Black (Xbox)

Developer:

Criterion

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

Xbox, PS2

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a first person shooter from the dark times of PC gaming, where first person shooters had migrated to consoles and didn't always get ported back (I'm still waiting on The Darkness and the TimeSplitters games to suddenly appear on Steam). 

Black is exclusive to the Xbox and PlayStation 2, which means it never got a release that featured mouse controls and quicksaves. The game did make it onto Microsoft's backward compatibility list though, meaning that I can play it on the Xbox One with an increased resolution and presumably a more stable framerate! So that's what I'm going to do.

The game was developed by Criterion, who are more famous for racing games like Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012). They decided to use their own engine for it, RenderWare, which was practically the Unreal Engine of the PS2-era, allowing developers to make cross-platform games without knowing all the dark arcane secrets of the hardware. In fact it was used in almost 300 games before EA decided they wanted out of the engine licensing business. It turned up in some pretty big name titles as well, like Grand Theft Auto 3, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, Suikoden 3, Broken Sword 3 and Max Payne 2.

I'm sure I've played Black before, many years ago, but I only got about halfway through and my memories are really fuzzy. I remember that it had a forest level, a church level and a factory level, but that's about it. I feel like I was impressed by it somehow though. Hopefully there'll be something special about it that'll make it worth showing off, otherwise this is going to be a bit of a disappointment.

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The game begins with a black screen, which is appropriate I guess. It's also given me some names to look at, like legendary composer Michael Giacchino. It seems like Chris Tilton did most of the music for this one though.

It's weird, it seems like these credits are building to something, I keep expecting something to appear on screen or a voice over to come on, but nope it's just credits and music.

TWO MINUTES LATER

Alright, the credits are finally over and I have reached the intro.

It's a fairly typical quick-cut montage of military imagery, news footage, maps with lines drawn on them etc. Very edgy, lots of shots of TVs and monitor screens filmed so close up that you can see the scanlines. In fact I'm surprised there's no shots of classified documents with words redacted. Maybe they're saving them for later.

The weird thing is though, there's no narration. In fact after 30 seconds the video just ended and left me staring at the main menu screen, confused. I guess it was setting the mood?

Oh damn, it's got full controller remap options! The Xbox version has you pressing the right analogue stick to aim and the PS2 version has you shooting with the R1 button, but it doesn't matter as you can switch it to whatever you want! Nice job Criterion, you get full marks for this.

There isn't an overabundance of options in this menu, you can't activate auto-aim for instance, but the Xbox version does let you choose to play your own soundtrack. I don't think that's going to do anything on this Xbox One I'm using, but it's a nice feature. Oh, plus you can play either version in widescreen, which is what you get out of an Xbox One by default.

 

The game features four difficulty modes, with the harder difficulties removing the healthpacks and asking you to complete more secondary objectives. Finishing the game turns all the weapons silver, which blesses your profile with unlimited ammo (the downside being that you can't ever turn it off again).

I'm going to play on normal, because it's what I do, so I'm looking forward to picking up plenty of healthpacks.

Hey I've finally reached a video with talking and story! You can even see glimpses of people occasionally, though the way it's filmed and edited it's mostly shaky flashes of their hands or chin.

There's two people at this table, a soldier in chains and an interrogator with a deep gritty voice who has clearly done a ton of voice acting. His IMDb page says he played a guy called Lt. Jack Keller in Need for Speed: Undercover, which is interesting as the soldier he's chatting to here is called Sgt. Jack Kellar. Neither of them are called Black, so it's not one of those games that's named after the main character... though it was designed and co-created by a guy called Stuart Black (seriously).

It seems like Kellar (with an 'a') is going to spend the rest of his life in prison unless he gives us a flashback of the events that led him here. He eventually explains that Division wanted a group called Seventh Wave taken down and his was one of the teams sent to kill the three people at the top. But there was a fourth man!

So my objective is to complete my primary objectives. That's... helpful. I also have to complete 1 of 8 secondary objectives, so I'll get right on that as soon as I know what they actually are.

Wait, headshots drop my enemy with one shot? I love it when that happens!

MISSION 1: VEBLENSK CITY STREET - 07:36HRS

 

Oh there you go, it puts the objectives up on screen for you. It also suggests that I find the shotgun, and I've already spotted it propped up by the door.

I don't know what I'm doing in this room and why the only door out is locked. It's like the start of a horror game. Fortunately it turns out that shotguns work as keys and open any door! They're like the GEP gun rocket launcher in Deus Ex, except slightly less noisy. But only slightly.

