Sam Fisher needs new moves. Big Boss is way ahead.

I finally played Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain this week and it was easily the second best game I played this gen, only topped by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Act 1 was rock solid, while Act 2 felt more like a DLC made to deal with loose ends. Yeah I know originally it was supposed to be bigger but Act 1 alone is worth full price, and there are some solid moments in Act 2 as well (but I've decided to not play it on my second walkthrough and only treat it as post launch DLC like Alan Wake's episode 7 and 8). Plus twist towards the end didn't bother me at all. I paid attention to gameplay reveals and opening section of the game and always felt that something is not right. So it made sense when the truth was finally revealed.

Let's talk about gameplay. I love Splinter Cell series and I think Blacklist was a huge improvement over Conviction. If we only judge Stealth then obviously Splinter Cell is more hardcore in that department as Metal Gear Solid had never been a "pure stealth" series but more of an Action Stealth series. However if we judge it as a game and forget about "pure stealth" then I'd say it's offering a lot more than Splinter Cell right now.

First of all, Blacklist is too short and its story and villain weren't as interesting as in MGSV. Second (and most importantly), the gameplay is better here. Sam Fisher needs new moves. Ubisoft needs to introduce new mechanics like crawling and what not. Movement in MGSV was so fluid, it gave you control of the character in a way which was only possible in cutscenes before. Anything you can think of, you can do in this game. Basically it's like original Crysis. You are only limited by your vision and not by game controls.

I can't say the same for Splinter Cell: Blacklist. While the game did provide couple of options to complete your objectives, it often forced you to take a single path to enter mission area even though I wanted to take a different route (may be choose a side street to enter the main building instead of main door). MGSV allows me to do it. It gives me freedom to approach my objective the way I want and complete them the way I want. Anyone who says the game is repetitive,,, bro you don't know what you are talking about.

I'd say Ubisoft should take inspiration from MGSV here. They should keep their hardcore stealth but at the same time also give Sam Fisher new moves, introduce new gameplay mechanics and give us more freedom. Splinter Cell definitely needs to up its standards as a GAME after The Phantom Pain. Looking forward to the next Splinter Cell game :-)

@Cloud_imperium:

I get what you mean but if anything, Sam Fisher has been ahead of Snake for far too long in every aspect of his abilities. Of course, I'm talking about stealth since that was always the main focus of both franchises. In those terms, we don't NEED free roam at all. I loved the idea in Metal Gear 5 and it makes sense for the story.

But Splinter Cell is about hardcore espionage. In which case, all we need is a prime objective, and a base to infiltrate. Anything else would just muddy up the entire point of the game.

I prefer Sam, more realistic as a spy.

I don't want free roam in Splinter Cell. I want more freedom in levels themselves. But that's just me I guess. Plus new moves; crawling, wall climbing etc.

Also bring back interrogation mechanic please.

Please no. taking inspiration form MGS5 would ruined splinter cell even more. I really wanted to like MGS5 but i just gameplay was good but everything else suck. every mission is same. clear outpost, extract the prison or solider, etc

Probably most boring game this generation and one of the most overrated too along with witcher 3 and wolfenstein.

Next splinter cell either should be evolution of chaos theory or not at all.

I think as a stealth feature Splinter Cell only misses crawling but I do agree MGS V is an awesome game that allows you to play as you like. I still wouldn't want Splinter Cell to become MGS V in any way though.

Good points, OP. Splinter Cell does stealth and tech really, really good, but it's just not as fun or as immersive. Love the freedom in MGS V.

@Cloud_imperium:

But Sam Fisher can already scale walls and has 2 levels of crawling. From crouching to prone. He can even jump from wall to wall and keep himself suspended over enemies using two walls close to each other.

if you're talking about blacklist vs mgsv i couldn't disagree more. mgsv's mechanics are sublime, blacklist's sub par, at best.

i got real crysis 1 vibes from mgsv too.

i've made peace with my opinion that splinter cell is dead. sam without ironside is just not sam. the only thing i thought was quite interesting about the game was when it goes fps in the final mission. the rest was awful. ubisoft ubisofted the sh!t out of the game until they got it as banal as their other aaa offerings

I actually agree with most of this (aside from the Witcher 3 and Wolfenstein slander).

