Black is the first, first person shooter (FPS) from Criterion Games and
EA, it does a lot of things really well but lacks in the depth
department and wears thin after it's all said and done. The story of
Black puts you in the shoes of Sgt First Class, Jack Keller. When the
game first starts you have been put in custody for an apparent mission
gone wrong and are being debriefed by this stereotypical military
"suit" character (who also has the gruff typical voice to match) and
the story, if you can call it that, plays out through these FMV cut
scenes full of military jargon that you can barely comprehend, so even
when the game is telling you what is going on you can't understand
anyways. But the idea is there is this ex-agent called Lennox who is
now commanding this terrorist group called Seventh Wave and your
mission was to take him out.
That's pretty much it for story, the missions are the meat of the game
anyway so it's a bit inconsequential. Once you are in the missions
things usually heat up really quickly and you get pitted against hoards
of armed soldiers and must usually simply make your way to the end of
level. On medium to hard you must also collect a few simple secondary
objectives which require you to shoot a lap-top or a safe and find
objects like blueprints, briefcases and folders full of super secret
stuff. These are just put there to force you to not just head for the
end of the level, they aren't really interesting, so are tricky to
find, but they don't really add to the experience. Of course shooting
and destroying is the name of the game and you'll be doing a lot of
shooting and destroying as you make your way through the game's eight
levels.
The thing is the shooting is basically the jest of it; you either shoot
like crazy or go for headshots. The latter being the option of choice
in Black because it kills most enemies in one hit. Because of that most
of the battles boil down to staying behind cover (contrary to popular
belief, being out in the open in Black is actually bad) and trying for
head shots, rinse and repeat for basically all the game's firefights.
In fact the levels are designed to keep you from moving through quickly
by putting you into one progress stopping firefight after another.
Probably the most annoying things is that even the basic soldiers must
be taken down with headshots, because they simply take way too many
bullets to kill otherwise. Even with good body armor, getting hit with
27 AK-47 rounds is going to take you down easily. The enemies end up
feeling superhuman and less like real people and because of the
realistic look of the game makes you question the reality of the world
you are playing in.
The simple play mechanics continue on with the other types of soldiers
as well, the Shotgun carrying, mask wearing enemies in the game can
literally take 2 clips of 60+ bullets to kill with body shots. You soon realize that they need to be taken down with quick headshots (it takes
about three, one or two to knock off the mask and a final one to take
them down) or using the Grenade-shooting tactic. This little move,
where you quickly shoot a thrown grenade will get you through most of
the game and becomes key when fighting the other soldier type, the
shields. These guys have metal or plastic riot-shields and it protects
them from direct shots while allowing them to blast you.
The level design is okay, but they are mostly linear with those
firefights thrown in to keep you from just "running the gauntlet" to
the end of the level. They mostly consist of industrial, factory and
derelict buildings but they look like full blown action movie set
pieces and are cool otherwise. The thing that isn't really appealing is
how as you play through the game the number of enemies you start to
face gets mighty unreal and to be frank, plain ridiculously out of
control. The game tries to go for this old school feel with thousands
of enemies to wipe out, similar to classic games like Contra (NES) or
even something like Doom on the PC, but because of the realistic look
and feel, that just seems fake here. It doesn't matter how "First Class"
and deadly Sgt. Keller is he isn't going to "one-man army" it all the
way through any of the missions, especially not the later ones. The
final poor thing about the level design is the length of the missions
themselves, the first mission will take 10-15 minutes, but after that
expect it to take 30 minutes to an hour to get through most of the
missions, but that isn't the bad thing in and of itself. The true culprit
is the fact that the game uses a checkpoint system at set points in the
level. They are about 2 or 3 in each level and can be spaced up to 15
minutes apart, so if you do die, then you sometimes get set back
upwards of 15 minutes, which really sucks. Being able to save and quit
at the checkpoints would have been a nice feature and a few of the
levels could used a few more.
The graphics in Black are among the best you can find on the PS2, with
spectacular explosions, cool lighting effects and amazing details that
are a Criterion specialty. Without spoiling some of the best moments,
pretty much everything can be taken out, they are specific, but there
are so many of them that you won't notice that you can't destroy
everything. Bullets for instance sometimes make so much dust from
impacts that you can't see across the room anymore, only the muzzle
flash of your opponents tip you off to where they are located. One of
the coolest and at the same time most annoying is the depth of field
affect that blurs the background when you are focused on reloading your
weapon. It's neat at first, but the first time you are blinded by it
during a fight, you wish it wasn't there. The guns themselves look
really great and the behave in a realistic manner, Autos have recoil
that forces your aim of the weapon up so controlling your fire rate is
important. Since we're on the subject of the guns, I should mention
that quite a few of the guns in Black are useless except as keys or to
throw away as soon as a better gun gets dropped. Stuff like the Mac-10
and the standard pistol are useless because you need to mostly fight
from long-range and the Shotgun and RPG usually are only good as keys
to opening blocked doors.
The sound in Black is another one of the games best aspects, the sound
of bullets whizzing around and ricocheting off walls sound really
great. If you aren't hearing booming explosions, you will learn to
detect the sounds of a few particular guns; the whoosh of a RPG round
or the cracking sniper rifle shot. There are a few satisfying sounds
that aren't from weapons, the plink of a headshot soldiers helmet tells
you that you "got him," and the sound of a body slumping to the ground
help you know you got your target. The soldiers also yell at you in
another language, you'll have no idea what they are saying (other
than the universal: "Grenada!!"), but you will know that they have seen
you if they say something. Your character also has some radio chatter,
but he yells way too loud, especially when he is trying to be covert.
In a few levels you also have team-mates that yell stuff at you about
RPG's, putting on suppressors or what you should being doing. I also
should mention that a lot of this radio chatter contains most of the
swearing that is featured in the game.
In the end, Black will take you 6-8 hours to finish, if the shallow
gameplay doesn't get to you first. This game would make a perfect rental;
you could easily beat it within that time. Criterion's first effort was
pretty decent, but lacks any kind of replay value (no multiplayer and
very low amount of unlockables), it's not even that great to play
through again, because of the awkward level design. With that said it
is recommended that you at least give Black a try in the end.
