Black (16+)
Verdict: Fuel-injected gun fest
Platform: Xbox, PS2.
Rating: 4/5
Not content with putting a rocket up the backside of the racing genre with the Burnout series, Criterion have shifted their gaze to the tiring first person shooter and attempted to turn it up to 11.
Like a shiny new amp, Black is one of the best looking current-gen console shooters - from stunningly realised level design to tiny visual flourishes it’s a game brimming with confidence and an almost unhealthy obsessive level of detail.
Featuring levels littered with destructible objects and some of the most satisfying guns rendered in gaming history, Black gives you the opportunity to use your environment to great affect and greater enjoyment. Instead of waiting for an enemy to pop up from behind a car or wall you can just destroy the wall or blow up the car and deal with him at the same time.
The same applies to you as well with seemingly safe places to hide slowly being obliterated, leading to an emergent style of gameplay as the environment randomly changes round you forcing you to adapt, improvise and play with your surroundings.
The game is a constant barrage of dust and smoke, gunfire and explosions - blowing things up never looked so good with particle effects and blurring put to good use and it never sounded so good either with audio design proving just as powerful as the visuals - the use of filters when you’re dying is as original as it is stylised genius.
The level design has some nice variation and genuinely interesting set pieces but along with debris from explosions some of the areas really show up the criminal lack of a jump button. In a game centred round high octane action, being able to jump is crucial to keeping up the flow - having to stop and circle round a tiny piece of debris just shatters any suspension of disbelief. It’s also really frustrating!
The sluggish controls also impact on the action - when you’re swinging a shotgun around in close quarters, taking on multiple foes, the treacle like sensitivity doesn’t help at all. The exclusion of a sensitivity option is a sore point but I suspect it’s down to hardware limitations than a design fault - if the PS2 was asked to move any quicker it’d probably explode.
Coupled with some annoying checkpoint placements, transparently scripted environments, lazy squad AI and unskippable cut scenes that traverse the fine line between cheese and stylised cool, Black doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot - it just comes very close.
The dial only goes up to 10 you know.