Black / Games / Web Wombat

There were no monkeys in the store, nor any branches for them to be sitting on, so there would be no mistaking the secret code-phrase for what it was. He slid a small brown paper bag across the counter and I quickly stowed it away under my bullet proof vest.

“Hang on a sec, mate – you gonna pay for that?”. Of course, black ops can never be on the books, so I’d have to pay for it myself. Damn this need for secrecy.

I hurried home, taking care that I was not followed by the suspicious looking guys hanging around outside Hungry Jacks and/or Burger King. Maybe they were KGB, CIA, MI6, or even Mossad… Maybe they were just civilians out for a bacon double bypass with cheese, but you can never be too careful in this line of business.

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enter the world of Black, the latest FPS from the people at Criterion and EA. Your primary objective is to confirm or dispel claims of almost fully destructible environments, guns which are the stars and best current-gen graphics around.

“Your secondary objective is to take out any objects of opportunity with extreme prejudice. This tape will self destruct if stored improperly.”

Well, at least it’s not another WWII sim.

When a gaming company claims a new feature in a game, I get this odd compulsion to test it to its absolute limits. A couple of years ago a game was released called Viper Racing – it claimed to have “realistic” positional damage models, and myself and Will Barker decided to put that to the test. Ten minutes later, with the help of a concrete wall, my sweetly purring V10 Viper had gone from a 4.5 metre chunk engineering to a 6-inch wide mangled ball of metal, floating two feet above the pavement and still able to move about and make a pitiful sound that resembled one of Will’s wet farts. Never underestimate people with too much time on their hands and very little else to do.

Enough reminiscing about good times and bad smells – let’s cut to the chase. And that’s appropriate, because that’s what Black is about, cutting to the chase. Sure, they laid the battle scenes over a thinly woven plot of intrigue and betrayal, attempting to heighten the mood with some quasi-film-noir live action cut-scenes (guys, that shot from above the table past the ceiling fan was cool for about a second, but if you use it for the opening and closing of EVERY CUTSCENE, IT WILL GET ON THE PLAYER’S NERVES! Ahem…) but ultimately it’s about the action. If you want a good film-noir FPS, get Max Payne 2. But sometimes I also crave just to jump in and pump bad guys full of lead, depleted uranium, plasma, soiled diapers, exploding chickens… you know, whatever comes to hand. And for a game that claims to be focussed on the action, it’s a little more than frustrating that you can’t skip the cut-scenes.

It’s a very basic style of play: start here, go there, in between here and there, shoot anything that moves (and, if you’re so inclined – which I am – shoot everything that doesn’t move to see if it explodes). You’ve got a bunch of “secondary” objectives, which usually involve finding maps, tapes, blowing up computers etcetera. Unfortunately, all of these secondary objectives are the same for each level, and it just gets a little boring looking for the secret document stuck up the enemy general’s kecks on every level.

And while I’m on the subject of a basic style of play, it really annoys me that while I might be able to take out 30 elite guards using only a rubber eraser and a thimble, I can’t jump over that one-foot-high fence, or jump over the conveniently missing step in the stairs. Get with the times, guys!

Destructible environments? Well, not to the extent that an obsessive compulsive person such as myself would want, but I was impressed nonetheless. Here I was in an abandoned asylum, and I ran into a large open room with plenty on pillars around the side, supporting a second level full of baddies. I got out my uzi, hit play on the CD player which just happened to have Propellerhead’s Spybreak! cued up and suddenly there I was in the foyer scene from The Matrix, pylons disappearing under the blaze of automatic gunfire.

Clip’s empty! No time to reload! Switch to the shotgun! Do impossible spinny move through the air while firing… damn wrong game, can’t jump... Yes, you can blow some doors open with the shotgun, but if I shoot a door, I want it to disintegrate into an amorphous pile of rubble, not slowly topple over like Will at the pub on a Saturday night [Easy does it Harm - Will's on leave due to 'mental instability']. Blowing up walls with the RPG is much more satisfying, often with huge gaping holes left in the masonry.

Visually you can’t fault the game. The environments look spectacular, the guns are detailed, muzzle flare on the big guns makes seeing where you are shooting difficult, which I like. Also when you reload, the surroundings go out of focus so you can’t just line up the next poor sap when you really need to be thinking about where the clip fits in your gun.

The music is moody, but ultimately a tad on the generic side. Like the storyline, probably good enough for a solid B, but not A grade material. It just felt like something was lacking. It was the environmental and gun sounds that made this game come alive in full Dolby 5.1 channel glory. The sound reverb effects and timbre changed in the different areas (open air, large room, small tunnel etc.) and gave a good idea of the position of the shooter. Weapon acoustics are extremely satisfying - there’s nothing quite like the thumping sound of a magnum being fired.

Level design is above average, making for some spectacular fire fights, but ultimately is let down by some poor AI - duck and cover is about as good as it gets, and frankly that went out of fashion in the fifties. Quit living in the past, man. Plus this get-up is aching for some Counterstrike-style multiplayer mayhem, but alas there is no multiplayer whatsoever... This is a major let down, and it seriously shortens the lifetime of this game which, considering the lack of tactical finesse required to progress to the next level, is not overly long in the first place.

Black has some cool features and stunning graphics, good popcorn-scoffing action, but not enough real meat to keep your common brand FPS player interested any longer than it takes to say “Didn’t the Xbox 360 get released?”.

Game: Black
System: Xbox
Players: 1
Online: No
Developer: Criterion
Distributor: Electronic Arts

Rating: 75%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

	Announcement