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Total Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: March 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I know this review is going to fall on deaf ears, but I'm going to write it anyway. I know that the majority of reviewers on Amazon are drooling fanboys, but still I will write this. If this review prevents one person from buying this God-awful game, then it was worth writing.

Black:

The storyline is you're some government agent type who was on a mission, and needless to say it went bad. Now you're telling your story from the beginning to save your butt from a life of prison and blah blah blah it's probably the worst aspect of the entire game. At the beginning of every level you're forced to sit through these horribly acted live action cut scenes, and by forced I mean you can't skip them even if you've already passed the game.

Good points: Sound, graphics, and...well that's it.

Cons: AI, gameplay, overall enjoyment.

It does sport some of the best graphics for a FPS these days however that is completely overshawdowed by all of it's bad points. The enemy AI is comparable to Goldeneye for the 64. There is virtually no stealth in the game what-so-ever. You enter the enemy's line of sight and he will now follow you until he kills you or you kill him. Doesn't matter how far you run from him, his ESP allows him to KNOW exactly where you are.
The gameplay is "go in guns a blazing" and kill everything that moves.
Which can be difficult when it takes practically an entire clip to bring down a single person. Black is famous for explosions. This is pretty spectacular the first time you see something blow-up, but it won't take more than five minutes before every explosion starts looking like every other explosion. It's almost as if you're fighting terrorists and evil foreign types inside a fireworks factory. In fact during the beginning of the game they tell you to "Shoot the red objects, because they explode." The AI of the enemy seems to have been set up with that in mind, as you watch enemy soldiers firing and slowly cluster around these little dynamite packs. Convienent huh? It got to the point where I was firing at a single guy in a log cabin, shot the predictably placed red keg of generic explosives, and watched as the cabin was reduced to rubble. All that to kill ONE guy. One reviewer complained that the game isn't long enough and I'm going to complain that it could have been a lot shorter.

Black at it's core is a fluff game, a lot of show and no substance.
If you're looking for a FPS that doesn't insult your intellegence, I would suggest F.E.A.R.

extremely typical, crappy FPS with no story or depth at all

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: November 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"black" is a perfect example of a game that looks cool but does nothing above sub-par. there's no story (you hear military-sounding dialogue over your radio that doesn't mean anything, oh yay), the weapons are cool enough but nothing new.. most of this could be overlooked IF IT WERE A FUN SHOOTING GAME, but alas, it's not, not at all. the controls suck.. aiming isn't done well (especially compared to a game like urban chaos: riot response), and it takes too long to move your view around. really i'd rather play pretty much any FPS game over this one.

Just Rent It

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'm glad I rented this game instead of buying it. It's fun as far as blasting everything and everyone in sight for stress relief. The graphics are very well designed. However, I found the autosave feature to be crap. No matter how far you go in a level or how many check points you hit if you don't finish that level you MUST start the whole level over again later. I also wish they had allowed the ability to skip the live action interigation series that preceedes each level. Each time you play you are forced to sit through several minutes of talk that you've heard before and don't need to hear again. The game's fun for what it is (a shooter with no depth or real story line) but I would recommend heading to Blockbuster and renting it as it's not worth the purchase price.

Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: March 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

In terms of sound and graphics, Black is superior to any almost any other console FPS. Despite its technical brilliance, Black is an utter disappointment in my opinion. The game is remarkably short, there's no story at all, there's no point, the enemy AI is horrific, and you have to shoot each baddie about twelve times to kill them.

What about headshots? Well, sometimes its a one shot kill and other times it takes about five bullets.Don't bother trying to employ any sort of stealth or strategy as you move through each mission. Yeah you'll have a silenced weapon, but after having to shoot the same guy twelve times to kill him things usually turn into a massive firefight.

The game can probably best be described as an A-Team style over-the-top ridiculous Vin Diesel action movie. If you want insane action and the ability to destroy everything that moves, pick up the vastly superior Mercenaries instead.

Great graphics, that's it...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: April 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Pros:
Great graphics!

Cons:
It's short (but I got bored and didn't bother to finish it).
Gameplay is too conventional and not really that innovative.
Not realistic:
- One man army
- Dumb enemy AI
- Lots of bullets
- Believe it or not, I can do stealthy sniping with my silenced pistol!!!

If you like FPS, it's worth a try.
But if realism matters so much, don't bother...

