User Reviews (11 - 21 of 57)

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Non-Stop Action Guns Blazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game by no means is not a splinter cell. If Sam Fisher stuck his head out in this game it would get blown clean off. I just got the game and find it challenging and fun to play. The evironment is destructable all around you and you cant hang out in one place for too long. Let me tell you in level one the RPG is a bad ass gun. I stongley recommend this game if your into FPS.

Fun FPS, but flawed

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed playing this game, but there are a few flaws that keep it from getting a 5 star review.

PROS:
- Fun, realistic weapons (when you shoot, the reticle "kicks" up as if you were absorbing the recoil of the shot)
- Great Bad Guy deaths (my favorite is when you cap a dude, he falls over the railing, then tries to hold on)
- Realistic, war-torn environments
- AI Teammates actually help, but not so much that you can breeze through each level.

CONS:
-NO JUMPING: overall gameplay is very smooth, much better than some other FPS's that took some getting-used to. However, you can't jump or dodge anything in this game.
-ENEMIES UNREALISTICALLY TOUGH: For some reason, a single shot to the head kills instantly, yet a burst of two shots rarely does. Also, massive trauma to the thorax & mediastinum really doesn't phase these guys for more than a couple seconds. I mean, it's not like your heart or lungs are in there...
- NO MULTIPLAYER, NO ONLINE: Seriously, what decent FPS is without at least a multiplayer version?
- NO WAY TO SAVE MID-LEVEL: if you die halfway through a level, you can restart at a checkpoint. However, you can't save it, cut off you console, and come back later and start again from that checkpoint-- you have to start the level afresh.

Bottom line: this is a fun game, but it strikes me as imcomplete. It should have maybe 4 more levels or a multiplayer version.

5+ stars!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am not a big "gamer" I play to kill time here and there, and I pretty much only play FPS's (doom 3, black, chronicles of riddick ...etc.) This game has a tendency to have so much going on that I start having massive adrinaline rushes. I got freakin hooked on this game! the graphics and lighting are amazing in my opinion, and the sound is the best ive ever heard on any game! a lot of people say its to short but it is actually pretty long with seemingly never ending levels, of course you want more!!!
Buy it!! its worth every nickle.

Needlessly dull and dimwitted...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Black is one of those games that you either like or dislike - no middle of the road. In my opinion, this game has no redeeming qualities. The explosions are fun, but don't even kill the enemies 90% of the time. The guns are impressively rendered, but don't even kill the enemies 60% of the time - you have to unload an unreal amount of bullets into an enemy just to make them hop around on their foot. And the enemy spawn points are so ill-designed - you destroy a room completely with bullets and explosions and then an enemy comes from behind a box that survived the mayhem. All and all, I really wish that I had wasted my money on some game that had a good story, had interesting levels, and gave me good replay value for my gaming dollar. If you want to try this game, let me know and I'll send you my copy! Be forewarned - you'll be bored before you're even halfway finished...

Extremely Over Hyped

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: March 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Black is probably one of the most over hyped games I've played in quite a while. There are some good moments in the game but most of the remaining moments are split between two category's: major flaws and minor flaws.

First the minor flaws: unlimited ammo but it takes at least four times the amount of bullets to kill any one guy. The bright spots in the game are so bright that the game prompts you to change the brightness factor from the default which is set all the way off. The glare is completely unrealistic. The reticule, which is white, is a tiny white dot that changes red when it is on a target. It's nearly impossible to see in certain firefights and you will find yourself relying on your naked eye to aim. Also if you're used to Halo's quick button reaction time, you'll be very disappointed here.

Major Flaws: there are few in game save points. If you are going to start a level you will almost undoubtably have to finish said level before you can stop playing without losing all saved info. And you have to watch all of the cutscenes every time you die and restart at the beginning. Besides the fact that the story is so unimportant that i cant imagine why they made it so you couldnt skip the cut scenes. And the game offers no diversity. The only difference between the early levels and the later levels difficutly is the number of villains that you take on which makes it entirely uninspiring. Especially since any seasoned FPS Vet will be able to finish most of the early levels with 30 minutes each. By the time you get to the last level you cant quit the game, no matter how far along, without losing all saved info from said level. Oh and one more thing, you cant put any of the saved levels onto a memory card to transfer finished levels to a friends house. This game is so stripped down i cant believe it was made this year. Yes, the expolosions are neat, but it never overwhelms the games many design flaws. Wait till it comes in used, which it will since it has absolutely no multi-player games or replay value.

Nothing Special

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: May 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

So, is Black as good as everyone was hoping it would be? Not really. Unfortunately, the game screams "mediocre" in just about every way and does not do anything well enough to distinguish itself from the rest of the typical Xbox shooters. It brings nothing new to the genre, and everything it does we have seen done better in other games.

Let's start with the weaponry in the game, as Criterion has said they are the star of the show. The assortment of weapons is your typical shooter selection. You have your machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, and your big rocket launcher. There is not much to distinguish each of the bullet weapons from each other. They all appear to do pretty much the same amount of damage, with only the range or rate of fire being slightly different. The weapon models themselves are unremarkable. Sometimes you have the ability to attach a silencer to the guns, but it does not have much of an effect, and this is hardly a stealth game.

