as a result of running into them in said corners) and will instantly kill a bleeding out player in co-op, or a equally annoying and dangerous Desert Eagle and Shield combo. They also soak up entire magazines from assault rifles like sponges unless you knock their helmet off and shoot them in the head. Incendiary grenades are the best option against them when going Assault, as it will kill them in one hit if they are in range of the fire.
  • Dogs are fast, hard to hit, and will hold you in place once they get close to you until you shake them off, making you a easy target for enemy soldiers and screwing up your combo when going Assault. They also alert and detect you much faster than other enemy types, and will smell and follow you even if they can't see you once you come within a certain distance of them, which also alerts enemy soldiers and brings them along with the dog.
• Goddamn Bats: Drone operators in Blacklist, they themselves aren't numerous, but until you take them out, they will keep on sending drones and prevent you from using your goggles.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The hacks done on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 strikes hard when you consider that the Engineers have succesfully targeted fuel pipelines in Louisiana.
• Mis-blamed: Accusations initially flew toward the studio and publisher over the replacement of Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher out of the belief that he'd been cut unfairly. It wasn't until later that Ironside revealed he'd been undergoing cancer treatments during the game's production and was keeping his condition private.
• Narm: The phone calls between Sam and Sarah are hard to take seriously because, despite it supposed to be an exchange between father and daughter, they sound the exact same age. It isn't far from the truth; Sarah's voice actress is actually older than Eric Johnson.
• Questionable Casting: Sam Fisher's voice in Blacklist. Eric Johnson, a twenty-years-too-young bit player, voices a nearly 60-year-old grizzled, charismatic, and cool-sounding hero... It's later explained that Michael Ironside kept quiet about the casting due to his cancer treatment.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Fans of the slower-paced, Dirty Martini earlier games were not impressed by Conviction and its redesigned Predator style gameplay, Darker and Edgier tone, and more linear level design. While Blacklist isn't a complete pivot back to the original games, it is a strong step in that direction. The stealth gameplay has been readjusted to accommodate different approaches, including a complete Ghost playstyle and a nonlethal playstyle, while still including the Predator gameplay from Conviction and expanding upon it dramatically. The game even includes a more aggressive "run and gun" cover shooter style of play for people who just enjoy the shooting, and each playstyle can be switched to depending on what the mission calls for, creating replayability. The tone is moved back to being lighter than Conviction too, with more humor and Sam mellowing out. Lastly, while the levels aren't completely nonlinear like they were in Chaos Theory, they still allow for far more approaches than what Conviction offered and the aforementioned loadout customization means missions can have quite a bit of variety. Thus, a lot of fans who despise Conviction genuinely enjoy Blacklist for what it offers, even if it doesn't reach the heights of the original trilogy.
• That One Level:
  • Abandoned City. Towards its end, Commandos enter in groups while you have to hack 4 laptops, and they don't stop spawning until you're done. The very last part of the level has Sam and Briggs knocked down on the ground and forced to gun down multiple waves of commandos and drones without being able to move or revive each other, and there is a glitch where dying and reloading from the checkpoint there can stop spawning enemies after so long, forcing a full mission restart. Pray you didn't bring a sniper rifle. Also, even though there are Undetected and Non-Lethal checks for the level, they are impossible to achieve due to said shootout.
  • Private Estate. The very opening is incredibly linear, as the main courtyard must be passed through, contains a lot of artificial lighting and moonlight, and has a few guards sat around. The only way to pass through is on ground level on foot (i.e. there's no hidden alternate/climbing/vent paths like in the bulk of the game) and there's a really twitchy guard dog patrolling the place. If you ever come within it's view or a dozen meters radius, it immediately makes a beeline for you and brings a guard or two with it and, again, there's nowhere to hide or alt paths to escape to; the option is to either run for it or backtrack to the garage to hide. The kicker? The level ends with a forced alert sequence, so you're going to need as many "enemies untouched" bonuses as you can get if you want that perfect Ghost score.
