by: Corey Peace

March 08, 2006

There are a few close range options as well such as Shotguns and melee ability with every gun. Both however are practically useless in most situations because you don’t usually get the opportunity to get that close to enemies. Even though the story is a huge let down, Black could have been about 10 times better had developers either polished this game to the extreme of the extent of say, Halo 2. Or, waited and put this game on Xbox 360 instead. A lot of stuff in Black is able to be destroyed or beaten up, but nothing is interactive in any fashion, there is hardly any physics engine at all and there is no jump option either. Another annoying factor is the occasional squad members that will join you on missions. They usually do their job but every now and then lose their place and don’t follow you. They also cannot be affected by friendly fire or for that matter…die! Despite being bombarded by gunfire or blasted head on by an RPG, they never die. Had something like this been put onto the 360, one can just imagine how much more fun and successful this game could have been.

Graphics
As much as the previews and all the hype want you to believe, the key feature(s) in Black are definitely not the gameplay. The visual and audio presentation is on a completely different level in comparison. As I somewhat explained earlier, when it comes to explosions, which are very frequent, they are always a sight to behold because this is by far obviously where the developers focused their attention first. The gun models are pretty impressive and what most would consider as quite accurate to their real-world counterparts. Oddly enough, Black is all about guns, but in the end you realize you pretty much used the same gun through the whole game. Anyway, another great visualization is the environments and backgrounds that you will travel through. A really nice bleak and sometimes intense color palate is used to help depict areas ravaged by massive gun fire and explosions while a warm sunset or sunrise is positioned in the backdrop. Character models are nice and crisp and match the environments fairly well, but it is very bothersome that the same basic enemy model is used throughout the entire game. Aside from the fact that you never really know why your enemies are enemies, they pretty much look alike the whole time.

Sound
The greatest feature in Black by far is the audio presentation, bar none. In cut-scenes, real time voices accompany the real time video sequences and in general are acceptable. You can tell that the acting was worked on because there are some nice pauses and emotional uproars between characters but it’s not something that really sticks out. No, the sound in Black is all about the guns, the noises they make, and the noises their destruction makes. If you happen to have a nice sound system for your console you are in luck because it feels like this game was built around what it would sound like as a finished product (NOTE: This game was reviewed with Altec Lansing’s XA3021 speaker system). Gunfire is felt in your hands with vibration turned on and the bass from the fire can be felt in the floor when cranked up. Explosions are key here as well, because they sound and feel as if they are happening right in your room with you. So many explosions can be happening at once or with in a short amount of time in-between it can become chaotic and help the “Hollywood action movie” style that was intended.

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In the end, Black holds a very well done audio and visual presentation but quickly fails in gameplay and story which drags it down to “just another” FPS. There is so much room for improvement here that it will be very exciting to see if EA coughs up a sequel to Black on the next-generation where they will have a chance at fixing the problems they have now, and truly make the series great competition. The lack of a interesting story and it being completely absent of any multiplayer is reason enough to only play through this once. It’s a perfect title for a weekend rental or a purchase once it goes budget price, but only true hardcore FPS fans will be getting the most out of Black for now.

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