Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist is a 2013 action-adventure stealth game developed by Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft. The game is the sequel to Splinter Cell: Conviction and the seventh installment of the Splinter Cell series. Players control Sam Fisher, a highly trained operative working for the Fourth Echelon, in a mission to stop the Engineers, a group of terrorists which is trying to coerce the United States into recalling all of its troops stationed abroad. The gameplay is similar to its predecessors, with players tasked with completing objectives and defeating enemies. Blacklist marks the return of the asymmetrical multiplayer mode Spies vs. Mercs, which was introduced in Pandora Tomorrow. Blacklist is the first title developed by Ubisoft Toronto, a studio founded by Ubisoft in 2009. The game was directed by Maxime Béland, who had worked on Conviction. The game endeavors to combine elements of its predecessors, including the action focus of Conviction and the stealth focus of the older games. To prepare for this game, Béland studied reviews and feature lists of the latter. Eric Johnson provides the voice and motion capture for Sam Fisher, replacing Michael Ironside, who did so for the previous games. The later-announced Wii U version was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, which also developed the game's multiplayer. Announced at E3 2012, Blacklist was released for PlayStation 3, Windows, Wii U, and Xbox 360 in August 2013. The game received generally positive reviews from critics when it was released, with praise for its level design, story, gameplay, combat, soundtrack and multiplayer mode. However, criticism was directed at its graphics, lack of challenge, and ending. Further criticism was also directed from some fans towards Johnson's casting as Fisher. The game underperformed commercially, selling two million units within three months of its release.