**NOTE: This post will contain potential spoilers for the Splinter Cell series as a whole in discussing story/plot points and levels.**

I recently played these three games and wanted to post my thoughts on them, it was a lot of fun, and interesting to see how the series changed from game to game. I didn’t really feel like doing individual reviews of each game, and given how I played them, reviewing and discussing them together (and in relation to each other) made more sense to me.

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**Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory**

This is probably the game that comes to mind for most people when thinking of Splinter cell, and for a title that released in 2005, it holds up amazingly well. The stages are iconic and really stand out as well done throughout the game. The emphasis on light and shadow with high contrast is awesome. The graphics are a little goofy at times (especially when holding and interrogating an enemy), but overall the aesthetic just works.

Many levels stood out as excellent. The first stage starting on the beach and traversing the initial caverns really sets the stage for how the game plays out. Right from the beginning you’re provided multiple routes to head for your objective, and the game feels like it teaches you its expectations simply by existing as it is. If you’re spotted, it’s bad, but not game ending. You can kill or disable enemies or just sneak past them like a ghost. You’re given tools to deal with situations both lethally and non-lethally, and it’s just great.

The story in this one was… there. It definitely existed. But it’s not why you play this one.

I’m usually bad at stealth games, despite liking them a lot, and I spent a lot of time slowly navigating stages, save scumming like crazy, and knocking out almost every guard in hopes of interrogating interesting info. Some of the conversations are hilarious, and I love Fisher’s level of snark. I didn’t ghost a single level, but I was also never detected.

This was far from my first time playing Chaos Theory, but it was my first time ever finishing it and I really enjoyed it. CT is still a high bar for stealth games, despite now being over 20 years old. There’s not much I can say that probably hasn’t been said better by others, but this is absolutely worth playing.

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**Splinter Cell: Conviction**

Hoo boy. This one is known to be the black sheep of the series. That said, it’s also one of my favorite games of all time. I’ve replayed it many times. I mean, it’s a 6-8 hour game that I’m comfortable finishing in under 5 hours now, and I have around 39 hours played on Steam (and that’s not accounting for the time spent on the Ubi non-steam version). I love it.

Conviction was *very* divisive on release, because it just doesn’t feel like Splinter Cell. The older games were slow, methodical, and designed that the optimal way to play was to be an absolute ghost. Conviction is essentially the opposite. It’s violent, aggressive, the stealth is more cover based, and Sam Fisher is highly violent. It’s very different from what came before.

Thing is… It worked. They nailed it. Conviction is a very personal story for Sam. For some background, in the previous game (Double Agent), Sam goes deep undercover inside a terrorist organization after the presumed death of his daughter in an accident. Over the course of Double Agent, Sam loses everything. His daughter is dead. One person in the JBA he comes to see as either a mentee or love interest (depending on version played, don’t ask) is killed. And in the canon version of events, he had to execute Lambert, his boss and best friend, at the end to keep his cover.

The Sam Fisher we see in Splinter Cell: Conviction is bitter, angry, and has isolated himself and left 3rd Echelon to essentially retire. Grim pulls him back into the game with news that his daughter is actually alive, and her death was a cover to protect her from Sam’s enemies that kinda slipped through the cracks after Lambert died, as only Lambert and Grim knew of it.

Sam is *pissed* and it comes through in every action, movement, conversation, and in the gameplay mechanics. He’s John Wick before John Wick.

I love this game more than is probably reasonable. But despite not feeling like traditional Splinter Cell, Ubi’s team committed hard on the gameplay and aesthetic, and they created something that just hasn’t been replicated. The stealth is fast, the movement fluid, mark and execute lets you take out up to four enemies at once after doing a melee takedown, and everything is just so fast and smooth and gives you a feeling of complete badassery. I love the way objectives are projected onto the environment, how everything drops to grayscale when you’re in shadow. Sam doesn’t have his tools for much of this game, but he doesn’t need them.

Also, I love how personal this one is. We see a different side of Sam Fisher here than in any of the other Splinter Cell games. Yes, it eventually turns into the typical Tom Clancy affair with a plot to assassinate the president and all, but much of the game is personal and it has one of the best plots in any of the games.

Lastly, I want to mention what many would call the elephant in the room in this game. The enemy callouts. Enemies are constantly yelling at Fisher. “I know you’re there Fisher! Come on out!” Or “Trying to catch a plane, *Fisher?*” And so on. It seems obnoxious, and many people hated it. But I feel like they’re missing the point.

