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Gears of War is an amazing playing shooter from developer Epic Games. Let’s get this out of the way right now: this game is nothing short of a masterpiece. The great control scheme and amazing sound and graphics make Gears a must-have and the first true “killer-app” for the Xbox 360. Gears of War starts of when your character Marcus Fenix is busted out of prison by his buddy Dominic Santiago, after going through this training level getting to the chopper the story’s biggest plot point is reviled to you. You must find Alpha-Squad rescue them and the Resonator and use it. The game doesn’t really do that well with the story after that cut-scene and misses lots of opportunities to tell you about its characters and honestly doesn’t even really do a great job setting the stage for the game’s world or events. Of course all you really need to know is the Locust Horde came from underground, they are trying to kill you and you have to stay behind cover, but the story could have been pretty cool if it had done a few things differently.

Of course you usually don’t play a shooter for its storyline, you play a shooter to shoot things and Gears does that damn well. The main mechanic of Gears is “stop and pop” in other words hide behind pillars, walls, cars, slabs of concrete, basically pretty much anything that can stop bullets and then pop up to fire well setup shots and then get back down. All this stopping and popping is handled by the “A” button on the 360 controller. It does everything from having you sprint (which I’ll get to more in a bit), slam or slide into cover, vault low walls, swat-turn between to adjacent pieces of cover, to doing evasive rolls. Once you get in to cover it is just a matter of locating an enemy and pressing the left trigger to get a bead on him (in fact if you don’t press the aiming trigger you don’t get a reticule and your shots will be highly inaccurate) and fire away while you can. If you are not in cover you are going to get killed and fast. The enemies are pretty accurate with their shots even on the Causal (easiest) difficulty and on Hardcore you are as good as dead if you can’t find cover in more than five or so seconds when under heavy fire.

The health system works hand in hand with the cover system, when you get shot you’ll see a red gear (called the crimson omen) appear in the middle of your view, the fuller it gets the closer you are to death. So what you have to do is take cover and you will simply and quickly regenerate your health. It’s a great system that allows you to feel threatened by your enemies, but at the same time never get in to a situation that you can’t get out of. The other great mechanic during battle is the active reload system. To reload you simply press the right bumper and you can wait for your character to reload his gun, but it can be more skilled than that. Once you press RB you get a little meter under your ammo counter HUD. A line passes through this meter which has a gray sweet spot which allows you to reload faster if you press RB again within it, inside that gray spot is a white zone which a perfect reload that gives those freshly loaded bullets a temporary double damage bonus. Of course, if you miss before or after the sweet spot, you jam your gun and it takes twice as long to reload than it would have if you didn’t press RB again. It seems simple enough and like something that you would master quickly, but in the heat of battle it is still easy to jam your gun from time to time, which makes things much more interesting.

With reloading in mind, the guns in Gears of War are all pretty powerful and exiting to use, some of them aren’t that creative as there are typical stuff like a shotgun, sniper rifle and a pistol (though the revolver pistol is nice), but there are two big unique standout guns: the Lancer Assault Rifle and the Hammer of Dawn. The Lancer isn’t totally special on its own, though it will be the main gun of your small four weapon arsenal; it’s special because it has a chainsaw bayonet. Yes, that is as awesome as it sounds, if you can manage to get close (or sneak up) to a Locust, you can drive that sucker right through him making a scene of carnage that splatters the screen with blood, leaves your foe a pile of pieces on the floor and you highly satisfied, though you have to be careful the AI won’t just let you walk up to them, you need just the right situation, like say, when your opponent is reloading his gun. The Hammer of Dawn has a limited use in the Campaign mode because you need just the right situation to use it as it uses an orbital satellite to rain down a firey beam from the sky. So you need open sky and for the satellite to be overhead. It mainly used to take down big enemies which are invulnerable to your bullets.

