Review: Black (XBX)

That lobby scene from the Wachowski Brothers' incredible film The Matrix (let's just pretend the sequels never happened, alright?) is one of the most revered and famous action scenes in movie history, as Neo and Trinity shoot and backflip their way across a corporate lobby while dozens of soldiers train lead upon them (thus reducing the marble interiors to a cloud of shrapnel and dust). When the scene is over the lobby is devastated; bullet holes pockmark every inch of space and pillars are left looking like oversized apple cores. Criterion, the creators of the sublime Burnout series, have tried to recreate this carnage in their first foray into the FPS genre - although, somewhat ironically, players may suffer a psychological "burnout" from the overly-repetitive action.

The story of Black revolves around Jack Kellar: a member of an unnamed American Black Ops team being interrogated by his boss as to why he and his team decided to hunt down the leader of a terrorist cell without orders. Every level is a flashback of these unauthorised missions, with Kellar telling his interrogator what happened in each one. It is established that Kellar is a loose cannon, since he tends to go in shooting people and not asking too many questions. And that is about as deep as it goes - which is fair enough, since you won't care about the story at all. Black is about over-the-top action, and it does this extremely well.

As soon as the first level begins and you're blasting away at identikit soldiers, you also realise that Black is about the über damage caused by your guns. Every surface can be plastered with bullet holes, every location can be riddled with dust, barrels explode, windows shatter, towers collapse and a shedload of enemies will fall to your Blackened agenda. And all of this achieved without a speck of slowdown (made all the more impressive because Black is graphically accomplished, and certainly on par with the best of breed for Xbox and PS2).

This wholesale bullet-wrought havoc is pretty much what makes the game enjoyable, as you unleash round after round on your foes and watch them get shot, blown up, crushed and shot again. Unfortunately, since the game focuses purely on the action, it seems to have ignored certain aspects that stop it from truly becoming great.

The aforementioned story isn't really interesting at all, which is compounded by the inability to skip the rather dull cut-scenes. Enemy AI is pretty much MIA, beyond them seeking cover (which most don't do anyway, and when they do they're usually sat right next to an exploding barrel - if you thought Half-Life 2 had a few too many of these clogging up the works, get ready for Black's endless supply of barrels, and soldiers, on demand). Indeed, the enemies' diminished capacity reminded us of bees - inasmuch as they seemed to think that they could triumph by sheer weight of numbers. Yet even bees present more of a challenge than these terrible terrorists, due partly to the fact that you've got far more bullets than terrorists. Most enemies carry the exact same weapon that you do (or one that accepts the same type of ammunition), so you'll never be left panicking for lack of arms.

Black's length and difficulty also add to its problems, but not for the reasons you might expect. There are only eight levels in the game, the longest of which can be cleared in around 45 minutes to an hour - and that's assuming you die twice in the level. During its first run-through on the normal difficulty, Gamestyle died a grand total of four times, and these occurred within the same two levels. In an attempt to extend the game's length, Criterion ensured that checkpoints were few and far between, so when you do die, you'll have to replay some 10- or 15-minute segments again. In a way this proves the price for not showing the game your best Rambo impression, but it's nonetheless annoying.

Once you have finished the game, you may care to replay it again on one of the harder difficulty levels - but unless you're feeling particularly masochistic after completing it on 'Hard' (a misnomer to be sure), or have unlocked the suicidal 'Black Ops' mode, there really isn't much of a point. You'll have seen and blown up everything there is to see, possibly twice. One lingering question on Gamestyle's mind is why on earth did Criterion not include a multiplayer mode, because this would have added some badly-needed variety and longevity to the game.

Nevertheless, Gamestyle enjoyed itself immensely during that first run-through and certainly admired the wanton destruction we had wrought with nothing but a few thousand rounds of M16 ammunition and three RPG shots; it's just a shame that it ended too soon. Black isn't a bad game by any stretch - it's just that a wealth of missed opportunities and minor blemishes hold it back from achieving FPS greatness.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Garry Webber