Splinter Cell: Blacklist is arriving on the first crazy games week we’ve had in a while, August 20th. It’ll be up against Saints Row IV and X-Com Declassified: The Bureau, both of which are looking pretty good. So what’s Sam Fisher got in those trifocal goggles?
Essentially, they’re pitching the game as less stealth-oriented and more of a mix. You can sneak around and never kill a single person, sneak around and kill everybody, or just, well, kill everybody:
Honestly, they’re making this sound a lot like a stealth-action game where you can swap on the fly as you need to, and we’re OK with that. The Splinter Cell series has always been solid, but games like this really work best when you aren’t overly stuck on one strategy, and it looks like the team on this is well aware of that. That said, we’re unable to see the term Panther and not immediately think of Anchorman. Which probably explains Sam Fisher’s controversial redesign:
OK, maybe not. But there is a Splinter Cell movie in the works, so if Paul Rudd does somehow wind up cast as the lead, we’re going to claim you heard it here first.