In Gears you can carry four weapons, two of the bigger guns (the Lancer, shotgun, sniper rifle, boom-shot (rocket launcher) or hammer of dawn), a pistol (snub or revolver) and hand grenades. Each gun has a melee attack, with the Lancer’s being the chainsaw, the grenades can also be used as a melee attack, in that case you will tag your opponent with it and he’ll go boom in a few seconds.

Joining you in the action is the Delta-Squad which includes you as Marcus Fenix and three other big tough dudes (Baird, Augustus “The Cole Train” Cole and Dom Santiago). These guys are great characters, but they aren’t super effective fighters and will get downed a lot. If one of your squad-mates gets downed you can run up him if you have a chance and press the X button to help him up. Of course that doesn’t work for you, if you get shot too much you are dead. After the first act of the game’s campaign you can give these guys three simple orders: regroup, attack and cease fire. The campaign itself is really great and really exciting, the AI is pretty smart (though occasionally they will fail to move if they aren’t completely in cover and getting hit) and challenging (even on casual at times) and all the areas are well designed (with a great checkpoint system) and the boss fights are pretty exciting as well. It takes about 10 hours to finish, but you will want to play through it again and again, because it is so exciting, intense and the areas are so diverse.

The multiplayer in Gears is also really great and helps to perfectly fill out the package. You can play the campaign over Xbox Live or using split screen and the beautiful thing is you can do this at any point in the campaign. Your friend (who will play as Dominic) could join you for one tough area, then leave and you could reload that save and play by yourself from that point. The other difference to playing the campaign co-op is that you can revive each other the same way I mentioned you could with your AI squad-mates, it makes things on the harder difficulties much more manageable. The other difference is that during the campaign (in both solo and co-op) there are some branching paths where Marcus and Dom will have to split-up if either you die during this time (in co-op) the game ends. This keeps it from having one player carry the whole fight, so both players will need to be able to fight well to win.

The other aspect to the multiplayer in Gears of War is the Versus mode which is team 4on4 deathmatch, last man standing wins. This mode is great for some quick action and houses three different game types: Warzone (plain team deathmatch), Assassination (your team must kill the other team’s leader to win) and Execution (when you are downed you can mash your A button to get back up, so you must execute your kills via the satisfying curb-stomp, shooting him more or decimating him). The Versus brings a different style to Gears, but unfortunately because of the need to “finish” kills and the reviving aspect the games almost consist of no shooting (except for the occasional headshot with sniper rifle) and are all about maneuvering to get in to position to chainsaw or shotgun your opponent at close range. The grenade tag move also plays a big part in this “no-shoot” aspect of the Versus mode. It’s overall pretty fun, but unless you agree to play “properly” you are going to get tagged a lot or see very few shots fired.

The graphics are another shining aspect of Gears of War, they are simply spectacular and pretty much perfect. This is the best looking game to date on the 360 and pretty much ever really. The detail in everything is so tremendous. The characters models themselves are heavy looking with fine details like scars on their faces and the deep red thick blood that flies from bullet hits is pretty amazing looking. The world around though, is going to cause your jaw to drop at least a few times, for instance the rain-storm at the beginning of Act 3 is one of the most amazing looking areas I have ever seen. The rain water rolling down the trees, buildings and pouring off the overhangs is all stunning. Not to overlook the other areas, because they all have amazing looks, from the glowing immultion in the underground to the amazing train sequence at the end of the game and even the camera angles bring you right in to the action, like, the amazing “roadie run” camera angle which is a low and bouncy angle so immersing that you will feel the urge to put your head down too as your character runs to the next cover spot, it’s all tremendous in HD or in SD.

