Intro:
We are all familiar with this situation. We hear all this hype
about an upcoming game, it’s getting loads of media and press attention and the
screenshots and trailers look amazing. The game gets released and you take the
plunge and fork over 50 quid for the game. And when we start playing it makes a
great first impression and we believe the hype and attention was deserved, Only
to be sitting in front of a screen hours later having finished the game,
wondering what all the fuss was about. Black Definitely falls into this
category. It’s been in development for a long time and has received a lot of
gaming press attention and when you play the first mission or two its hype seems
warranted, and while the game can be immensely fun, has some glaring flaws that
ruin the experience.
The game was developed by Criterion and published by
EA, the same team that brought us burnout and to draw a comparison, there are
some similarities between the two. Both look and sound great, and in both the
games that action is relentless and moves at a very frantic pace. The problem is
whereas Burnout had a pretty deep game underneath all its flair, Black simply
doesn’t. To put it another way Burnout “has a lot more under the hood”, (pardon
the pun)
Graphics:
By Far and away the games biggest draw is it
visuals. The main reason Black got all its media attention is simply because it
looks amazing. At times it’s hard to believe someone got a game to look and move
so well on the current generation of consoles, but Criterion pulled it off and
while the PS2 does bog down a bit in places this is an extremely well polished
looking game. There is not one solitary thing in the game that does not look
great, from the environments to the weapon models, to the explosions and
particle effects. It is easily the best looking shooter on the PS2 and just
altogether one of the best looking games of this console generation. The
developers clearly went for an action movie feel for the game and to achieve
this there is a huge amount of explosions in the game and they look amazing. The
first time you blow up a truck or oil tank it really makes you sit up and take
notice. Pretty much everything in the environments is destructible in some way
and it’s so well done that it’s never boring. Not only does Black look great
with the big stuff like explosions and models but there are loads of nice little
graphical touches that are really impressive. clouds of dust kick up if bullets
hit dirt, shards of glass fly everywhere when grenades and such explode, every
bullet fired that doesn’t hit a soldier will leave a mark on the environment, be
it a simple bullet hole in a wall or a chunk of concrete knocked out of said
wall. There are times in the game I found myself looking around at an area I had
just cleared of soldiers and marveling at the amount of destruction that had
been caused and how well represented it was. There was one slight graphical
glitch in the game where you would reload a weapon but the reload animation was
of a completely separate weapon but this only occurred a few times throughout
the game.
Sound:
The Sound in Black is good but not great. All
the weapons sound like they should and sound distinctly different when you fire
off a few rounds. There are some nice little touches that complement the
graphical effects such as the sound of bullets hitting the ground and ripping
through body armour. Unfortunately you will end up using just the same weapons
over you will get tired of the sound of the likes of the AK and MP5. The
explosions sound great, with shattering glass effects and such. Other than this
there is not really much to talk about on the topic of sound. Like any action
FPS there is plenty of up tempo/rock music during the missions and gunfights and
while they are not as generic and annoying as some games they are not brilliant
either. There are some occasions when you might be approaching an enemy position
and the music succeeds in creating a tense atmosphere, but overall you won’t pay
much attention to the music. There is some voice work in mission, mostly from
you commanding officer giving you directions over the radio and to be fair it
does sound very authentic. The Voicework in the games cutscenes is nothing great
either. Not that this is a fault of the actors but more to do with the material
they are given, there is far too much use of cryptic phrases, the like you would
see in a Tom Clancy novel, the designers clearly wanted to create a
cloak-in-dagger, black-ops feel to the dialogue but they overdid the use if
these phrases and terms and the cut-scenes are so short, that most of them are
not interesting at all.
Gameplay:
The gameplay, much like the
graphics, makes a great first impression. From the very first mission the action
comes at you thick and fast and the relentless pace of the first couple of
missions never lets up. The game designers have clearly gone for an over-the-top
action movie feel. And in this endeavour they definitely succeed. This action
movie feel is well supplemented by the graphics and sound in that the explosions
look and sound so good, that you will find yourself looking for stuff to blow up
and the enemy does their fair amount of destruction also, RPG soldiers will
bombard you with rockets constantly and the exploding environment Is just as
harmful to you as it is to them. The one really neat gameplay touch worth
mentioning though, is that the exploding scenery doesn’t just look good it can
be used as a weapon, if a guy is hiding behind a brick wall you can simply empty
a few magazines into it and the scenery will crumble, leaving you to pick off
your man, the rubble from walls and pillars and such can actually damage the
enemy if it hits them.e.g. Blast a pillar that someone is using for cover and
the falling rubble will crush them; in some indoor areas you can even use the
likes of the shotgun to make your own doorways.
