Black (PS2)

The first problem with black is that it's got no soul. As Criterion's previous effort was 'Burnout', you expect good gameplay but you don't expect all the emotional involvement of a game where it's more fun to crash cars than race them. Black has a pitifully dull story told in flashback (urgh) in a gravely voice (urgh) about a black ops group for whom, who... erm... it's very difficult to care. The worst thing is you can't skip the cutscenes so you're normally asleep by the start of the level.

Characters are non-existent and the only lines you'll hear in game are your usual 'get him' or 'take cover' junk. So any excitement that comes from blowing stuff up is quickly offset by a colosal sense of apathy.

As for stuff actually blowing up, there's a few problems there too. 'If it looks like you can blow it up then you can!' ok then, why can't I blow up that rickety wooden look out tower? And why can some of the enemies take more shotgun blasts than things made out of concrete? It's things like this that just make black seem cheap. I've never played a game where I've shouted 'BUT PAINT CANS DON'T BLOW UP!!!' Yup, after a while it just gets a bit repetitive, just shoot till something sets on fire... attaboy.

AI was obviously replaced with explosions, as I mentioned before, why use smart AI if you can just give soldiers armour made from the impenetrable beard of Zeus. And a hockey mask sometimes too.

Level design is often a little odd, like everywhere has been made specifically for a buff black ops guy to make explosions in, it just makes everything seem more contrived. There's also a lot of levels that are self consciously similar to parts of Half Life 2 (there's a Bridge that seems like it's ripped straight out of the buggy section) all this serves to do though is remind the player that they are not playing Half Life 2 and they wish they were.

The actual level objectives are just laughable, secondary objectives are even worse... remind me, why am I throwing grenades at a safe? Oh right military secrets. Cool.

But some things are nice, guns are big and noisy even if there's no point having half of them since they're mostly the same. Still the best part of every level is getting a new gun and seeing what it sounds like. The graphics are plain but they do the job quite well and it's probably a bit of a sacrifice to fit in all of the particle effects and whatnot.

In closing there's about 6 hours of gameplay in Black, 2 of which are really great, the rest is just average. To be quite honest, Killzone was better and it had multiplayer... it's probably cheaper too now... the choice is yours

Bad:
______
*Quite short - only about 8 levels
*Plot is a bit pointless - Just seems tacked on & you dont really care about the outcome.
*Cant jump - Backtracking is prevented by strategically placed tiny ledges that you cant pass. You get used to this after a while though.
*No multiplayer - Again, this doesnt really bother you so much because the single player mission is so good.

I really enjoyed black, and although it seemed a little short, I still feel compelled to play it again and again, on harder difficulty levels. Its loads of fun to play, and can be tricky to achieve all of the secondary objectives. Its got nearly everything that Killzone did so well, but without the samey gameplay and bad AI. Its the best, most intense and fun shooter ive played since Halo2 - i highly reccomend it.