Well it was nice to have that shotgun for 3 seconds, but I'm going to swap it for this convenient AK-47. I feel like it'll be better suited for mid-long range combat (ie, the distance of that guy down there). Yay for two weapon limits!

I'm feeling weirdly lost right now, like the game's skipped something important. I think I'm just used to military shooters starting with a bit of conversation instead of throwing me into a world with barely any context.

Oh, 'health packs' has a space in it now? I'm more interested in the 'carried until needed' part of that helpful hint message though. Seems I have enough slots to carry three of them. Defeated enemies sometimes drop first aid kits as well, which are instant-use heals. It's nice to have a few ways to get health back, seeing as it doesn't regenerate.

You know what does regenerate though? These bloody enemies! They keep popping up in the same places over and over again, no matter how many of them I kill. I guess this is one of those places where you have to push forward to stop them spawning.

I remember one of the early WW2 Call of Duty games had a mission where you had to make it through infinite enemies and it was great. Really made it feel like you were up against an entire army and the best you could do was survive and keep moving. I've absolutely hated it in every game since.

The enemies stopped respawning once I joined up with my team and now we're assaulting the museum together. That's them on the bottom left. you can tell them apart from the enemies by the way that you can actually kind of see them. It's a bit of an effort to spot the bad guys at the best of times, but once the chaos breaks out and the place fills up with smoke I'm suddenly very grateful that my crosshair dot turns red when I'm aiming at a someone who needs killing.

I also found a red document stapled to the wall, which is cool. 

Turns out these documents, destructible laptops, rolled up blueprints etc. are my secondary objectives, so I'm being encouraged to stray from the main path and go looking for them. I even found a hidden Uzi once! But I left it behind because I can only carry two guns.

Bloody hell that was close!

Every 30 seconds or so there's an explosion that takes off half my health, and I have to run back to where I killed some dudes and pick up a couple of their first aid kits. I'm not complaining, I just wish I knew where all these missiles keep coming from so I can do something about it.

Xbox (Xbox One)

PlayStation 2        

There he is, up in that tower... I think. He's a bit hard to spot, even zoomed in like this.

I've thrown in a second shot from the PlayStation 2 version, so you can see what it's like trying to spot him in the game's original resolution. I would've had no chance without the smoke trail.

Damn I wasn't expecting him to explode! He took the whole top of the tower out! There's some destructible scenery for you.

This is as zoomed in as it gets by the way. Kellar doesn't aim down the weapon's sights, he just focuses real hard on what's ahead. Oh speaking of focus, the whole background goes out of focus when you reload and it's a nice effect.

I also like how how the meters on the top corners of the HUD pull back like a pistol slide when they're refilled:

 The game's got some style to it. And Kellar carries a lot of ammo.

Alright, I shot some people in the street, shot some dudes in some windows, and now I'm shooting some people in this room. I know I should probably be using cover, but it doesn't feel like that kind of a game (plus the cars in here explode if they're shot enough). I think I'll do okay staying mobile and topping up my health with the first aid kids they sometimes drop.

Hey there's another red intel document on the wall! Some of these are hidden out of the way, but you'd have to be paying zero attention to get to the end of this level without collecting any of them.

Wait, that was the end of the level? I just walked through a doorway and it faded to black.

Well I didn't find all the objectives, but I got more than enough. Plus I apparently killed one enemy every 11 seconds, as there were 76 of them on that level. Probably would've been less if I hadn't stuck around the part with infinite enemies trying to kill them all for a full minute.

The game let me save here, which is nice of it. In fact it even turned on autosaves so I don't have to think about it anymore.

With the first mission done I've earned another live action video of Kellar's interrogation. I remember Battlefield 3 using this format as well, with the hero being questioned about the events of the game, and I kind of gave the game a hard time because of the dialogue.

This, on the other hand, is just colours and noises to me at this point. I am so powerfully disinterested in whatever they're talking about now that my brain's not taking any of it in and honestly I don't think it matters much. These cutscenes apparently only exist so the developers could cross 'Has a story,' off their checklist.
  

 

MISSION 2: TRENESKA BORDER CROSSING - 05:03HRS

Oh damn, this forest is surprisingly pretty for an original Xbox game. It doesn't come across so well in a still screenshot that's been mangled by both video and JPEG compression, but it's all misty, with godrays shining through the trees.

I'm all on my own again for this one and it seems like I've got two paths to go down, maybe three, and the game's not giving me any clues which is the correct route.  
 