Gears of War’s sound is also top-notch. The music is really well orchestrated and really adds to the atmosphere of the game. You’ll know when there are enemies around when the music starts getting frantic and you’ll know when you’re are safe when you hear the clear jingle and the music quietens down. But the sound effects are where the game really excels though. The guns all sound super powerful and the aural cues, like the clicking of a low on ammo gun or a the sound of a bouncing frag-grenade will be key to your success. When playing with headphones or I assume on a good surround system, the ambient sound effect really help you keep aware, while making you jump when things are calm and tense. And the chainsaw makes a grotesque revving and squishing slicing sound that is super satisfying and completely disgusting at the same time. The character voices are well suited especially with the Delta-Squad, they will naturally banter back and forth when they have a free moment, trash talk the enemy and just yell stuff that big dudes with guns yell.

In the end Gears of War is nearly a perfect title, the graphics, sounds and gameplay all come together to create an amazingly exciting and intense action experience, single player or multiplayer. The shortish campaign and the odd “no shoot” action in the multiplayer hurt the game a bit, but overall this is a game that not a single 360 owner should miss and if you don’t have a 360 this is the game is a reason to get one.

Developer BioWare, famous for such games as Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, it looks to continue to that pedigree with their latest title Mass Effect. The most important part of an RPG is its storyline and Mass Effect delivers, with a Sci-Fi Space Opera of universe shattering proportions. You play as Commander Shepard, this man or woman, can look anyway that you desire with the fairly in depth character designer. After a short first mission you become the first Human Spectre Agent and begin to chase after a rogue spectre named Saren. He appears to be controlling a race of machines called Geth and is searching for an ancient technology that threatens every living thing in the Milky Way. But what really sets Mass Effect apart in the story category is the way you interact with the story and characters. The dialog wheel gives you the opportunity to choose how to behave and what to do during the dialog scenes. Some may argue that the dialog wheel is overly simplified, because top right is always Paragon (good cop) and the bottom right is always Renegade (bad cop), but each selection can change how characters react to you or affect the entire situation.

As a Paragon for example, you might talk out the situation, ending a potentially violent situation in a peaceful way, whereas the Renegade might just decide to shoot first and ask questions later or end violence with more violence. Another way the story is affected is by the choices you make about your origins, you can pick what kind of life you had as youth and what the defining moment is that set you apart in your military career. Based on what you pick characters will react to you differently either admiring you for your efforts or get put off by your upbringings. By the end of the story in classic BioWare fashion you will have to make a huge decision that might leave you conflicted. The story is a great one that you will want to explore for yourself, but the depth of the characters and the amount of back-story and detail about the universe and how it works went above and beyond generous.

Continuing on, with more on character customization, you can select from 6 pre-set classes. The first class is a straight up soldier, who is good at all types of guns (the four being pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle and assault rifle). The adept who is excellent at using biotics, which are powers that use dark energy to lift, throw and trap enemies in energy fields. The final main class is the Engineer who is great at using technology to his advantage, by overloading energy shields, sabotaging weapons or even hacking the enemy robots' AI using it against its own side. The other three classes are mixtures of the first three: Infiltrator, which is a mixture of soldier and engineer; Vanguard, which is a mixture of adept and soldier and finally Sentinel, which is a mixture of adept and engineer. These classes are all well balanced, but require different strategies and support characters to be effective. Also later in the game you gain access to a specialized class, which allows you specialize in one aspect of your chosen class.

As for the gameplay of Mass Effect you will take part in missions all over the galaxy on many different planets and fighting your enemies in simple, slightly tactical 3rd person shooting. There are two sets of progressions in Mass Effect the main story missions and the side missions. The main story missions will last you about 15-20 hours as you make your way closer to stopping Saren. These missions are generally longer and more detailed as you fight through all kinds of labs and bases and even take part in some boss fights. The side missions however, are not nearly as interesting as the main ones. They tend to be short, repetitive simple missions where your toughest objective might be to just kill all the enemies infesting the base. But doing a mixture of main and side missions helps balance out the repetitive simplicity of the side missions. Though there are over 20 hours of side missions to take part in, all of which lead to good gear, interesting side stories and lots of rewards.

