by: Corey Peace

March 08, 2006

During all its hype and anticipation, Black was brought up as another “Halo-killer” but, just like all the games before with the same promise (i.e. Killzone, Pariah); Black falls short with false hopes and too much room to grow. Nonetheless, Black carries enough interesting factors to help it stand out, but is likely soon to be forgotten as more FPSs are pumped out trying to make a name for themselves too.

Story
The absolute weakest and disappointing part of Black is its story. You are put in the shoes of a highly trained “black-ops” soldier named Keller. You begin the game with a cut-scene that shows Keller in chains, being interrogated by an undercover government agent. After every mission you partake in, the game returns to this interrogation, which sets up each of the eight missions as flashbacks covering the previous four days. Over the course of time, you learn that your objective was to take out an arms-dealing terrorist outfit known as the Seventh Wave, and its leader, an ex-black-operative known as Lennox. The rest of the story is played out very quickly and straight to the point, leaving no room for any character build up or emotional attachments. There is a ton of black-ops talk, covert names and confusing dialogue that clogs up what story there is and really just confuses the player.

Gameplay
The first few missions are brilliant and contain some of the most fun you will have with any FPS, the first time you play it that is. After a while the missions more or less follow the same exact pattern and quickly become repetitive with a “been there done that” feeling. So at first, you are loaded with a powerful assault rifle, a pistol and a few grenades. The gun-play is the key note here, because that is what this game is all about, shooting your gun a lot, at everything within plain sight. One of the coolest features you will notice right off the bat is the ability to make pretty much everything explode and take out several enemies in the process. Here’s a hint, if you see something “red” at all, shoot at it and there is a very great chance that it will explode with extraordinary finesse. Usually there will be a few unfortunate enemies who decide to set up ground next to a gas tank or vehicles and if you think quickly, you can knock them all out in style, and it simply looks amazing. However, this is where the game quickly falls flat and becomes very predictable in every possible situation. Every single mission holds way too many situations like this where you can take out enemies with huge explosions or simply unloading magazines into them without having to worry about aiming too much at closer distances.

A lot of the weapons you are given are usually what you will end up sticking with throughout the entire mission, because either the enemies are carrying the exact same weapons as you, or certain guns like RPGs or Sniper Rifles can only be found and usually only carry enough ammunition to get you past the certain area where you found it. On the other hand, the guns you are given at the start (you can only carry two at once) are either very good or very poor depending on the situation. Guns such as the MAC10 and the UZI are widely used by the enemy who use them very effectively but in the player’s case, they are practically useless because they don’t carry near the range or accuracy like guns such as the AK, MP5 or M16 do.