PlayStation 2

I went a different way on the PS2 version and found myself in a cave that I'd walked right past on the Xbox. Some military shooters punish you for straying from the path, either yelling 'RETURN TO THE COMBAT AREA!' or just instantly killing you for the crime of turning left instead of right during an exciting cinematic moment, but Black rewards curiosity. I found an suppressor for my AK in one cave, which should make it easier for me to kill unsuspecting patrols without it turning into chaos.

By the way, you might be wondering why I used such a boring screenshot without any enemies on screen. I'm actually fighting two soldiers here, it's not my fault they're practically invisible!

PlayStation 2

At least when they're onto me I get a bit of helpful muzzle flash to help me spot them in the dark. Plus there's no weapon sway so it's possible to headshot enemies from a distance even with a controller by making tiny fine adjustments to your aim. Trouble is that the enemy muzzle flash is usually accompanied by a spray of bullets, so maybe it'd be better if I didn't stand perfectly still in the open. I can't complain about the enemy AI when they're at least smart enough to find cover and I'm not.

This is the PS2 version again by the way and it looks basically the same as the Xbox game to me. I assumed the lower spec system was really going to be showing its age here, but nope it's keeping up with its beefier rival.

There's also a red damage indicator to show me the direction the last few bullets that hit me came from, which really helps point me in the right direction.

I've been trying to play the game carefully, taking the time to line up my shots with their heads, but I wasn't expecting to run into these two like this and all I could do was hold the trigger down and spray. The thing is, the guns in this game have double-sized magazines so I was actually able to really cut loose on them. Especially as enemies take about twice as many shots as you'd expect. You hit them, they flinch, you hit them, they flinch, over and over.

Here's something else that's weird about this gun: the ejection port is on the left so it's spraying spent casings into Kellar's face. They all landed on the floor as well, so I was practically wading through the things after I was done with this room.

 

I guess I'm taking out this outpost then? I'm just following the road shooting anyone who tries to stop me, but it runs right through this base so I suppose it has to go. I also tried shooting out some of the spotlights but there didn't seem to be much point to it so I stopped.

This must be some kind of fuel or explosives depot because there are warning signs all over the place. Though the game tricked me with something I thought was a red barrel. I unloaded my AK into it thinking it was eventually going to explode and ended up losing a bunch of health to all the enemies standing around it shooting me. Trust me to aim at the one thing here that was never going to blow up.

There are a few locked doors here so I'm going to have to pick up a shotgun to get them open (or use a grenade perhaps). You'd think the two weapon limit would force me to keep making choices about what gun to keep, but there's so few of them on each stage that I rarely have a reason to think about it. Especially if I swap out the pistol for one of them.

Oh crap, another RPG sniper, and I've got barely any health left. The crosshair isn't turning red over him so I guess he's too far away for me to take him out with a headshot. I'll need to move up closer using whatever cover I have out here, maybe duck behind the truck. Wait, no, bad idea. Cars are explosive at the best of times and everything in this outpost has been packed with fuel or explosives.

Okay new plan: I'm just going to step to the side when he shoots me, because I've got plenty of time to just walk out of the way. Speaking of time, I've been playing for 15 minutes now so that tunnel should be the end of the level.

17 MINUTES INTO THE LEVEL

Awesome, I've hit the next checkpoint. I can't even remember when I last saw this message. Actually, I'm not sure I even have seen this message before. This may be the very first checkpoint in the whole game. I can't turn the game off yet though as it's just a checkpoint, not a save. I have to carry on and finish the level for my progress to stick.

Something else really unusual happened when I approached the tunnel: I got a few seconds of music. Like maybe 14 seconds of it. 99% of the time the soundtrack is just gunfire, ambience and the occasional bit of radio chatter, but it turns out that there is some music there as well. It's just shy.

19 MINUTES INTO THE LEVEL

Hey a bridge! It's not a dam (I love dam levels), but it'll do.

I'm in better shape now after finding a first aid kit and a health pack so I'm not so worried about getting Kellar killed in his flashback. Especially as I've got all these grenades to play with.

20 MINUTES INTO THE LEVEL

That's a satisfying explosion! Look at all that debris flying into the air. There's probably a few enemies in there as well.

Grenades definitely get the job done, but only if you can get Kellar to lob them far enough. You have to aim upwards to make him throw further, but the analogue stick sensitivity is much lower on the vertical axis than the horizontal one, so it takes longer than you'd expect.

35 MINUTES INTO THE LEVEL

 

Alright, I followed the road all the way to the Merjakni farm and now I have to survive all these incoming enemies. Fortunately Kellar's actually pretty good at surviving, and is able to withstand multiple shots to the ass, giving the player long enough to wake up and turn around. In my defence I was looking out of a window, trying to snipe soldiers before they got close.