As you play all these missions your will be introduced to the game's battle system a real-time 3rd person tactical shooting engine. The first thing that you will learn is that if you try to play it as a pure 3rd person shooter you are going to get destroyed. At first, with low levels you need to really manage your squad, consisting of yourself (Shepard) and two others of your choosing, by using the power selecting wheel that you access via the RB bumper. Activating this menu stops the action allowing you to use one special power at a time on your squad or the enemies. Using tech or biotic powers to help control the numerous enemies you will face at a time. Good strategy, such as using choke points works well to help keep you alive. The shooting is solid and exciting, so once you get the feel for the combat it all comes together, though the game doesn't really explain the best ways to fight, you just have to learn, trail by fire.

The AI of the enemies is different for each type of being you will face, the Geth like to use cover, while the humans (and a few of the other aliens) like to charge recklessly. Some of the bigger enemies are also aggressive, but this makes it much easier to run in to a room as Shepard and lure them to the rest of your squad and your choke point for easy kills. Your squad's AI is good in some situations, but there are occasions where it can unfortunately see an enemy through a wall and will just keep shooting the wall even though it can't hit the enemy. Though if you tell them to move towards a door they will take cover on both sides of the door and cover you when you open it, which is a nice touch. Your squad as long as you keep an eye on them they behave pretty well and give you pretty good support.

To help protect your characters you will need weapons and armor, each character is equipped with the four guns in the game, but only the soldier can train in them all. Without training your character will not be able to use the gun well, though each class can at least train with pistols. The same goes for armor, each class is only capable of a certain level of armor, all classes can use light, some can train up to medium and only the soldier can train to use the heavy armor. Both weapons and armor can be augmented with different types of add-ons, these upgrade mods can give you increased shields, more stopping power, different types of ammo and many other types for all situations. The only problem with all this gear is that there is no good way to tell how much you have, you are only allowed to carry 150 items (guns (all 4 types), armor, upgrades (all types), biotic amps and omnitools). The biggest problem is that none of the items stack, so if you have three of the same upgrade they all remain separate and clog up your list. The inventory system could have been a bit more streamlined, but at least the game warns you when you are close to the 150 item limit.

If you choose to do some side missions, you will encounter another side to the game, one that might be as sharp as the rest of it. Most of the side missions take place on "uncharted" planets that are nothing more than barren wastelands with maybe a single base or camp. They have no trees, no rivers and no water, nothing just rocky terrain with a different colored texture. The other thing that makes exploring planets not as fun as it could be is the Mako, your moon buggy crossed with a tank. The Mako just does not control well, it handles jerkily and will sometimes change direction without warning. But probably it's biggest flaw is the tank's turret, because it can only aim up or down a certain amount, it means that if you move your crosshair passed the end point of the gun you do not get true aim; this is especially a problem on uneven terrain, you just will not be able to hit your targets with accuracy. Then final problem of the Mako is that while it has pretty massive energy shields, they take nearly 5 minutes to fully recharge, causing a lot of wait times before you can fight some more if you get in trouble.

Mass Effect graphics are spectacular… when they run properly. The game looks great; the characters are great looking and have great facial animation which allows them to express themselves like never before. The problem is that the game suffers from frame-rate dips fairly frequently and suffers from texture pop-in after load screens and when the game switches cut-scenes nearly all the time. These things are merely distractions though as you enjoy the great art style and even though the planets often lack details, they do have some beautiful views and skylines. The final thing is the sound and Mass Effect excels here too, with an amazing sci-fi score with an old school sort of early '80 sci-fi flair with lots of synth type instruments, it's a joy to listen to. Then there is the voice acting in the game. Every single line is read with perfect inflection, prefect pacing… even the smallest of parts. The voice acting helps draw you in and become attached to the characters, you feel for them, you understand them and you want to see them all survive. Heck, BioWare even went to the trouble of having a narrator, narrate the main entries in the galactic codex, which is just amazing.

