Black Review 154
- Title: Black
- Developer: Criterion Games
- Publisher: EA
- System:PS2 (Xbox)
Gameplay itself is the height of simplicity. Level maps allow for occasional stealth moments, but for the most part you'll know there are enemies about because they start shooting at you. Once you've identified the points in space you need to click on, you'll notice the numerous explosive crates and gasoline-filled vehicles nearby. In an effort to show off their work on the game's physics, the designers provided flammable cover for your enemies. After you've exploded the obvious targets, you can move out among the wreckage and take down the remaining stragglers. Aside from an understandable desire to flee a thrown grenade, the enemy AI is only slightly more advanced than that utilized by some witty mailboxes. Their most confusing move is the 'don't fire at the player' maneuver. While they're more than willing to take badly aimed shots at you from afar, if you do enough juking around up close they seem to get tired and give up. Firing a gun can be confusing when you're that dumb. Maybe they're confused by the boring sameness of the weapons. Despite the concentration on what happens once the trigger is pulled, the weapons themselves are all pretty much the same. You've got your AK, your shotgun, your silenced pistol, etc. None of them feel appreciably different, and the result is that you'll be switching weapons as soon as you find a new one just to keep your ammo levels up. Strategy is hard to come by on pretty much every level of this title.
Beyond that, the game's focus does result in some fairly impressive gunfights. Bullets spatter and spark off of every metal surfaces, throw up clods of dirt as you walk a burst into an enemy combatant, and chew convincingly through the scenery. The term 'fully destructible environment' is not just marketing; The AI never seems to fully grasp that hiding behind stuff isn't that helpful. When you can break up a downed tree into lumber with a few well-aimed bursts, it's easy to get to take out cowering bad guys. It's even easier when the terrorists shoot out their own cover, but that's another story. Other physical elements are just as convincing. Explosions bloom outwards with smoke and fire, and leave noticeable marks on the environment. Bodies fly heavenward when prompted by a grenade or vaporizing vehicle. Criterion chose to make virtually every other element of this game a secondary priority, and it shows. Black's physical environs are one of the most impressive in any shooter I've played.
That physical environment could have looked better, though. In the graphics department, the game looks merely adequate. Screenshots of the Xbox version seem quite polished, but I had to play the PS2 version. I sold my Xbox to offset my purchase of a 360, which won't play this game at all. The PS2 version of Black has the jaggies problem that plagues many titles on that console. Though that distracted from the experience, the quality of the textures throughout the title match up with the best the PS2 has to offer. The game also moved with a very crisp speed. Even when explosions were dominating the screen, there was little to no slowdown. My only real peeve was the monochromatic color pallete used in many of the environments. Urban areas all trend towards a grey sameness, and more naturalistic maps are dominated by simple greens and browns. On the PS2 the drab colors and jagged pixels made navigating through areas like dense jungle somewhat disorienting.On the other hand, the aural elements of Black are extremely well developed. The detail found in actually firing a weapon is here, with every weapon managing to sound unique. Their watery action prevents a real differentiation, but you can always tell what your opponents are firing merely by the sound their weapons make. All the sound elements are well-crafted, resulting in very satisfying explosions and gunfights that at least sound exciting. Curiously, the occasional musical stings are nowhere near as polished. Ostensibly used to heighten tension, they come across as mostly annoying. After the first few levels I turned them off, and didn't miss them a bit.
Black is a title that could have captured some of the core of gaming fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a stripped down shooter that focuses on the gunplay element of the genre. I reviewed two games that captured that quite well at the end of last year, in fact. What makes me dislike this title over those is the immaturity of the game's language. Whereas Quake IV was a military game, focused on the business of shooting, Black feels more like some cynical kids playing at war. The 'bad guys' do dumb things because they're bad. The good guy always has a ton of ammo at hand, and there are copious explosions. Occasional radio chatter with HQ is so loud I can literally hear the sound of the radio's feedback echoing off of the surrounding terrain. The impression I get from the game is that this secret, stealthy agent is working way through the jungle when suddenly you hear "KSHHHHH AGENT BE AWARE OF POSSIBLE TARGETS INCOMING!!!" The fact that your opponents don't react to this loud and obvious element of their surroundings may indicate that you are listening to your radio through earbuds or headphones. I just think it means their AI wasn't programmed to react to that part of the game. The most interesting and telling element of the game's language, though, is that there is no 'use' button. You want to open a door? You shoot it. You want to destroy information on a laptop? You shoot it. Compared to the nuance of another 'black ops' title such as Splinter Cell, the childlike stupidity of the gameworld is almost embarrassing.
