Black

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.