If spies and mercs could just sit down together over a pizza and a few beers I’m sure they could work out their differences. Yet, Ubisoft, being the blood sport-loving developer that they are, have kept them separate and their blood up just so the two archetypes can fight it out in Splinter Cell’s Spies vs Merc multiplayer mode.
Those cruel bastards.
Watch the two go at it in the below trailer.
The thing about enemies of the state, right, is that they like to disguise their identities by altering the pitch of their voices. That’s sort of their prerogative. But I can’t help but feel that their consistent leanings towards the bassier end of the scale - the choice of Sauron and unambiguous evil - only contributes to their unerring ability to attract men like Sam Fisher. Perhaps if they went higher, aimed for shrill or irritating, they’d live a little longer?
Speaking of abilities, Splinter Cell: Blacklist’s new ‘Abilities’ trailer features a pitch-bent voiceover from a likely villain. I wonder which way they’ll go?
Splinter Cell: Blacklist has been running a little bit quiet recently. It's been hiding, you could say. In the shadows. In the black. In the black... list? Now, we've got a little bit more information, courtesy of a commented walkthrough of a level set in an abandoned mill.
Ubisoft have gone and committed Splinter Cell: Blacklist to the clandestine Special Edition Silly Names Initiative that’s evidently been uniting major publishers behind a common cause for the past couple of years. If you live in Europe, the Middle East or Africa, they’ve four silly-titled versions of the game to sell to you, variously including graphic novels, figurines, unlockable maps and whatnot. And for one edition, they’ve forgotten to stop covering their their creative tracks and actually named it after a Bourne film. Don’t believe me? Take a look.
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Nobody’s sure whether it’s because Ubisoft have seen Zero Dark Thirty, or because of the pursed lips that greeted Splinter Cell: Blacklist’s E3 demo. But an interactive torture scene demonstrated to the public last year - in which Sam Fisher pokes a man with a knife in an attempt to drain answers from his body - is now gone from the game.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist has been delayed until August 20th. Boo! Luckily, Ubisoft have seen fit to soften the blow with a new trailer which I’ve dubbed ‘All the Presidents’ Man’.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist has ruffled a few feathers since first being announced. For a start there was the E3 footage that was set during the day and showed Sam Fisher running about sliding over car bonnets Starsky and Hutch-style while shooting men in turbans. Then there was the news that Michael Ironside wouldn't be voicing Fisher and instead a younger more mocap-able actor would be stepping in. So Ubisoft are going to need to claw back some ground before the game is accepted by the Splinter Cell fans. The latest dev diary is a step in the right direction:
“When you’re coming up behind someone you want to take them out quickly and efficiently," advises Ubisoft animation director Kristjan Zadziuk, terrifying everybody else in the office. “So we found a good way of doing it is basically going for nerves in the back of the head, the back of the neck, go for kidneys as well."
Amazon UK have outed Splinter Cell: Blacklist's release date of March 29th, 2013, which makes Splinter Cell: Blacklist perhaps one of the least stealthy games ever - being one of the few you can see coming from eight months away. Also revealed are the game's mandatory pre-order bonuses. Buy now and you'll get a big poster for your bedroom wall, an "exclusive steelbook" (ie. metal case) and a "bonus content leaflet", whatever that is. You'll also get the 'Upper Echelon' pack of digital content, which includes the Upper Echelon sneaking suit, special goggles that "shine gold" and an exclusive mission.
Whether they be drenched in wubwubs, besotted with Inception-esque brawngs, edited together by an ADHD lab-chimp or just grossly misrepresentative of the final product, everybody loves a good old-fashioned videogame trailer. I've gone ahead and pulled together the biggest PC game trailers of E3 and laid them all side by side, to save you wandering all over the internet and potentially getting hurt. Some of them are brilliant.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist takes the latest midlife crisis of Sam Fisher, dropping the aging counter-espionage into the sort of bright environment you wouldn't want to wear night vision goggles in: the Middle East. 