BioWare has done it again. If you are fan of RPGs this is a must play, but even if you just enjoy science fiction the amount of background details and the story can draw you in. With great graphics, great story, great well voiced characters and so much interaction with the universe and its characters belonging to you, you really have to experience Mass Effect for yourself.

The Legend of Dragoon was an RPG released for the Sony Playstation back in 2000, it featured some nice graphics, a cool story, one of the most enjoyable RPG battle engines in a long time, but the localization/translation of the game’s text is what impacts this game the most in the long run. The game starts as most Japanese RPG’s do, innocently, a young man named Dart has returned from a quest to avenge his parent’s deaths at the hands of the Black Monster to find his country in a time of war. His village is burnt down and his good friend Shana is brought to a terrible prison. Soon after rescuing her, the story begins to unfold until it is a matter of world safety. The depth of the story is definitely there, as there are some incredible thought that went into the return of the Dragoons, the history of the world and a couple of the games great plot twists. But because of the terrible translation/localization of the game’s text, it becomes more a matter of personal imagination than the game telling you outright in most cases.

If you remember Final Fantasy VII’s translation work and cringe at the thought of it, then this is probably even a step below that. Typos, grammatical errors, oddly placed words, horrible style and many other bad writing breakdowns. A great example is in about the middle of the game, there is a place you visit called the “Valley of Corrupted Gravity” and for a majority of the times it is written in the textboxes just like that. But in a few specific cases, for some reason, the writers spelled “vally” instead of “valley” it’s that kind of stuff that plagues the writing in the game. Giving credit where credit is due though, there are few times when the writing is actually quite superb and that makes those times when it falls flat all the more frustrating. It was as if they directly translated the text and had their good days and their bad days while touching it up.

As in most RPG’s you progress from town to town, location to location, following key story triggers. Dragoon simplifies things by keeping you to set paths of “dots” to each location on the over-world map. The game even goes as far as telling you what location you should go to next when you zoom all the way out with a blue spinning arrow. This feature (we’ll call it) is a double-edged sword, for one, it saves you from the frustration of getting lost on the world map, though on the other hand it pretty much denies you of any exploration off the beaten path. The actual locations and towns are a different story as they consist of amazing looking pre-rendered backgrounds and have many different paths to explore and usually a compliment of treasure boxes to find.

Random battles are what RPG’s are all about and The Legend of Dragoon handles these very well, except for maybe the 15 second wait before each fight. Once you are set and fighting, it takes place in a turn based system with your three characters pit against an assortment of monsters and other enemies. You have a few options when fighting, the first option is the standard “attack”, more about this in second because it worth talking about in detail. Second is a neat take on defending called “guard,” this choice halves all damage taken and restores 10% of your hit points, it adds a neat strategic element to the fights. Of course you have items and the ability to run away. Once you receive the ability to transform in to Dragoons about 3 hours or so into the game, you’ll have that option as well.

It’s now time to talk about the standard attack system, called addition, this system is timing based and once you get the hang of it; it is by far the game’s coolest feature. Once you choose attack, then your target, you’ll see a blue square over the enemy that you picked. A second blue square spirals from near the sides of the screen; you must time your press of the X button when the squares exactly intersect. It starts off pretty easy as most characters only have one button press moves, but later into the game you may have to do 6-7 presses to successfully complete an addition string. But to keep things interesting each character has multiple moves (you pick one from the main submenu) each with different timing and a different amount of button presses. You also have to contend with counter attacks from enemies during slow moves or slow parts of your attack strings, a counter attack, requires you to press the Circle button instead of X. Also each time you do one of your characters addition moves 20 times they raise in strength and how many SP you get. Do a move 80 times to master it, master all your moves and you unlock the characters most powerful addition attack.

