Black takes place in Chechnya (Southern Russia). The protagonist is a black ops soldier named Sergeant First Class Jack Kellar (portrayed by Marty Papazian). Kellar tells most of the story in first-person at an interrogation four days after the events in the story begin. Kellar is an inadequately disciplined member of a CIA black ops group and a veteran of several conflicts including Guatemala, Colombia, Iran and Croatia. The unknown interrogator (portrayed by Paul Pape) questions Kellar about an arms smuggling and terrorist operation called the Seventh Wave. Seventh Wave have been responsible for a number of terrorist attacks. Kellar is told that, unless he co-operates, he and his actions will be declassified, he will be dishonorably discharged and imprisoned for life. Though initially resistant, Kellar at last agrees to tell his story.
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Esse foi o jogo que eu mais joguei no PS2.
Jogava muito quando era criança, achava difícil antigamente, hoje em dia eu acho de boa, maravilhoso cada ponto de detalhe, problema é a falta de legendas apenas
nice shotgun(s)!
played on ps2
played on ps2
juegazo, pero no lo recordaba tan corto
This was a weird era for shooters. They had progressed past the "boomer shooter" template, but in the wake of Half-Life, many developers didn't really know what to do if they wanted to create something focused purely on action. Returning to monke was viewed as unacceptable -- we're living in a Three-Dimensional World now, soldier, the People demand a Cinematic Experience. As a result, many shooters from 2000-2006 feel like they're being pulled between two extremes and tearing apart in the process. In a pre-CoD2 time, a select few games managed to straddle this dichotomy (F.E.A.R. is one such example, Return to Castle Wolfenstein another) but the vast majority are worse off because of this. Black is one of them.
Described as "gun porn" by the developers, in one of the earliest recorded examples of "Extreme Cringe," Black was meant to show off the Power of Firearms, make you feel like a God with an AK-47, raining destruction against any of those who dare stand in your way. In practice, it's an underwhelming shooter with worse gunplay than Goldeneye, except it makes you look at the guns a lot. Yes, it has detailed reloading animations. It also released in 2006, when this wasn't really impressive anymore. It's not the developers' fault that this came out couple of months after CoD2, a better game in (almost) every single respect... But it sure doesn't help. They want you to look at these guns. They REQUIRE that you look at the guns. Every time you switch weapons, you chamber a round for no reason. Every time you reload, an incredibly obnoxious depth-of-field effect obscures the rest of the screen (I think this game in particular is the reason I hate DoF and turn it off whenever possible).
Despite this, the guns. Feel. WEAK. Enemies can take an ungodly amount of damage before dying, which is probably why every gun's magazine holds about double the amount of ammo that it should. You can riddle a guy with bullets like he's Kenny and you're ED-209, and he'll eventually go down after expending half of your AK's 60-round mag. You have grenades, but your character has a wrist that would get you called slurs in PE. The prevailing tactic seems to be to shoot the copious red barrels and other explosive objects strewn around, rather than shooting at the enemies themselves. Those explosives, and the destructible environmental elements, also dry up pretty quickly into the meager 4 hour campaign. The game is also completely bloodless, adding to the lack of impact, which is extra strange. It feels like it's a T rated game in every respect except for guys yelling the Fuck Word on your radio.
The controls also suck, of course. It has a bizarre control scheme, naturally, because that wasn't standardized yet, but at least it's fully customizable. The strangest part is that you have "cycle weapon forward/backward" buttons despite only being able to hold 2 at a time anyway. The aiming is as bad as you would expect from a console shooter of this era where you click the right stick to zoom in (not ADS). It's easy to talk shit about Left Trigger, Right Trigger controls, but it's vastly superior to this crap that we were dealing with in the Before Times.
The one thing I will praise in Black is the audio. It's the sole saving grace. The guns do sound loud as shit, and the music (from Chris Tilton and Michael Giacchino, composer for Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow and director of Werewolf by Night) is excellent. Until BF Bad Company came along, this was the best guns had ever sounded in a video game. So they had that crown for 2 years.
After this, Criterion went back to making racing games, which they're actually good at. Developers of Black went over to Codemasters and made a spiritual sequel, Bodycount. I remember it being pretty average, which is at least better than Black. Contemporary reviews loved this game. I never understood why. At least now I was able to get some enjoyment from the ridiculously pretentious opening cutscene, which is simply credits in the lower left of a black screen.
If you have a hankering to play a mid-2000s shooter with a focus on bombastic gunplay and a prominently-featured SPAS-12, make the right decision:
Play F.E.A.R.
2/10
Described as "gun porn" by the developers, in one of the earliest recorded examples of "Extreme Cringe," Black was meant to show off the Power of Firearms, make you feel like a God with an AK-47, raining destruction against any of those who dare stand in your way. In practice, it's an underwhelming shooter with worse gunplay than Goldeneye, except it makes you look at the guns a lot. Yes, it has detailed reloading animations. It also released in 2006, when this wasn't really impressive anymore. It's not the developers' fault that this came out couple of months after CoD2, a better game in (almost) every single respect... But it sure doesn't help. They want you to look at these guns. They REQUIRE that you look at the guns. Every time you switch weapons, you chamber a round for no reason. Every time you reload, an incredibly obnoxious depth-of-field effect obscures the rest of the screen (I think this game in particular is the reason I hate DoF and turn it off whenever possible).
Despite this, the guns. Feel. WEAK. Enemies can take an ungodly amount of damage before dying, which is probably why every gun's magazine holds about double the amount of ammo that it should. You can riddle a guy with bullets like he's Kenny and you're ED-209, and he'll eventually go down after expending half of your AK's 60-round mag. You have grenades, but your character has a wrist that would get you called slurs in PE. The prevailing tactic seems to be to shoot the copious red barrels and other explosive objects strewn around, rather than shooting at the enemies themselves. Those explosives, and the destructible environmental elements, also dry up pretty quickly into the meager 4 hour campaign. The game is also completely bloodless, adding to the lack of impact, which is extra strange. It feels like it's a T rated game in every respect except for guys yelling the Fuck Word on your radio.
The controls also suck, of course. It has a bizarre control scheme, naturally, because that wasn't standardized yet, but at least it's fully customizable. The strangest part is that you have "cycle weapon forward/backward" buttons despite only being able to hold 2 at a time anyway. The aiming is as bad as you would expect from a console shooter of this era where you click the right stick to zoom in (not ADS). It's easy to talk shit about Left Trigger, Right Trigger controls, but it's vastly superior to this crap that we were dealing with in the Before Times.
The one thing I will praise in Black is the audio. It's the sole saving grace. The guns do sound loud as shit, and the music (from Chris Tilton and Michael Giacchino, composer for Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow and director of Werewolf by Night) is excellent. Until BF Bad Company came along, this was the best guns had ever sounded in a video game. So they had that crown for 2 years.
After this, Criterion went back to making racing games, which they're actually good at. Developers of Black went over to Codemasters and made a spiritual sequel, Bodycount. I remember it being pretty average, which is at least better than Black. Contemporary reviews loved this game. I never understood why. At least now I was able to get some enjoyment from the ridiculously pretentious opening cutscene, which is simply credits in the lower left of a black screen.
If you have a hankering to play a mid-2000s shooter with a focus on bombastic gunplay and a prominently-featured SPAS-12, make the right decision:
Play F.E.A.R.
2/10
Fired the starting pistol without headphones and was cited by my landlord for causing a disturbance