There are few franchise I get excited about, and Splinter Cell is one of them. I used to think the franchise had climaxed with Chaos Theory (closest thing to perfect on the Original Xbox,) but after suffering through Double Agent and Conviction, I was pleasantly surprised by Blacklist. Yes, I know it did a lot of things differently from traditional Splinter Cells, and leaving out the iconic Ironside was an extremely gutting change, but after getting into it, I found it to be a great game, the best SINCE Chaos Theory, IMO. It really opened up the franchise giving nearly every mission viable options to go stealth, guns blazin' or a mix of the two. Of course, I went pure stealth my first time through (and Blacklist's stealth does traditional Splinter Cell great justice,) but played several missions full-on Rambo afterwards and found it to be just as enjoyable if in a different way.
I will say this: in an era of gaming wherein developers/publishers are quick to find one thing that works (read: "sells") and repeat it ad nauseam every single year until it doesn't work anymore, I'm glad to see they haven't given up on Splinter Cell. Yes, they've tried a lot of different takes and Splinter Cell hasn't necessarily "blockbusted" in a while, but they recognize the promise it has always had, so they've enough faith to keep the franchise alive. I need a good organic, realistic military stealth game from time to time to offset all these devs who're convinced gamers aren't content unless they're frenetically racking up kill streaks whilst running along walls, jumping 12 feet in the air directly into a mech with rocket launchers for arms.
