Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist

It's been eight years since the last truly great Splinter Cell game. While both Double Agent and Conviction were decent additions to the Tom Clancy series of espionage and stealth, neither equated to the tense thrills of Chaos Theory. And I, for one, was starting to lose hope for Sam Fischer, the series' protagonist. Now came Blacklist.

This is what Splinter Cell should feel like. Flexible, fluid and intriguing in its gameplay; a quality presentation that feels vivid and looks impressive; an enticing plot but not so complex that you lose both yourself and your connection to Sam. Purists may criticize the decreased emphasis on a stealth approach, but the game's subtle design and incentives will have fans naturally gravitate towards using the darkness and levels to their advantage.

The plot of the game isn't anything revolutionary unfortunately. A terrorist group calling themselves “The Engineers” has started a mission they call "The Blacklist" whereby they will attack one U.S. target each week until the U.S. removes their military presence in 151 countries. Your task? Simple: find them and stop them.

But where the game's plot somewhat sinks, the level design shines. As with any true Splinter Cell game, the environment opens up a realm of tactical choices. Pipes and ducts become your friends as you slink and ripple through shadowy environments. But there's more to the game's settings than darkened warehouses and underground lairs. There's enough variety – light and dark, high and low, crawl and sprint – to appease any player and to keep the gameplay feeling fresh and intense.

While enemies are relatively predictable, they are also highly lethal. The game quickly teaches you to keep a cool head, immersing you into a true sense of danger, never abandoning its roots and degrading the experience into a one-man army approach. If you're smart, you'll survive. If you're a cowboy, you'll lose.

Another nice feature is how you obtain a score at the end of each mission – and subsequent cash for upgrades – depending on your style of play. Highest points go to those playing as a “Ghost,” using non-lethal tactics and leaving enemies undisturbed. On the flip side, you'll also get points and cash for the moments you find yourself playing as an “Assault” player, make things go boom and crash. My personal favourite was to embrace the “Panther,” the silent, unseen predator. What's great about Blacklist is that if a situation forces you into using Assault skills, all your Ghost stealth up until that point and after will still have a payout. This flexibility combined with the incredibly extensive and layered customization – weapons, get-up, and gadgets all can be tweaked – allows you to define your own version of Sam Fischer.

Though not as robust, another interesting feature is the Spider-Bot tie-in game for your smartphone. While not overly engaging on its own, it's nice to know that grinding through an hour of tedium can be exchanged for a quarter mil in the real game, though this becomes rather moot later when one realized that playing as a ghost nets huge cash anyway.

Other elements are equally superfluous and taint the game's mastery. Missions when you have to play as another, after having become one with Sam and his style, can be frustrating. And while dissension in the ranks of Sam's team and questionable orders make for a thicker story, the periodic calls to Sam's daughter feels tacked on without any real impact on Sam's character. With the lack of any real decision-making, the overall story becomes rather straightforward in its execution.

Still, Blacklist's flexible, true-to-form gameplay, its quality, varied presentation, and its superb online challenges, makes it the best Sam Fischer game this generation has seen.