The enemy knows who Fisher is because they’re working for Tom Reed and 3rd Echelon, who has gone corrupt after Reed took over after Lambert’s death, and is plotting a coup. In the earlier games (certainly it was noted in Chaos Theory) it was hinted that there was a mole inside 3rd Echelon, and it was confirmed in this one that Reed was the mole. The enemies you fight know who Fisher is. And this is my roundabout way of saying: They are *terrified* of him.

It becomes obvious over time that the enemy call outs are just bravado and shit talking, because Fisher is basically the boogeyman, the reaper to these goons. These guys are disposable mercs and they know it. Consider how jumpy they are, how they react when a light goes out or if they notice someone disappear. They completely freak out every time. They’re cannon fodder to someone of Fisher’s calibre. It becomes even more obvious later on when you do the mission to infiltrate 3rd Echelon headquarters. The enemies there speak normally, communicate sitreps, and refer to Fisher as “the contact.” They maintain profesionalism and behave more intelligently than the Black Arrow mercs earlier in the game. I love the attention to detail in this, and I can’t believe so many people miss it.

I could go on and on, there’s so much to love about Conviction, and like Chaos Theory, the stages are memorable and well done. Every level feels like a stealth playground.

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**Splinter Cell: Blacklist**

This one is a return to form, a Splinter Cell game that plays like a Splinter Cell game. That said, while I feel it was the most interesting of the three mechanically, it wasn’t the best. In some ways, it’s not even as good as Conviction, in part because it fails to commit. It tries to accommodate the traditionalists who loved the original Splinter Cell Trilogy, as well as the people who liked the more fast paced action stealth of Conviction. And while it was admirable, I don’t think it fully succeeds at either.

The game has three “play styles” that you’re rewarded for, Ghost, Panther, and Assault. Ghost would be original style careful stealth, remaining undetected, and dealing with things non-lethally. Panther is more the Conviction style gameplay, lethal, but stealthy, and if you get caught, reposition, get out of sight, and finish the job. Assault is…weird. The series is not known for being an action shooter, but that’s Assault style. I didn’t bother with this one.

In the past I’ve always played Panther style and treated it as a sequel to Conviction. This time around, having finished Chaos Theory so recently, I decided to try Ghost, and it went better than expected. Initially the game seems designed for the Panther style. Stealth is hard, and your gear sucks. Enemies seem to have supernatural hearing, and notice you even from behind when you’re as slow and quiet as can be. This is soon mitigated by upgrading your Ops suit, and after a few upgrades you’re basically a silent ninja. From there Ghost style is breezy.

I had a lot of fun playing this way and it was very different from past experiences with the game. I still feel like the sonar goggles are a bit of a cheat, and the game suffers from that 2010s cover shooter HUD-ness. It’s got an overreliance on the radar for staying undetected. Light and shadow are less defined than in older games, and hiding is still heavily cover based, especially with many missions taking place in the daytime.

The story is actually good, the Engineers are a compelling group of villains, Sadiq knows all the tricks, being a disenfranchised former MI-6. The game is rather cinematic, and almost feels like playing episodes of something like “24” having an episodic vibe to the missions and ongoing situation. I actually really liked this.

You’re given a ton of tools as usual, but the mechanisms behind it is weird. Unlocking and upgrading gear makes little sense, the costs are just a time and money sink, and feel out of place. But I guess it lends it replayability. You can unlock most of the gear in a single playthrough, though depending on the order you upgrade the plane and your gear, the game becomes either really easy, or *extremely* frustrating.

Lastly, I get why Michael Ironside wasn’t available, but it felt disrespectful to recast Sam, and this just didn’t feel as much like Sam Fisher. Like a skinwalker took over and it was the same character at appearance and in gameplay, but in cutscenes this just didn’t feel like Sam. The wit and snark are gone, there’s no levity, and while I get that he’s stressed, the stakes are high, this does not seem to be the way Sam Fisher reacts to high stakes, based on previous games. It’s like a fan fiction of Sam Fisher. Not the worst thing and it doesn’t ruin the game, but it’s there.

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I had a ton of fun playing these over again the last few weeks, and all three are absolutely worth a play. That’s all I’ve got. This was longer than I anticipated, so if you made it this far, thanks for reading my TED talk.