These days the words, first person shooter are thrown around a lot in the realm of gaming, but what made this genre so popular to begin with is at times lost in today’s world of Ghost Recons and Rainbow Six tactical shooters. EA and Criterion Games (developers of the Burnout series) are here to remind all gamers why we enjoy FPS’ in the first place with their no-holds barred, adrenalin rush, Black.

Gameplay

There isn’t much in the form of a plot in Black which is both a good thing and bad thing depending on how you look at it. The game opens with a live action cut scene where the main character, Keller, is being interrogated about some kind of government conspiracy. I found the story pretty contrived and hard to follow and it really just seems like a bunch of filler. This is great if you are the type of person who just wants to start a game up and run into a firefight guns a blazing, but if you prefer the more slow paced, strategy oriented gameplay of Rainbow Six or even Halo you may be a little turned off by Black’s linear story.

What Black lacks in story it more than makes up for in its gameplay. In each of the games eight missions you are given a primary objective and several secondary objectives, the number of secondary objectives you must complete depends on the difficulty setting, but they mainly consist of finding top secret documents and blowing up laptops and safes for information, these tasks are rather easy to pull off and you are more than likely to run into quite a few by sheer accident.

The biggest draw and one of the biggest set backs to Black comes in regards to the game's sheer level of destructibility; you can literally crumble stone walls with a barrage of machine gun bullets and anytime you see a fuel tank or something that looks like it will explode you can shoot it and chances are it will blow up. Unfortunately this destruction loses its initial luster after the first few missions and won’t amaze you throughout the entire game, but with that being said blowing up trucks and watching lifeless bodies scatter though the air will never get old.

Another drawback to Black is the unintelligent AI, your enemies really only know how to do a couple of things, shoot and run towards you or away from you. Additionally, the seemingly limitless supply of ammo in Black makes taking out your enemies a pretty easy task; when they do manage to gang up on you and knock your life back, chances are a health pack is nearby or an enemy will drop one for your convince.



As the advertising for Black states the guns are the stars of the game and I hate to say it, but the guns don’t seem to be very good stars and seem more like a bunch of run of the mil B-movie actors, as opposed to true Hollywood stars. Black offers a variety of weapons including; shotgun, pistol, AK-47, RPG, M16, Uzi, and many others, but the majority of these weapons work very similarly. The real star of Black however is the overall presence of destruction, the guns do though make for a great supporting cast in what is easily one of the most satisfying first-person shooters on the Xbox to date.