  • Swiss Embassy. Unlike the other Charlie missions which are at least decently large, open and have some good hiding spots, Swiss Embassy is small, linear, and has very few hiding spots, so enemies will quickly detect you. Enemies also tend to come in larger groups earlier in this mission than other Charlie missions, and the later waves are a absolute nightmare to get through, with Dogs and Heavy Infantry everywhere in small, well-lit and enclosed spaces, which even includes Heavy Infantry HVTs with riot shields. Even worse, the enemies tend to spawn on opposite sides of the map from each other in this mission, so if you want to get a mastery in the first five waves through comboing (Possible in each of Charlie's missions) before all the painful stuff comes in, you better have some good reflexes and luck.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The announcement of Michael Ironside being replaced by Eric Johnson from ABC's Rookie Blue prompted some long-time fans to swear off the game, claiming that it was evidence of the franchise straying too far from its roots. There was a legitimate reason to replace Ironside, a series mainstay — the voices were done in-scene using the motion capture so as to get a realistic, visceral feel, and Ironside (who did help train Johnson for the part and gave his blessing) later explained that he wasn't sure if he could do the role due to being treated for cancer at the time.
  • There's also the fact that Sam seems to be bizarrely aging in reverse. Blacklist is the most recent entry in the series yet Sam not only sounds 20 years younger, he looks it too (keep in mind that Sam is a veteran of the first Persian Gulf War who also has a college-age daughter; he was 47 at the start of the series). In Ghost Recon Wildlands, Ironside returns to voice Fisher, who has a much-more appropriate appearance (he looks much more grizzled than his appearance in Blacklist, which functionally has him as a man in his mid-40s with grey hair and stubble) and is functionally on the cusp of retiring, being informed that a fellow operative his age has already retired.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Given how Conviction went to the effort of implying that Fisher had definitively ended his working relationship with the U.S. Government and wanted nothing more to do with that life anymore (after doing something similar in Double Agent, where he functionally leaves Third Echelon after the New York debacle), the time was right for a new point-of-view character to pick up where Fisher had left off, and would have thematically made sense with the decommissioning of Third Echelon and the activation of Fourth Echelon. Instead, Fisher is brought back again, this time working as a field operative in tandem with his role running Fourth Echelon, a notion that doesn't particularly lend itself well to the plot, particularly because Briggs is set up as the character who will take over from Sam (to the point that he is the Player Character for most of the final mission).
  • Blacklist also could have worked great as a prequel to the series without having to change the final product massively. The plot even goes to pains to establish Sam working with Vic in Mirawa when the Engineers attack, took pains to de-age him in certain respects, introduces a cast of characters with little baggage from the previous games (barring Grim, Kobin and Kestrel), and could have revolved around terrorists who were connected to an older Middle-East conflict (e.g. the Gulf War). Instead, the plot is specifically tied to connect to the Occupy Wall Street movement, thus dating the game even when it came out^note Occupy Wall Street had largely been disbanded / disrupted by 2013, and the campaign ends with Sam still pledging to stay involved in field missions, even when Sarah asks him to spend more time with her (which could have better explained his domestic double-life in the original games).
  • The co-op campaign ends with Kestrel, the Russian agent from Conviction's co-op campaign, who was apparently killed at its conclusion being rescued by Sam and Briggs, who recover him and bring back to the Paladin for treatment. The game ends without showing said character wake up, nor does it go to the trouble to payoff Kobin's Heel–Face Turn and remorse for what he did to both Archer and Kestrel at the end of said co-op campaign.
• Win Back the Crowd: The promised Perfectionist difficulty in Blacklist seems to be this as it is a return to classic stealth play, removing melees from the front and the Execute part of Mark & Execute, features from Conviction that have deterred hardcore fans of the earlier games.
• The Woobie:
  • Sam slips into Jerkass Woobie in Blacklist.
  • The Secretary of Defense in Blacklist. Being tortured by having his hand cut off and then having to be executed by Briggs before he can provide Sadiq with national security files. Government bureaucrats aren't usually shown with much sympathy in this series, but you just feel for the guy.