Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3935 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2006-02-24
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: PlayStation2

Manufacturer's Description
Black is a fresh and unique take on the first-person shooter. Moving away from the covert and simulation obsessed games of recent years, Black delivers intense action gun fights by identifying the key components of great Hollywood shoot-outs and recreating them as a game. The peerless fire-and-effect experience will revolutionise video game shooting.

With the odds stacked heavily in the enemy's favour, the player can only succeed by learning a new style of attack&. be bold, be aggressive and use the physical environment as an ally. In Black, it's not just who you shoot, it's what you shoot. Signs, walls, statues, doors, ceilings, and windows can all be destroyed to surprise, stun, wound or kill your enemy with devastating results. Every bullet has an impact, every impact has an effect

Customer Reviews

Good game with simple flaws
When i first played Black the first word which escaped my mouth were wow and oooo look at the pretty explosions. The game is absolutely spectacular in those respects, the explosions are huge and the action and gunplay are brilliant. This is beyond doubt the best action shooter on PS2 at the moment. The graphics are brilliant, the action immersive and truly enjoyable as well as being extremely tense. All of the weapons have a superb solid feel to them and although it may not be realistic it is truly fun to simply stand up and empty a full box magazine for an m249 into a group of enemies. Once you complete the game and play it again on the same difficulty level you get unlimited ammo which adds immensely to the fun and carnage. However this is where i must mention the games most severe flaw; it is incredibly short. There are 8 missions including a shorter prequel type mission and each mission first time round will take between 45 minutes and an hour to complete. I completed the game for the first time in under 8 hours. PS2 games cost £30 upwards and for 8 hours of gameplay this is just not worth it. Even with it being so short i may have given it 4 stars but there are other gripe to be made. For example the voice acting is terrible and your character often seems to be shouting over the radio when he should be stealthy. The gameplay eventually gets slightly repetitive and although there are some interesting twist such as making your way through a minefield, even this is used twice. In addition the explosions - the games selling point - are over used and the enemies are incredibly hard to take out, most taking more than 15 rounds to put down. This forces you to look for stuff to blow up which means that you are rarely being tactical and constantly looking for stuff that blows up which just gets repetitive.
Overall this is an excellent game and has easily the best shooting of any game on PS2. With a little more length and variety it could have been a classic. As it is it is just good. I would suggest renting this not buying it as £30 is just too much money for 8 hours of game. Either that or wait for the price to drop.

A decent shooter... shame really...
I expected Black to make me feel 12 again and for a few minutes it really did. I shot down the front of a building and threw grenades everywhere... I beat my chest and admired my handiwork. From then on in however it was all a little dull.

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

Best FPS since Halo 2
Good:
___________
*Outstanding graphics - atmospheric, detailed and superb particles and explosions.
*Really satisfying weapons - The M3 and Uzi make you squeal with joy!
*Awesome sound - Explosions, bullet hits and gunfire all sound great. The environment noises add a lot too.
*Pretty good AI - They take cover quite a lot and try to sneak up behind you sometimes. They tend to stand next to explosive things, which although is really dumb, it makes it more fun!
*Very well designed levels - especially the sniper alley and bridge levels. Lots of alternative routes.
*Good replay value - Hard level provides a very good challenge and once finished, you get infinite ammo, so youre encouraged to do the 'destruction' objectives - Ie, shoot everything up!
*Superb destructible environments - The amount of stuff you can destroy is incredible! Shoot out walls, pipes, barrels, cars etc. The difference is great when you do a 'before & after' comparison of the environment of a gunfight.

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.