Developed by Criterion Games
Published by EA Games
Released for Xbox (2/28/2006)
Also on PS2
Backwards Compatible on Xbox 360/Xbox One
Black was developed by Criterion Games, most known at the time for the Burnout series, and was released in February 2005, a few months after the new Microsoft system the Xbox 360 was released. It seemed like an odd choice for EA Games to put this out for the older system. Regardless, Black serves as a graphical showcase for what the aging Xbox and PlayStation 2 hardware were capable of. Black featured several aspects of the world that were destructible, awesome sound design and impressive particle effects.
Black consists only of a single-player campaign mode which contains 8 missions. There's a decent variety between the stages, featuring a town, asylum, dockyard and bridge to name a few. The levels themselves are detailed for the time and feature an admirable amount of destructible objects in them. Levels are linear but leave a little room for exploration, though the path forward is never really difficult to find. Black's stages have a decent flow to them, but they typically just consist of go to a checkpoint, kill waves of enemies that spawn and then move to next checkpoint to do it again. To be fair, this is the case in most first-person shooters and Black is no exception. While the overall stage design is a tad generic, there are a few standout levels like the bridge and the finale at the gulag as quite memorable.
There's some kind of story to follow along with in Black, but it's a bit convoluted and tough to keep up with. You play as a black ops operative in Chechnya, Russia. The story is revealed in cutscenes before each level, featuring full-motion video showing clips of the interrogation. Our character is a veteran who is being threatened with imprisonment unless he cooperates with the interrogator. There's some stuff about an arms smuggling/terrorist group called the Seventh Wave, which are the guys you'll be killing by the hundreds. While the story is a bit confusing, the cutscenes are well-produced and they don't get in the way of the action.
The weapon selection in Black is quite standard, but Criterion Games did a good job making each weapon feel different and fun to use. For handguns you have the G17 and the DC3 Elite, the only fictional gun in Black that is comparable to a Desert Eagle. For assault rifles, there's the AK47, G36C and M16. The M249 SAW sits as the only light machine gun in the game. Then for sub-machine guns you have the MP5, Uzi and P90. Rounding out the weapons cast are the two specialty guns, the sniper rifle (Walther 2000) and the RPG. You can only carry up to 2 guns at a time so there's a bit of strategy in deciding which weapons work best in certain scenarios, but unfortunately the game chooses which guns you start each level with, so the available arsenal is limited to what the enemies on that particular stage are carrying.
For the most part, the weapons feel good to fire. There's some nice, beefy gunfire sounds and the particle effects and damage when bullets hit surfaces is quite impressive. The recoil is a bit crazy on some of the automatic weapons, but once you get used to burst-firing it's not so bad. I wound up using the MP5 for the majority of the game, because ammo was plentiful due to most soldiers dropping it and the recoil is minimal compared to the other guns in the game. There are definitely situations suited for the shotguns and sniper rifles, providing a bit of variety to the weapons effectiveness. There's an effect where the camera focuses on your gun when you reload and the background blurs out while you insert a new clip. While I'm sure this was impressive at the time, it quickly became a bit annoying and was definitely not necessary. At the very least, an option to toggle the blur off would have been welcome.
Enemy design is not one of Black's strong points, but it gets the job done. You'll face off against countless grunts, most wielding SMGs but some will be equipped with an M249, sniper rifle or rocket launcher. There's the heavily-armored shotgun soldier, who will rush in to get close and will get back up again before dying. There's also riot-shield soldiers who can be a real pain, but can be taken out quick with a frag grenade. Enemies are often content with just ducking in and out of cover, but the shotgun and riot shield guys will close in on your position, adding some intensity to the firefights.
There's a bit of replay value in Black, with multiple difficulties and some unlockable modes. Playing on normal or up will reveal additional objectives for each level that aren't present on easy, similar to how games like Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark did. There's added objectives for the toughest difficulty for a nice boost in challenge. If you clear the game on normal or hard with all objectives completed you will unlock silver weapons, granting you unlimited ammo. Completing the game on hard will also unlock black ops mode for players who want an extra challenge.
Back in its day, Black was a rock-solid FPS game and a technical marvel for the aging consoles it released for. There were many times while playing this I could have easily mistaken the game for an early Xbox 360 title; it really looks that good. The gameplay hasn't aged as well as the graphics, unfortunately, and Black feels a bit more sluggish than your standard FPS. The already slow aiming and movement isn't helped by the fact that there's no sprint button, so movement in general just feels a bit slower when compared against other FPS titles. The cutscenes that play before each level are un-skippable the first time through, a minor annoyance but I thought it was worth mentioning. While the guns feel good to use, there is a bit of a lack of variety when it comes to the enemy and stage design. Black is far from a perfect shooter and hasn't aged the most gracefully, but there's still some fun to be had running around blasting bad guys with the various weaponry.
Black would receive backwards-compatible support on both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One. On the Xbox 360, it's one of the titles known to run more or less error-free, which is a bit rare for Xbox backwards-compatible games on that system. The game looks great running on an Xbox One X and I didn't experience any issues while playing through the game on that console. I did notice tears in destructible objects likely due to the resolution enhancement, but it was by no means a game-breaker.
A sequel to Black was planned and would have come out for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but was cancelled due to differences between the developers and publisher EA Games. Bodycount, which was released for the Xbox 360 in 2011, is considered to be the spritiual successor to Black. Bodycount was developed by Guildford Studio, which was made up of several of the developers that worked on Black. I don't have Bodycount yet, but I'd be interested in taking a look at that one on the site sometime.
Final Verdict: Black is a solid, action-packed single-player first-person shooter. While it hasn't necessarily aged the best and feels a bit slow at first, once you warm up to it Black is still a fun time.
Purchase Links:
Buy Black (Digital) - Microsoft Store
Buy Black (Disc) - eBay
Related Links:
Criterion Games - Xbox Overview
FPS Games - Xbox Overview
Criterion Games - Official Site
Electronic Arts - Official Site
Black - GameFAQs
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