Actually shooting the weapons feels pretty good as they can tear into some things, ripping it apart as everything erupts into dust. However, the environments themselves are not that destructible, and remind me of Red Faction II. Only things designed to be broken can be, and you can even see the lines in the geometry where the item will break when you shoot it, which takes out a lot of the fun. There are many situations when you can blow a hole in a thick concrete wall, but a chain fence will withstand a blast from a rocket launcher. As for shooting the enemies, they don't react much to being shot, and there are only a few death animations that you will see over and over again.

The graphics are pretty good for a last generation game. The particle effects like dust and smoke look pretty good, and the environments look pretty decent. The explosions are great as well. Shooting into things like walls, boxes and cars looks pretty cool, though no where near as good as F.E.A.R. looks when you are blowing objects to pieces.

There are eight levels in the campaign, and they are over pretty quickly. Other reviews have said the game lasts about 6-8 hours, but the game timer clocked in at less than 4 hours when I was done. At first the game starts off with a pretty energetic and explosive level, but shortly after you realize that you have seen pretty much everything there is to see after the first level. The level design is pretty boring overall, only the first few missions are interesting. The gameplay itself pretty much breaks down to looking for barrels and other conveniently placed explosives to shoot to take out enemies. The AI is pretty suspect, and you face the same few types of enemies for the entire game. The only difference is that some of them have extra armor or a face mask, which just means that you have to shoot them in the head a few times before they go down. There is not much strategy to this game at all, so put your brain on hold and fire away. Your indestructible teammates don't do much to mix up the gameplay during the few levels that they appear, and are pretty much useless.

There are some secondary objectives in the game, the most of which are pretty lame. You will be walking around a level and find a locked safe randomly on the ground in an empty room that you are supposed to shoot, or you might be walking around and see a random laptop with a red screen that you need to destroy. The secondary objectives feel contrived and completely unrealistic.

The plot is your typical black ops story line and the characters in the game are two dimensional. The story is told by live action flash backs. It feels as if the only purpose of the plot is to try to give you some minimal justification as to why you are where you are and to try to explain what you are doing. It just comes off as a bad excuse to give you a reason to shoot some dudes. Also, the game ends pretty quickly without much closure and the plot is paper thin.

The lack of any multiplayer component also hurts the games value a lot. Since the game is extremely short, at least some multiplayer mode could have allowed you to get some further mileage with this game. Though given the gameplay, I don't think they could have made a compelling multiplayer game unless they drastically changed some of the core shooting mechanics for online play.

Overall, the game is competent and can be fun for a short amount of time, but due to how short and unremarkable it is I would suggest renting this game over buying it. If you were not interested in it before, there is no reason to check it out at all.

Tedious

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: November 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Big bangs and powerful weapons are cool, but levels are long and dull with few save points. People who like tactical shooters might like this. I like immersive story shooters like Halo, Max Payne, or Half-Life. No immersive story here. Got bored. After awhile you just ask yourself, why am I playing this? Didn't bother finishing; it seemed a chore. Try Rogue Trooper if you're looking for a recent good shooter.

Cool first person shooter

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is really good for anyone that likes blowing up alot of things. I really liked the graphics, and the sound is amazing in surround sound. Also I noticed that on the back of the game it didn't support a custom soundtrack but in the options you can switch it to a soundtrack on your hard drive.

Overall this game is great, the only downside is the story is hard to follow the first time, and the same enemies over. What I loved the most is playing on Hard and Black Ops mode. This game is good for anyone that likes difficult games and lots of shooting. Its an intense game.

Not too bad

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Black is a pretty good game, but not without a few drawbacks. The first thing most people will notice is how hard it is to kill an enemy. Even the weakest guy can take 5 or 6 shots to the torso before he dies. Only the shotguns, explosives, or a headshot will defeat an enemy quickly. The enemy isn't particularly smart, but they make up for it with their numbers. In a couple of levels it is hard to find the way through. There were a couple of times were I wandered around for a while after killing everybody in the area before I found a way out. This is further complicated by the inability to jump, which means even small objects can block your path. There is no way to adjust the sensitivity of the controls, so you just have to get used to it. The graphics are good, but nothing worth writing home about. Most of the scenery (crates, windows, cars, and some walls) can be destroyed or at least damaged which makes the game look pretty cool for a few seconds at a time. The sound is good too, if you have a home theater turn it on and turn it up loud. Basically there are two ways to play this game, both work pretty much the same. The first way is totake your time, move through slowly and take out your enemy from a distance. You won't get shot a lot, but it gets kind of boring. The other way is to run through the levels, and shoot anything that moves, anything that doesn't move, and everything in between. This is more fun, but is difficult to do on hard mode because there aren't very many health packs. I would suggest renting this game. It isn't hard, or long and the replay value is basically non-existant.

Highs:
Looks good, sounds good, plenty of ammo to keep you locked and loaded.

Lows:
Too short, enemies are way too tough, can't jump, controls make you feel numb.

The Verdict:
THE game for those who like to kill people and break things.

wicked cool

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome! It's extremely realistic, and your team (when you have one) actually makes intelligent chatter. The levels are easy enough so you don't get stuck forever, but hard enough so that it takes a couple of tries. I like how the enemies have almost as much health as you. I also like how you need to use some strategy instead of just running around shooting. Finally, being able to shoot anything and have a affect is really cool. There are only two small drawbacks. 1) The enemy is either deaf and blind, or really stupid. You can kill a person right next to another person, and if you have a silencer they won't even notice. 2) The game is very short and has no multiplayer, so rent it. It's awesome!!!!!!!!!

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