I love stealth games, but to me, MGSV missed the point of what makes stealth games compelling COMPLETELY. it totally fails to make you feel vulnerable, meaning it has very little tension, and the open world and missions were incredibly dull.

granted I haven't played any other MGS games but I have absolutely no desire to

in my eyes, even Blacklist was far superior to MGSV

I agree about Blacklist being a an improvement, jack it up to hard, turn all the casual shit off, good time.

Only aspect I do miss is hiding bodies.

I don't know why all people just love to say that MGS V Phantom Pain is unfinished. By that logic every game is unfinished since every game in the world has cut content.(Story,gameplay, enemies etc)

The unfinished/rushed games are games that are either too buggy(Like Driv3r, Tomb Raider Angel Of Darkness , True Crime 2 , Kotor 2) or games that lack content.(Like Star Wars The Force Unleashed 2.)

Phantom Pain neither lacked content or polish and it is as complete as intended.(If Kojima wanted to add a whole new chapter he could make one of the 2 maps smaller and made that chapter which he didn't)

And that Kingdom Of The Flies was supposed to be an epilogue DLC for the game.(Similar to the way that GZ was the prologue)

So Imo Phantom Pain is as finished as it was intended and those repetitive missions were inspired from Peace Walker's repetitive missions.

This is really the only fair complaint with MGS V, it was WAYYYYYYYYY to easy. Almost no challenge even on the stealth missions. Even getting S rank was a joke in almost all the missions, and if there were any that you got hung up on, there was almost always a technique to "cheese" them. I don't mind semi-easy difficulty as a default, but this is a game that almost needed a higher difficulty level for replay-ability. Some of the post-game missions did have increased difficulty or challenge, but it wasn't quite enough IMO.

Far cry from MGS IV in that regard.

I disagree completely with those that complained about the "barren open world", or the "repetitive missions". Yeah, the "side missions" were repetitive, especially if you took 100+ hours or whatever it took to 100% the game (as I did) - but this is the defacto case in all open world games. Nobody makes you do all the extra missions. I'm not sure it's my "game of the gen", but it's definitely up there and will probably remain up there. That's saying something considering it on a technical level is a bit dated now, and is almost a "last gen" game, almost 2 gens old considering it was on PS3.

Blacklist is worst in series. and its the only SC game i never bother to finish.

mass effect like mission breifing, badly done FPS segments, invisible walls, sam fisher doesnot feel like sam fisher atleast in conviction it feel like we are playing as sam fisher.

First 3 splinter cell were masterpieces. double agent was ok but beginning of downfall. everything else suck afterwords. they killed sam fisher character and franchise only need reboot.

yeah the dull / empty / barren open world complaints always seem a bit daft to me. it's early 80s afghanistan desert (to start with) not the vegas strip. get dropped off, do a mission, get out. it's not meant to be played like a fallout or assassin's creed. i'm unsure what people were expecting in that regard.

as for mgsv failing to make you feel vulnerable... the insinuation is blacklist does make you feel vulnerable, and i don't really know how a game that actively encourages you to use combat as a viable play style makes you feel any more vulnerable. as a huge fan of the original splinter cell trilogy i struggle to see what people, assuming they played those games, enjoyed about blacklist. it was just bad. not quite thief reboot bad, but not far off

well, they should have chosen a more interesting setting. I got so freaking bored I never even made it to the second map.

why make it open world if they don't want you exploring? I've always felt large, discrete levels were the way to go with stealth games (ala Dishonored and the good splintercell games)

Blacklist also has something MGS V lacks: difficulty settings. on the higher difficulties, you can't really play it like a third person shooter, because you die so quick. You can ignore or disable most of the stuff that turns it into a action game. Snake could absorb an insane amount of bullets in MGS V and there was no way to change that. I don't give a shit about mission ratings so that wasn't sufficient motivation for me to restart a mission if the sneaking went bad. MGS V gives you a million ways to complete missions, all equally boring.

I'm not even that crazy about Blacklist, but at least I enjoyed it enough to finish it.

