Reviewed: March 14, 2006
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
EA Games

Developer
Criterion Games

Released: February 28, 2006
Genre: FPS
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

8
10
10
8
9.2

Supported Features:

Black even manages to sneak in a compelling, yet totally unnecessary story, told through some eerie FMV sequences that slip in between the missions. These movies basically have your character, Jack Keller, who is apparently shackled and under arrest for a mission gone awry, retelling the events to the man across the table. The entire sequence is stereotypically setup with extreme facial close-ups, long drags on cigarettes and a blinding light in your face.

As you recount the events you will actually get to relive them through nearly a dozen massive and totally challenging levels that can be played at several difficulty settings, each offering their own risks versus rewards. Playing at higher levels makes the enemy more aggressive and limits the health packs, but you can earn new weapons and even an extreme Black Ops skill setting if you are good enough.

Many weapons have multiple fire modes like single shot, burst mode, and rapid fire. The automatic weapons have realistic recoil making it harder to maintain your aim during extended fire. Black seems to reward you with quicker kills if you fire single shots at the head, but not in single shot mode. This means you have to perfect the quick flick of the trigger in either burst or rapid-fire mode for the quick kill.

The medium and long range weapons can be zoomed in much like the “down the barrel view” in Call of Duty. This gives you a bit more accuracy in targeting but it will distort your movement speed, so make sure to toggle it off before you move any great distance. The SPAS12 is one of the few weapons that won’t zoom, but it is primarily a short-ranged weapon good for single shot kills on most enemies.

You can also toss the occasional frag grenade (sorry - no smoke cover in this game), but this interface, or rather lack of one, makes doing so trial and error for the first half of the game until you really get used to the system. There is no throwing arc or target system for grenades and you throw them much weaker than you would expect, so you have to learn to compensate by throwing them in high arcs to cover greater distances.

Level design is fairly straightforward and even a bit linear. If you check out the maps in the official strategy guide you’ll find just how limited your options are for getting from point A to B in each level. And even when you have multiple routes, you still need to explore them both to get all the secondary objectives. But that still doesn’t keep this game from having some of the best and most destructible environments in FPS history – yes, this even blows away the Red Faction games and their scripted Geo-Mod technology.

Coming from the destructive minds of Criterion (Burnout baby!) just about everything in this level can be shot, blown up or broken. Locked door? Blast it with a shotgun and watch it fall to the floor. Perhaps the most impressive effect is that if you walk along a wall with windows the protruding barrel from your gun will start knocking out the glass panes, and don’t even get me started on what happens when you detonate a grenade inside the glass arboretum in the psych ward level.

But even more important is that your cover can be destroyed. I haven’t seen destructible cover since Full Spectrum Warrior and I wasn’t expecting it here, but imagine my surprise when I am all crouched down behind a tree and the enemy is unloading their AK47’s into the wood and it starts to blast apart in chunks until I am totally exposed! Perhaps one of the most intense examples of destructible cover is trying to get across the cemetery, one headstone at a time while a distant sniper is shooting at me sending showers of rock and marble into my face from the disintegrating headstones.

In addition to breakable objects you also have plenty of explosive content in these levels. Barrels, ammo crates, and even the gas tanks of abandoned cars are all prime candidates for being turned into an impromptu explosive device. Just don’t ask me why those stupid soldiers thought it was a good idea to store explosive fuel tanks at the base of their guard towers.

The levels and mission designs all work very well creating multiple primary and secondary objectives in each of the 30-90 minute missions. You don’t have to do them all but there are some requirements in order to pass the mission, and you’d have to purposely ignore obvious pick-ups in order to fail. The secret weapon in each level is usually the hardest secret to find, but also the most rewarding.

There is a good mix of indoor and outdoor levels. You start off in a bombed out city then move on to a nighttime border crossing mission. Then it’s off to a factory, a shipping yard, another bombed out city with a massive asylum to explore, and many more.

These levels are populated with some of the best enemy soldiers I have seen outside of a Clancy game. I’m not entirely sure if this is due to superior A.I. programming or just the ability of the enemy to recognize and use the available cover. Even on the Normal skill setting you will need to concentrate your fire on headshots – assuming you can get them to come out from behind that tree or wall.

My only complaint with the A.I. is that they are too award of their surroundings removing almost any attempt at stealth. I appreciate the fact that when you drop one of two guards the other one actually sees what happens and reacts, but they have an almost instant awareness of where you are, even if you sniped from 500 yards away.

Everyone wears body armor and can withstand as much damage as you. You’ll often unload one or even two entire clips into a body before they go down, whereas one or two skillfully placed headshots will drop them. Grenades and rockets work nicely for instant kills, often on multiple targets. You can even destroy large sections of the environment with explosive rounds.

For most of the game you play alone, but on a few occasions you get some help. One mission teams you up with a fairly proficient female who does a lot of the work for you, and the dock level teams you up with an entire “tac” team. Regrettably, these guys work under their own orders and A.I. leaving you no control over their actions. It would have been so nice to order some suppressive fire while trying to take out the sniper with the rocket launcher. At least you can use the mayhem they generate to flank the more difficult enemy positions.