This all sounds great
and initially the game is great fun but after say the first 3 missions,
repetition starts to set in and after the initial impression the game makes has
worn off you start to notice the cracks in the gameplay. The problem is that as
much fun as black can be it is a very basic, run-of-the-mill shooter underneath
it all. If you are the kind of person who likes a bit of Ghost Recon or Socom
Black isn’t really going to do much for you. The Basic premise of all the
missions is enter an area, shoot the living hell out of everything in that area
and move on, the missions are based around a set of primary objectives but these
are all of the make it from point A to point B variety You are never once asked
to do something like take out a specific target or protect anything. The game
does have secondary objectives but these are all just in the form of pickups,
like secret documents or items that need to be obtained or destroyed, (some
classic action and spy movies are referenced by these objects but this doesn’t
really make it any more interesting). Now don’t get me wrong in this generation
of never-ending tactical shooters there is definitely a place for this kind of
mindless no nonsense shooter (e.g. Doom 3) but the problem is Black doesn’t
really pull this off as well as it should have. The first problem with black you
will come across is the weapons. You can only carry two and given the nature of
the game you will only ever need 1 long range and 1 short range weapon, and
given that you start each mission with an assault rifle there is no need to try
any other weapons (you will play 98% of the first 3 missions with the AK47 and
it does lose its appeal after a while). Shotguns and magnums for instance are
never really much of an option and the likes of rpgs and sniper rifles are rare
to come across, and rarely have more than a few rounds in them.
But by
far the worst part of the gameplay is the enemy AI and not only is it a case of
just having plain dumb soldiers, but other areas of the gameplay are very dumbed
down. First off the enemies are just really, really stupid, and don’t deviate
from two basic attack patterns. Either a big group will just charge at you while
you mow them down and pick them off, or they will go take cover behind blown out
cars or other bits of scenery but instead of making use of the cover like an
intelligent little terrorist they will just keep moving out from cover and
moving back in out as if they are a target in a shooting gallery and you can
just sit there and take easy head shots (sometimes it does feel like it is a
shooting gallery). What also makes it utterly pointless for the enemy to go for
cover is most of the time they are covering behind oil tanks and weapon crates
etc. basically the designers clearly wanted to exhibit the pretty explosions so
much they filled the levels with so much explosive stuff and bizarrely place
loads of enemies beside said explosive stuff. Examples of this are coming up on
an enemy hut with 6-7 guys and noticing the big fuel tank right next to it, See
3 guys and an rpg on a bridge, don’t panic they are standing beside a truck
filled with weapons. So the really dumb ai coupled with this bizarre placement
of enemies beside explosives makes 80% of the missions very, very easy. The only
time you get a decent challenge is when you come across strategically placed
snipers and rpg soldiers but again if you look hard enough you will find your
own similar, conveniently placed, hardware to take these guys down.
The
other thing about the gameplay that infuriated me was that in later missions you
come across a lot of guys with body armour. Now body armour guys should be
tougher to take down but there are times when you have to empty an entire clip
in one guy to put him down, not only is this un-realistic its annoying too, and
when there are 6 guys advancing on you and two of them have body armour you have
to spend so much time on just two guys while the rest keep pounding you, and
again these body armour guys just stand there and let you empty said rounds into
them. The final gaping hole in Black is the lack of a multiplayer option,
offline or on. The best FPS in recent years either had a great single player
game or a really great multiplayer and then games like killzone was somewhere in
between, but Black has so much missing from the single player game that the
absence of multiplayer stands out a mile.
Lifespan/Story:
Ok so
Black has no multiplayer so at the very least you would expect a hefty single
player campaign and a decent narrative. Black fails to deliver either of these.
There are only 8 missions, yes count em 8, missions in the game. Except the last
2 or 3 most of these can be completed in 20-30 mins. There are 4 difficulty
levels and the latter is called the black ops difficulty where you have to
complete all the secondary objectives in the game and given the fact you have
infinite ammo after your first play through this isn’t really much of an
incentive for another play through, plus after the first play through there is
no real desire to play through the game again, and the game is very linear so
there are no alternate routes to explore and there is nothing to unlock so there
is no real incentive to try and beat the game on harder difficulty.
The
Story in BLACK also leaves a lot to be desired. The story is told through a
series of fmv cut-scenes that play at the beginning of each mission and the
first few are so cryptic that you have no idea what’s going on and how the story
ties into the missions. You eventually find out that your character Sergeant
Keller is part of a team on a mission to take out a terrorist group called
Seventh Wave and its leader, a man called Lennox. When the plot does begin to
take shape and become somewhat interesting the game is over so quickly and the
ending of the game is just plain silly in that it offers no conclusion to the
proceedings and feels really un-finished, like it was the back-story for a much
deeper plot. There is a definite feeling that this was merely setting the scene
for a sequel but Criterion could have done so much more with the narrative for
this game.
Conclusion/ Closing Comments.
Now I just want to state
for the record that I had a lot of fun while playing through Black. Despite its
gameplay flaws the action is relentless and they managed to capture the action
movie feel so well that the game is a lot of fun and there is some degree of
challenge in the later missions. But the problem is the game is over far too
quickly 6-8 hours, and if you are adept at console shooters you could easily get
it done in less than 6, and when you finish the game the story feels so
half-assed and un-finished, there is an in-escapable feeling that you have
wasted your hard earned cash. Its very sad in a way because Black does so many
things right that had the game been a bit longer if the AI was a bit tighter
then this would be a must have shooter. At the end of the day Black can only be
recommended as a rental and if you do rent it you will have a lot of fun with it
but as a full price game the game simply does not offer enough. It basically
comes down to this simple principle, if you are going to release a First-Person
shooter without a multiplayer option , then it simply has to deliver a hefty
single player campaign and a decent narrative and unfortunately black fails to
provide either.
