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Black - Enough Arms to Take Over a Third World Country...
Date of Review: Mar 16, 2006
The Bottom Line: Black is just another solid 3d shooter, fun to play but with little to distinguish itself from others.
Black is EA s next foray into the 3d shooter market. With a nearly impeccable track record in great hits, especially in its EA Sports division, many game review sites had high expectations for this game. These high expectations may have hurt Black a little. It received some less than super ratings, a 7.4 / 10.0 from Gamespot and a more reasonable 8.7/10.0 from IGN.
I attest, it s not nearly as bad as some reviews make it out to be, but I d agree with the web reviewers for the most part. Black does not really break ground the way Far Cry did when it first came out.
Storyline Intriguing, confusing, and pointless.
The storyline was one big critique that Black received and frankly it is deserved. Story consists of short cinematic cutscenes of a moving ceiling fan, darkly lit flashes of the mouths of two people as an interrogation of a Black Ops soldier goes on. The interrogation basically refers to the missions you play out. It s really nothing exciting. The plot is a bit stereotypical and involves the manipulation of an elite soldier in order to catch another elite defect that has joined a terrorist cell. This isn t all bad as most 3d shooters have sub par plots as it is, but I suppose the worst part is that these cutscenes are mandatory. Even if you have watched them before, there is no way to skip them.
Guns that open doors, blow up walls and kill people.
The whole emphasis of Black is the guns. They are incredibly detailed, have loads of recoil, and come with amazing gunfire sound effects. In this sense, they completely deliver. No inaccurate historical war guns (Brothers in Arms cough* cough*). The high powered weapons in Black are amazingly accurate at far ranges and can pretty much all be used to snipe, so long as you have a steady hand.
Reload times for weapons tend to be very long and also blur the background so that you only see the gun reloading, which adds another level of gameplay to the shooter. You must be aware of your ammo supply at all times, and know when to start looking for cover in order to reload. All in all, the weaponry in Black, although limited only to maybe about 8 guns are all very satisfying to use.
The catch is that you can only carry 2 at a time, but this makes sense given that is the extent a real soldier can lug around anyway without reducing his mobility.
Stupid Enemy AI - Clone Wars Strikes Again
As with most 3d shooters Black falls into the habit of overuse of enemy models, and it does so more notoriously than I think other shooters. Adding to that, the enemy AI is about as dumb as AI gets. If properly instigated, the enemy AI can get confused and run back and forth while you snipe at them, and other times they ll run up and down stairs like they are training for a track marathon.
In addition, there are only a few varieties of enemies. There are two types of gunners, a bulletproof vest one and a helmet one with less armor. These two are the generic fodder and the kinds of weapons they carry vary but for the most part they are easy to kill. There are the heavily armored shotgun-wielding guys who run up to you and try to gun you down. These guys are tough because they do a lot of damage and are hard to hit because they dash back and forth. Then there are the machine gunners, who surprisingly are easy to snipe. The rocket launcher holding units are perhaps the hardest because getting close enough to hit them can be fairly tricky. Then as with most games, near the end the more elite units that have bulletproof shields come out. Unfortunately these guys are not even smart, for the most part they run up to you like all the other guys, the only catch is that you have to shoot them in the leg to kill them.
The lack of intelligent AI, added to the fact that the entire game consists of these guys in varying packs does make this a bit of a letdown. The last battle, which is supposed to build up to a showdown between you and the defective soldier, never happens. I blew up the bunker with a few grenades, ran through and the game ended, saying I had taken out the target. It would have been nice to actually have a showdown against a Quake 4 bot or something.
Music SFX
As mentioned before, the gun shots and the attention to explosions are excellent. The sound quality is good. The music consists of a few soundtrack-like dramatic fanfares, but for the most part takes the backseat during the game, since all you hear are explosions and enemy dialogue.
8 Huge Levels with Plenty of Big Explosions.
Levels are big but the catch is there are only eight. The levels each take about 40 min-1 hour to beat though and the environments are actually really well made. Almost everything in these levels can be shot at and have some kind of reaction. For example if your enemy hides behind a tree trunk, you can fire and chip away at it to reduce their cover. Or if they hide behind a barrel, you can knock the barrels over with a few rounds and hit them. Finally there are plenty of explosive crates, barrels, and trucks in the game that you can aim at to cause these huge explosions, sending enemies flying everywhere.
Setting off huge explosions that send enemies flying is essentially one of the characteristics of the Black gameplay. It is evident that when you drop a grenade, the enemies will panic, they will kind of run around slowly (a poor attempt to dodge) so that the game designers could have them launched into the air from the grenade blast. I suppose the designers felt it was better to give us stupid AI in exchange for stylish kills.
Environments are diverse, and involve wandering through these abandoned cityscapes in parts of Eastern Europe. Again, the huge level design, complete with plenty of sniper positions, a wide diversity of lighting effects and attention to detail make these some of the best single player 3d shooter maps I ve seen. It is a shame though there are only eight levels in total, which is just too short for a 3d shooter these days.
Final Score 8.5 /10.0
Black is a fun 3d shooter. With its endless hordes of enemies, the ability to damage the environment and a solid assortment of guns, Black provides hours of solid gaming entertainment. It fails to renovate the genre in any way, lacks a good storyline, is fairly short, and as a result is not as good as it could have been.
However, in a market where 3d shooters are becoming less frequently released, it s a safe bet to say this is worth renting for that week s worth of entertainment. Unfortunately, after one round through, I would say Black s gameplay value ends there. With little replayability other than the chance to unlock some silver guns and collect some missing intel items, there is not much to go back to it for.