Last but not least is the clever health system that features both health packs and first aid kits. First aid kits are instant use while you can actually store up to three health pack for use at your discretion, but only in the Easy and Normal skill settings. It’s nothing too original but it works extremely well. If you get shot down to one sliver of health you will auto-regen back up to two notches if you sit still for a moment, but you’ll need some real healing to get rid of the thumping heartbeat sound.

Black is a gorgeous game and comes fully loaded with some of the best weapon models you have ever seen. In a game where the guns are the stars it is easy to see where the attention to detail was placed. Even cooler than watching these guns in the game is just letting the menu system kick into demo mode and watching the stunning 3D models get test-fired.

The opening movie is actually just a black screen with purposefully small white text for the credits. You then kick into the first of many interrogation sequences, which certainly didn’t break any budgets, but they are effective nonetheless. The movies were directed by Joseph Hodges (24) and share a similar style to that TV show.

What is most impressive about Black is that each and every single bullet is accounted for, and I don’t mean as inventory, but as a visual representation. Bullets will kick up puffs of dirt and dust when they hit the ground or send showers of rock and debris into the air when they impact a wall. Often the air will become so full of dust and smoke that you will have to wait for it to settle to locate your target or confirm a kill. Explosions are impressive and violent generating miniature mushroom clouds on some of the larger blasts. You can even get some cool chain reactions going if you plan ahead.

Textures are fantastic and easily rival anything being done on the PC these days. The lighting is gorgeous; especially on the border crossing level where you are sneaking through a forest lit only by blue moonlight that streams through the branches in visible rays. Advanced particle effects really help sell the explosions and endless bullet impacts bring the war to life. Rockets leave billowing smoke trails that are useful in locating the shooter and when you do shoot them you apparently hit their RPG since they blow to bits.

The physics engine is outstanding, especially on the character modeling and reactions when you kill them. A single shot will send a man collapsing into his own shoes and grenades will send enemies flying in all directions. The most impressive is when you shoot a guy on a ledge or in a tower and they either plummet to their demise or even better – grab onto the rail and try to pull themselves back up while you line-up that second shot.

There are two subtle effects in Black; one is the slowing down of time and blurring of the screen when you are near death and the other is something entirely new and needs to be included on every FPS game from this day forth – the change of focal point while reloading.

This rack-focus effect is so subtle that I didn’t even notice it for the first ten minutes then I realized that every time my weapon was reloaded the gun would come into extreme focus and everything else would blur out. Imagine the potential of this system in a multiplayer game where every time you reload you temporarily lose sight of the enemy.

With graphics that can easily be mistaken for 360 quality and a draw distance to the horizon you would expect some framerate issues, but interestingly enough the game chooses to slip into a slow-motion mode when extreme graphics tax the Xbox, so you never get jerky animation or missed frames, just short bursts of slow-motion which are actually pretty cool and let you appreciate the carnage.

WOW! This game rocks in a serious way. I literally had to back my sub-woofer down one notch from my normal gaming and movie listening setting. The explosions are deafening from the initial “pop” to the extended low-frequency rumbles at the tail end of the fireballs. Chain reactions will have you scrambling to catch objects as they fall off of shelves. Black literally puts you smack in the middle of a war zone with all the audio effects that go along with it.

With the guns being the star of the show you can only imagine that each and every one has been meticulously sampled and recreated within the game. Nothing is more powerful than the bang of the sniper rifle or the deafening blast of the SPAS12. Even the everyday weapons like the MP5 and AK47 give off an impressive chatter as they spit out streams of lead. Even the clicks and mechanics of the reloading animations are brought to an almost exaggerated sense of audible life.

The voice acting is good if not somewhat melodramatic. After checking the credits I confirmed David Hayter (Solid Snake) was not doing the voice for Jack even though it sure sounds like him. The cast for the movies and the in-game radio chatter all turn in excellent performances, often with convincing dialects and regional accents.

Composed by Chris Tilton (Alias, Incredibles. Mercenaries), produced by Michael Giacchino (Alias, Lost, Incredibles), and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra, Black has one of the most stirring and influential soundtracks of any FPS game to date. Most of the music lurks in the background, dulled by the endless gunfire, but there are those rare “hero moments” when the score swells creating just the right amount of adrenaline needed to get you through a tough spot in the game. Available on CD and iTunes, this is one soundtrack that is totally enjoyable outside the game.

Of course, this is all assuming you play the game as it was intended. I supposed you could tackle this title as you would Serious Sam, and pillage your way through at record times, but why bother. If you are that type of gamer then you should be renting your games anyway, Black included.

By thoroughly exploring each level and finding all those documents, plans, and secret weapons you can unlock bonuses, and by finishing the game on the Hard mode you can unlock the Black Ops skill setting, which I can only assume is next to impossible.

The lack of multiplayer is sorely missed, but Black is what it is – an amazing thrill ride with plenty of bullets and explosions. This is the summer blockbuster film that isn’t meant to change your life, just take you out of yours for a few days.

This game is a must-own title for anyone who professes to love the FPS genre. The current war on terrorism and initial attack on Baghdad might have coined the term, but Black is the true definition of “Shock and Awe”.