An alright third-person shooter enhanced due to its presentation, narrative, and bullet-time mechanic. Though nothing new is on offer in the narrative of Max Payne, it is stark and bleak in a shooter market that was a bit sillier than grimdark. Though the game controls well and functions like a dream on modern hardware (fan patches are highly encouraged, if not necessary), the difficulty is nuts considering the limited arsenal and bullet-time move set. Issues only compound when the only breaks from the flashy, frantic violence are frustrating mazes and platforming challenges. Though infrequent, the combat breaks are frustrating and fail to break the pacing of a mostly frantic experience.

An amazing technical showcase for what could be squeezed out of the 6th generation of consoles. Playing on modern Xbox hardware helps showcase Black's impressive destruction technology in a wide screen, HD picture. If you have the ability to play with great headphones or a surround system, Black additionally offers a robust sound profile with some of the meatiest, devastating sounding weapons of the generation. It is wild to see what Criterion was able to pull off in the last leg of the Xbox's life cycle, so much so this could easily be mistaken for an early 360 title at a glance.

The impressive tech and audio can only push Black so far, though. While it's understandable for the time considering we didn't quite have a universal FPS controller format, Black's controls can be a little confusing to get to grasp; amplified further if you're like me and are juggling this game alongside others. I honestly cannot think of another console shooter off the top of my head that uses the A/X button for a reload, and Y/triangle to equip suppressors, while you use the D-pad to swap weapons.

Once you finally have a grasp on Black's controls, you'll have to contend with its post-processing effects. I have different motion sickness triggers than others, but one thing that truly gets me feeling ill is excessive blur. Black, sadly, is chock-full of blur effects through its many reload animations. Yes, it is truly stunning to see the animation detail on each weapon's reload, but if you make the grave mistake of moving (especially turning) while reloading, you may find your stomach flipping over itself like me. This frequent camera blur is in addition to violent camera shakes on explosions, and bloom effects that border on the horrendous side of ugly. Motion sick and photosensitive people should approach Black with caution.

For a Game Pass title, the nearly 4 hours for a "normal" playthrough isn't so bad and is a bit of a joy in a market full of 20+hour minimum experiences. I can say that it's understandable why the short length would be an issue, especially at the time of release. Replaying the game is incentivized to get more collectibles and play with different weapons, but I could imagine running the same levels time and time again with the game's unskippable cutscenes and brutal, unfair checkpoints becoming a chore sooner than later. Black is an impressive shooter when taking a broad look at it, yet there isn't much of a "deep end" to immerse yourself in and get "genuine playtime" out of it.