To me, that's what makes Black ultimately unappealing. I could tolerate the sameness of the weapons and the flimsy plot. A lack of sophistication can be appealing sometimes, but even Full Auto is a more grown-up game than this particular title. In focusing on one singular aspect of the game, Black's developers have created a title that falls short of its audience. Criterion's other well known franchise, Burnout, manages to bring the zen experience they were aiming for here to the racing genre. I applaud their effort to distill the FPS down to its most basic elements as well, but the result is an uninteresting mess that I have to work to enjoy. If you're an Xbox owner and just need something to take the edge off of the Halo 3 wait, Black will be a great rental for you. Otherwise, you can feel free to give this one a pass.
Are you playing the same game that I am? (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember, tracers work both ways.
i've played it (Score:5, Interesting)
i have to say i love playing some of the latter stages over and over again because sometimes some games create great classic fun scenarios that you find yourself wanting to play that part over and over again. black definately has those stages.
while black's graphics may be great to look at they truly add to the experience, there's a stage where u hide from a sniper behind gravestones and suddenly the gravestones are shattered by the bullet from the sniper! now you find yourself running and ducking for cover as gravestones shatter around you from sniper fire.
two words: mine field, you'll come across mine fields more than once in the game, and it is abundantly fun.
also have you ever wanted to take a heavy machine gun and just stand up like rambo and unload on an entire building, several cars, dozens of enemeies in front of you and have the whole screen explode and go insane for 15 minutes? well black can give you that.
for those types of scenarios, it's a fantasy well lived.
Did he play it for more than 5 minutes? (Score:3, Interesting)
My take (Score:5, Interesting)
The main problems I had with it were:
* Bizarre definition of 'headshots' - sometimes I could hit a guy five or six times in the face with an M-16 from close range, and he'd just shrug it off rather than dying.
* For a game that was touted as being like a Hollywood blockbuster (I was thinking Commando, Rambo, Die Hard, The Rock), there was a distinct lack of gleeful mayhem and carnage - it very rapidly became 'shoot each guy 30 times to make sure they die. Unless they're armoured, in which case shoot them 60 times.'
* Unskippable (and boring, and irrelevant to gameplay) FMV before each level - if for whatever reason you power down before finishing a level, you have to sit through the whole thing again next time you play. And unskippable credits? Which are just white text on a black background? What the fuck is that all about?
* Several levels were tedious attrition rather than all out action. I hated the bridge level. For a start it was almost the same as a level in some WW2 FPS I played last year. And the gameplay was just 'advance slightly. Take cover. Deal with bad guys hiding behind cars. Wait as more bad guys run up to take their places. Advance slightly. Take cover. Deal with bad guys hiding in a bus. Wait as more bad guys run up to take their places. Advance slightly. Take cover. Deal with bad guy with rocket launcher shooting at you from some angle you can't quite figure. Advance slightly...'
I was hoping it would be the Burnout Revenge of FPS games. Unfortunately, it was just the Burnout. Wait until Black 2 or 3, and they'll probably have got the right amount of fun into the game. But all the tedious advance/cover/shoot stuff made it exactly the same as any other 'realistic' console FPS.
If you're going to have a game that's 'gun porn', why not treat it like an OTT action movie and just throw in hundreds of disposable, easily-killed goons coming at you from all angles a la Arnie's Commando? I mean, Jesus, why does it take 12-15 bullets to the chest just to put one generic bad guy down? I want a hilarious blood-spurting ragdoll death spasm if I hit him in the toe!
A little personality goes a long way (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Did he play it for more than 5 minutes? (Score:3, Interesting)
If they wanted to be realistic, they would give you loads where every other bullet was a tracer round.
Israeli defense doctrine is to load a magazine so that tracer rounds alternate with regular rounds. In operation, the personnel aim by walking the tracers onto the target.
Linky:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzi_submachine_gun [wikipedia.org]