I miss the old Van Damn splits maneuver bracing against the walls. Big Boss can't do the splits.

yeah i understand what you're saying. maybe the, in your eyes, lack of difficulty took away from the premise, which was you start with nothing, you need to build an army, so you're forced to commit daring espionage raids against the soviets in their afghan army bases. but if you find the game too easy, there's no jeopardy, so the whole get in, get out mission style is kind of lost on you.

the open world in mgsv is a great enabler for strategically chosen entrances and exits to the mission area. missions often span multiple locations. that's a nice feature bringing another dimension to the game which the open world facilitates. and if you're so inclined to just wander around you can do, it adds to the realism. the open world has its merits.

i agree with you about dishonored and the early splinter cell games. there's no mission in mgsv with anything close to the kind of level design you'll see in dishonored for example. but then you don't get that gritty mgsv military realism in dishonored. and, just for the record, the dishonored games are by far my favourite of the two.

my feeling with mgsv is the mechanics were amazing and the premise initially was cool (something very crysis-like about approaching a mission area with night / day cycles from your area of choice with the freedom to approach it how you choose), but the game was lacking in a lot of other aspects. i'd still rather play it for those great mechanics and that initially enjoyable premise though than the stealth-lite and bastardized splinter cell blacklist

fair enough. the mechanics were certainly sound in MGS V. i guess for myself if I want the style of gameplay that MGS V is going for (aka the 'gritty military realism') i'll play Arma 3, but that game generally lacks the kind of narrative setup that might be a requirement for some people to get invested.

Would love to see a new Splinter Cell. Enjoyed Chaos Theory and Black List so would be ok with something similar to either.

I also enjoyed MGS5 but could do without all the base building non sense. I would like to see something along the lines of MGS3 just with bigger levels from the next MGS (if we ever get one that is)

Look OP, there's two things that I absolutely will not tolerate.

Mayonnaise on french fries.

Complaints about Sam Fisher.

You're walking on very thin ice here my friend, and when you fall through...

Sam Fisher will be waiting there for you.

I mean it makes sense lore-wise, Big Boss was building a nation and the base building just nails the feeling that he truly was building a nation. Solid Snakes story was over 10 years ago, the only ''gap'' that existed was mostly filled by the events of MGSV. There's really nothing more they could've added to make the game you wanted.

MGSV is gutter trash. Glad they kicked Hideo out.

MGS5 was also incomplete game. If this game was not called MGS5. it would not recieve more than 7/10.

its just every other open world game in market. its basically far cry in third person.

And yet games like GTA 3 that was made in 2001 had a much less boring open world. because of a lot of reasons(That I should type a wall of text for that)

It that doesn't excuse this that in PP exploration was completely pointless.(Which is the opposite of true open world games) and PP liked to waste as much time as possible(Via heli rides and boring travelling)

But just having the ability to spawn from different parts of the base would have been the same thing.(But with this difference that it would have saved half of my time wasted on this game)

And If MGS wanted to be realistic then you wouldn't get this option to fulton russian soldiers and easily turn them from their own country.(Or you couldn't use a cardboard box since it's a silly idea)

Agreed, I loved MGSV. It was an MGS game that played more like a Splinter Cell but again with a great MGS story. I'm on my third play-through of it.

@2Chalupas: One thing I have thought about is trying to play the game in Subsistence mode for added difficulty, i.e. deploy with no weapons every mission and try and beat it.

@ghosts4ever: You're clueless af

Sam isn't on the level of Big Boss. Maybe Solid or close to Raiden but he ain't Boss.

@nepu7supastar7: Not in new Splinter Cell games. Many of those gameplay mechanics are removed or are now part of scripted moments. Hanging between two walls of your choice is gone. Climbing fences of your choice is gone too. You can't interrogate random guards anymore. It's too simplified. However Blacklist in alot of cases went in the right direction.

@Cloud_imperium:

Yeah, Blacklist did get rid of alot but my point was that Sam Fisher could already do those things before.

not really. bases weren't big enough to do that effectively. and it wouldn't work for missions which involve tracking transportation from one base to another or assassinating lieutenants across different bases.

and maybe authentic was a better choice of word instead of realism, but i'm sure you knew what i was saying and didn't need to point out the obvious.

i think that's fair. saying mgsv is far cry in third person is probably one of the stupidest things i've ever read on this board. call it metro gear solid with you playing as a russian instead of against the russians and he'd be furiously pulling his little pud to it

MGSV is the only metal gear game I ever loved. It’s gameplay nirvana. Nothing else matters. I shed a tear every time I hear it disparaged. It’s still a contender for game of the generation for me. SOCOM never did much for me. That is all.

I was rocking through MGSV until they poured a bucket of ice water on me with the base building, invasion nonsense... It was a full stop negative distraction for me. Lost steam after that.

Pretty sure Fisher is supposed to be more realistic than Snake. Partly because that, despite it being fiction, is created with the input of Tom Clancy, who tended to make more realistic political/spy thrillers.

Fisher, is that the Sphincter Cell game?