Let's start with what the game does right:
- The destruction physics are extraordinary, even compared to many shooters of the succeeding generation.
- The levels are unique, varied, and have cool set pieces.
- The shotgun is very satisfying to use. It's powerful and loud.
- ..... That's all I got.
Onto the negatives, there are a lot of them:
- The controls feel terrible. Your movement speed is slow and there is no run button. The aiming sensitivity is also very low with no option to change it.
- The weapon switching, reload and alternate fire mode animations take way too long. They break the flow of fire fights and add another layer of clunkyness on top of my previous issue.
- Enemies are bullet sponges which is the laziest way of adding difficulty to a game. At least head shots are one hit kills.
- The story is pretty bad, even for modern military shooter standards. Knowing the history of the game, you can really tell that it was hastily put together to connect a bunch of levels that have nothing to do with each other.
- While the graphical fidelity is impressive for the time, I wasn't a fan of the art direction. Everything is dark, brown and grey with a bit too much bloom. All things very common in the seventh gen so I guess Black really was ahead of it's time.
- Checkpoints are sparse considering the length of each level.
- Higher difficulties require completing more boring secondary objectives which are essentially just glorified collectibles. I tend to play shooters on the second highest difficulty my first time through but I switched to normal here just to avoid the secondary objectives.
- Game length is on the shorter side.
Black to me is a really good tech demo, just not a good game. I wish it had been released on PC. That would have solved the control issues for me at least and made it more enjoyable to play.
- The destruction physics are extraordinary, even compared to many shooters of the succeeding generation.
- The levels are unique, varied, and have cool set pieces.
- The shotgun is very satisfying to use. It's powerful and loud.
- ..... That's all I got.
Onto the negatives, there are a lot of them:
- The controls feel terrible. Your movement speed is slow and there is no run button. The aiming sensitivity is also very low with no option to change it.
- The weapon switching, reload and alternate fire mode animations take way too long. They break the flow of fire fights and add another layer of clunkyness on top of my previous issue.
- Enemies are bullet sponges which is the laziest way of adding difficulty to a game. At least head shots are one hit kills.
- The story is pretty bad, even for modern military shooter standards. Knowing the history of the game, you can really tell that it was hastily put together to connect a bunch of levels that have nothing to do with each other.
- While the graphical fidelity is impressive for the time, I wasn't a fan of the art direction. Everything is dark, brown and grey with a bit too much bloom. All things very common in the seventh gen so I guess Black really was ahead of it's time.
- Checkpoints are sparse considering the length of each level.
- Higher difficulties require completing more boring secondary objectives which are essentially just glorified collectibles. I tend to play shooters on the second highest difficulty my first time through but I switched to normal here just to avoid the secondary objectives.
- Game length is on the shorter side.
Black to me is a really good tech demo, just not a good game. I wish it had been released on PC. That would have solved the control issues for me at least and made it more enjoyable to play.