Splinter Cell Blacklist Diaries Part Two

This is my ongoing exploration of the Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell games, played in release order. I will chronicle my playthrough of each title in turn and discuss any recurring themes and noteworthy events. This time I continue Blacklist.

Having extracted Kobin from his captors, we were planning our next move to stop The Engineers from carrying out their next terror attack…

Kobin’s intel led us to a payment made from Mirawa, Iraq. We set course straight away, believing that to be The Engineers’ base of operations. I had to use Isaac to snipe some targets while Sam was parachuting down to the dropzone, and through some rapid shooting I managed to get them all before they knew what was going on.

The route upstream was clear, so I went on my merry way to the first village I came across. I tased one of the two guards and left the other one alone, heading up some stairs to a big house on the hill. I flew a drone up inside to record some voices, trying to find out who was inside before I went in. The drone exploded, somehow not alerting the men inside, without a positive ID so I went in myself.

After grabbing one of the men inside, I dumped him unconscious on the stairs before heading up to go around on the landing. I had to climb out, so threw a noisemaker to distract the men in the main hall, then slipped out of a window. I climbed in through another window and knocked out an armoured man before hacking the nearby laptop, then went into the next room to get a positive ID.

One brief thrashing later, the man revealed himself to be from MI6. Unfortunately for him, Grim revealed that he had been burnt by the agency, and most definitely was not undercover, so I shot him. Charlie told me that there was a signal nearby that was uploading a ton of data, so I should check that out.

Leaving the building, I began to climb a cliff as multiple Fourth Echelon teams engaged other targets. I listened to them for a bit before reaching the top, well beneath a bridge anyway. I attempted to be stealthy, but with “crouch behind cover” also seeming to be bound to “climb over cover”, I was spotted and had a bit of a firefight. Luckily, I had packed a shotgun after my success with it during the last game.

With many men dead behind me, I went into a cave complex which The Engineers had dug, presumably to avoid being spotted by flyovers. I came out in another village, where I once again tried to be stealthy, but once more the controls made me leap over several pieces of cover instead of hide behind them. I shot one guy and grabbed another target of interest before scarpering, managing to avoid being spotted by six or seven other men and a dog.

Once up another climb, I executed a couple of men and escaped into another tunnel system. Now closing in on the signal source, I discovered a bombed out building, so had to climb around it. I went through a door on the other side, finding an executed soldier from the Anderson base. The Engineers wanted to send a message, so had recorded it and left it on a tablet for me to find - and had recorded my arrival.

Suddenly, the Paladin reported that they had lost control of the drone. It was being hacked! The building began to explode, so I legged it. Isaac was en route with the chopper, and I was hoping to meet him as I ran down through the exploding village. Isaac began counting down, and I leapt aboard the helicopter with minimal injuries.

With hours to go until the next target - called “American Consumption” by the Engineers - we were headed to Dallas where intel showed they were hitting. However, Charlie suggested that it was Chicago, as the TSA had missed five passengers from an inbound flight due to “system maintenance”. We went in to find a festival hall rigged to blow, with people shot dead scattered about the place.

After taking down three like a ninja stealth master, I was spotted. I managed to sneak away, and head for the lower levels where I took down a couple more of these two-bit terrorists. It wasn’t looking like the kind of professional attack that the Engineers were becoming known for. Taking two more down, Charlie unlocked a door for me and I went through.

I found the survivors in the basement, taken hostage by five more of the thugs. I took two down without being spotted, but the rest noticed and went after me. I managed to kill them, and went down a ladder into the sewer system, where two more were patrolling, with three others at the end of the tunnel. I executed the patrolling pair and waited to take the other three out separately - one was armoured, and another was a wanted target, so another execution wasn’t on the cards.

Sam shot a tank-shaped drone and interrogated the operator to find out that the Engineers were poisoning the water supply. Further down the tunnel, I hid from another drone, then slowly took out three patrolling mercenaries before finally getting the second operator. Finally out of the sewers, I took down a sentry and found myself on the opposite side of the river to the festival hall. Up some stairs into the control room, Grim told me that I had ten minutes before the pumps they had attached had poured in enough chemical agent to be deadly.

Sliding down the ladder to go for the left hand device first, I knocked out a guard, but his buddy in front of us turned around before I could get him. I shot him, but the alarm was out, and the remaining few men swarmed my location. Luckily, I was able to slip out and get to an elevated position where I planned on taking them out quietly.

The plan went to hell, and I wound up having to use my shotgun on the few remaining men, before I could deactivate the pump. Once it was deactivated, I had to get across the facility to the other water vat, which I was able to do via a tunnel. Since the gathered men were watching for me to come from the control room, I managed to sneak around to the pump. Unfortunately, as I was taking out the armoured bloke, someone spotted me. Several dead men later, I deactivated the pump.

Grim informed me that it was too late, and that the levels were already too high. So, great job on working that out, Grim… Charlie threw me another option - to shut off the main valve, to stop the water getting out of the reservoir. I went through the tunnel again and shut off the valve, thwarting the Engineers.

Back aboard the Paladin, Briggs informed me that it would have gone smoother if he was on the ground too. After his foul up by “assuming” that Kobin was in the wrong building, he hadn’t been deployed except for picking me up. I’d have to keep an eye on him, with that attitude…