Where is the rest of it?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: June 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Black is a very fun first person shooter. the exposions are great and the guns are alaso awesome. HOWEVER....... it takes forever to kill someone. I hit a guy in the chest 4 times with an M5 and he is still shooting at me? why? Why???? In real life that is overkill. 5 shots to a person's chest means that you shot him 3 times while he was laying on the ground in agony. Another problem i had with this game is the lack of blood. This game is rated mature isn't it? If so, then I want the full package. I want big guns, big explosions, and blood. Is that too much to ask for? I guess i should also ask why is the game so short? Within a few hours i was done.

If you like watching things blow up and big guns then maybe this might entertain you for a good 3 hours.

No 2-Player or Online/Multiplayer...BOOOO!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: March 02, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After walking into my local game store a month ago and seeing this game on the PS2 demo screen, I was wowed by the "Blow up everything that is in your way" style of the game, and immediately pre-ordered it. The game looked sharp and sleek on the hi-def demo screen, and I couldn't wait to play it. Even the gentleman at the game store was anxious for Black to come out--he was curious to see if it would have Online Multiplayer features.

....To my dismay, when I finally received the game yesterday, I saw it was only for 1 Player--there are no 2 Player or Online/Multiplayer features at all. The game is difficult even on Easy setting (I am not the best video game player, but I had difficulty staying alive on both Normal and Easy settings). ....I really wish the crosshair was bigger (though I may have to fiddle around more with the settings, I haven't tried making it bigger yet--right now, the crosshair is a tiny white dot). And I also wish the AI were a bit smarter instead of walking into my line of fire.

....On the positive side, the movies are great and the music is really beautiful. I am giving this game 3 stars because it's a lot of fun to make huge explosions after shooting a farm silo with an AK-47, or if one of your stray bullets hits something you didn't know was explosive. (That and because I haven't finished the game yet, and I am sure it gets better as the game progresses--at least I hope!)

too repetive! each level roughly the same

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: March 05, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was going to be "all that" but, it is too short and all u do is shoot people with no strategy at all! Enemies are very stupid, i mean very stupid, and.... each level u do the same thing; get a gun, shoot the crap out of everything, shoot more people(no strategy involved if i already mentioned) and just blow up crap for no reason. This game is amusing, but i would not buy it, i would rent it. u will never play this game again. Really mediocre game.

Big booms but its short and no replay value

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I won't babble like some reviews. I'll just say these few simple truths about his game.

Graphics - outstanding except that the enemies are all copies of each other. Might as well play Duke Nukem or Painkiller.

Sound effects - awesome. NOTHING BAD TO SAY. It's top notch.

Weapons - you can only carry 2. But for some reason, you can carry mass amounts of ammo for any other weapons even though you don't have that weapon with you. On a positive, you can snipe a guy in the head with a silenced pistol from an unrealistic distance. I use pistols on a somewhat regular basis. I know.

Shoot anything red to blow up everything around it. This includes non-red vehicles, large yellow canisters etc. If you think it will blow up if you shoot it enough, it probably will.
I guess I'll call this a good thing.

Cut scenes - Boring and badly acted. You can't stop the cutscene to jump ahead to the action. Even if you finished Easy mode and are now on normal or hard, you have to sit through the exact same scenes all over again.

Movement - The ability to climb over things or jump...GONE, None, Nada, Ziltch. It's a straight walkin game. NO RUN option either.

Length - Very short. I heard people have done it in 6.5 hrs but I took my time and did it in 11 which is still way too short.

Rent it.

Comes up short

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

You'd figure that a violent first person shooter developed by the same folks who brought us the Burnout games would be nothing short of spectacular. Well, you'd be wrong. Don't get me wrong, Black is a solid game, but it comes up short of what it could be. Taking cues from Hollywood action movies, Black puts you in the shoes of a black ops soldier with some very big guns as you trek through enemy territory. The game itself looks sweet, even for a PS2 game, and the sound effects and music are wonderfully done as well. All great so far right? Well, here's what ultimately kills Black from cashing in on all it's potential. First off, the game is incredibly short, and quickly gets very tedious; even for a first person shooter. Depending on which difficulty you select, the game is either really easy or way too hard to play, and offers quite a steep learning curve in later levels. Black delivers on the visual and audio goods in spades, but it's the overall gameplay effects that bring the game down, but it's the fact that EA and Criterion didn't feel the need to inject any online capability into Black at all. Yes this is a first person shooter, and it doesn't offer any online multiplayer options, go figure. Besides all the negativity, Black still offers some solid and quick paced first person shooter action, which is something that the PS2 never really did very well. It's worth a look, but be prepared to get bored with it quickly.

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