The other interesting aspect of the battles are the Dragoon transformations, these require a special stone to be collected, but all but one of them you’ll pick up as you go through the main quest. Once you get this stone you’ll be able to transform during battle, but only for one turn, to get more turns as a Dragoon you must do addition attacks to get what is called SP or Spirit Points. Each hit in an addition string gains you a specific amount of points, the game transparently collects these points and when you gain enough you raise what is called a D. Level, each D. Level (up to 5) gives you 20 more MP, 1 more turn as a Dragoon and in every level except the 4th you gain special Dragoon magic. The characters in this game cannot use magic, so transforming into Dragoon form is their only access to it. Dragoons also gain powerful boosts to their attack and defense, protection from all status effects (except death,) not to mention transforming cures all ailments as long as you can still transform. Dragoons attack using a Dragoon version of addition, in this version you have to press X as a spinning light hits the top of a circular meter, doing it five times successfully nets you a full power Dragoon attack. Another feature of the Dragoons’ is if you have everyone available to transform, then you then have a special transformation that activates all three characters and the character that chose the option gets automatic perfect Dragoon additions. With that amount of strategy Dragoons are best used during the game’s boss fights, because you will want to gain SP and raise your additions during normal combat.

As for items the game has a few unique items called Multis these items are elemental magic and once you toss them, you can pump them up by mashing the X button. Speaking of elementals, Dragoon uses a simple element system for its fights, every element has an opposite (light/dark, fire/water, earth/wind,) except Lightning, twice the damage to the opposite, half damage to same and normal damage otherwise. Dragoon’s battles are what sets the game apart from most RPG’s and trying to master all the characters addition moves gives the game longevity.

Not that Dragoon is a short game in the first place; it will take you upwards of 40 hours to complete, maybe more the first time through the game. If there is one fault to the gameplay is that game is quite easy, there is no EXP grind, as you hardly get any EXP for normal fights, you only need to fight random battles to get SP and raise additions. If you are going to do any levelling it’s after a boss fight as you get massive chunks of EXP from them. And levelling hounds might be disappointed to find that there are only about 60 levels of EXP in the game. This probably needs mentioning as well, the way the game is balanced mostly to Magic Defense, you may find yourself shying away from the powerhouse characters for ones better against magic.

Graphically The Legend of Dragoon is a great looking game, there are a few rough spots but overall the game is very appealing. For example the pre-rendered backgrounds in the game look amazing, especially the ones that feature water, whomever the artist was that did the water sparkles and water animation was spot on. To keep the static backgrounds from being boring Dragoon puts all kinds of effects on them, smoke from chimneys, hazy clouds, birds and other animated objects make for a lifelike look. The battle engine graphics are really great as well; there are plenty of over the top effects for the Dragoon magic, tons of neat little bouncy sparks and light flashes during addition strings and an assortment of other neat looking effects. There are also a few times during the game where a characters polygon model is a “high-res” version; they even have separate fingers, which is pretty impressive for a PSone game. The game also features some outstanding FMV CG movies; a couple of them have to be seen to be believed. The only poor areas are that during sequences on the pre-rendered backgrounds, occasionally the polygons in the characters twitch and it’s a bit distracting and the characters have not so seamless joints.

The sound in Dragoon is quite sharp as well, there are some great slashing sounds, but most of the sound effects consist of your characters grunts during addition strings, these sounds are key as they actually help you with timing of your moves. Characters also call out their moves when you complete a string of presses successfully, it’s pretty cool especially after you nail a tough addition, but it may get a bit repetitive after a while. The music in Dragoon is also very good, it has a slight off-beat score, with off beat meaning instruments that don’t necessarily fit in with the swords and dragons motif of the game. You’ll hear electric guitars, steel drums and other interesting instruments complimenting the more traditional sounds in the music. The game also has a lovely theme song that you get to hear during the intro movie on Disc 1 and at the end of the game.

The Legend of Dragoon is a game that lives mostly by its battle system; the story is also a good point if you can ignore the quality of the writing. The characters are memorable and so is the overall adventure. This game could have been almost perfect if it wasn’t for the poor translation and pretty awful writing. But in the end it’s not a game, any RPG fan should miss.

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.