These two belong to a new enemy type which uses shotguns and wears extra armour. Fortunately their weapon is also their weakness, as a good shotgun blast can put them down in one shot. Though I just threw a grenade in the end and sent them both flying.

39 MINUTES INTO THE LEVEL

Once I dealt with the enemies coming after me I got a new primary objective telling me to clear them out of 5 farm outbuildings. I'm not used to the game giving me clear goals like this!

After that I was finally done with mission 2, to my immense relief. The stats screen afterwards says it took me 40 minutes and 47 seconds to finish and I can believe it. It's funny, I can go around first person shooting in a Far Cry or a Fallout game for hours, but after one level of this I feel I've just finished a marathon. A marathon I would've had to repeat half of if I'd lost. 

MISSION 3: NASZRAN TOWN - 08:42HRS

Mission 3's a lot brighter and it's changed up the gameplay a bit. Now I'm the one being sniped at from a window and I'm armed with an Uzi so I need to get much closer to their house to do anything about it. So right now I'm darting from gravestone to gravestone trying to time it right so my head's behind cover before they pull the trigger. Their shots are strong enough to destroy the headstones so I shouldn't linger in one place for long.

I've played some really awkward sniper levels in classic shooters before, but this seems alright. Also I'm mesmerised by the strap hook on my Uzi wobbling around as I move.

I took out the sniper easily enough, then I realised I could take their gun and have some fun of my own. But I know what these games are like so I ran back and searched the graveyard for healthpacks and secrets first before picking it up and triggering the enemies to come after me.

Video game sniper rifles can require a bit of skill... not this one though! There's absolutely no sway so I'm able to make tiny adjustments to get the ^ lined up perfectly each time. Then the little bastards move and I have to do it all over again.

I was told to shoot the gravestones to remove their cover, but I think I've done enough damage to this place already. Kellar's bad at following orders so I'm just getting into character.

 

Ever successfully throw a grenade up at a church bell tower sniper and then immediately regret it? At least I got out of the way of the bell before it crashed down to the ground.

The good news is that no one will ever be able to prove it was my fault, as I've killed all the witnesses. Well except for my buddy MacCarver who's been helping out on this mission.

Kellar and MacCarver even talk to each other occasionally, which goes a long way to making the game feel less strange and lonely. It'd go even further if they hadn't put a radio filter on Kellar's voice. It took me ages before I figured out it was him who was talking!

This scenery's nice as well, especially with this Xbox One resolution boost, even if the view gets a lot less impressive beyond the walls. Also MacCarver's model is a dead giveaway that I'm playing an original Xbox game and not an Xbox 360 launch title. What does an Xbox 360 launch title look like anyway?

Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360)

Here's Call of Duty 2 running on the same Xbox One. This was released in November 2005 and Black came out in February 2006, so CoD2 is actually the older game by a few months. The scenery looks similar at a glance, but the soldiers have a lot more detail and the gun's rough surface is showing off some bump mapping.

The shooting is similarly slick in both games, but CoD2 has a better frame rate and enemies that drop in a single spray of machinegun fire wherever you hit them. It also has regenerating health, so if you can survive the incoming bullets you don't have to worry about how much life you have afterwards. (Okay to be absolutely pedantic, Black does regenerates a notch if you're down to 1 HP, just enough to keep you in the game if you're in the danger zone.)

 

Alright now I'm scurrying through trenches trying to avoid being blown up by folks with RPGs hidden in the buildings. It looks like I've made a bunch of progress since that last screenshot but I really haven't. This is still the same place somehow. The game's got huge seamless levels.

There aren't that many rocket launcher dudes around but there's more than you'd typically find hanging around an apartment block and they always spot me before I spot them so I need to stay on my toes. I also need to pay attention to my health as it's easy to get into the red without noticing.

Hang on, I just found a rocket launcher resting against a wall. Good timing too, as I've ran out of sniper ammo and I need another long-range tool to discourage people from shooting me.

 

Oh that's beautiful. Killing an RPG guy always blows up a chunk of the surrounded area without fail, but it never gets old! Plus it's nice to have my kill visibly confirmed.

I feel like I'm at the end of the level now, but nope! I need to cross the road and then go do another set of trenches; it's bloody endless. At least this level seems a lot less stingy with the checkpoints, or maybe I'm just getting better at noticing the checkpoint message come up. They're still nowhere near as common as the checkpoints in Call of Duty 2 however.

MISSION 4: NASZRAN FOUNDRY - 19:14HRS

Man that mission took 54 minutes to complete. They're getting longer! Or I'm getting slower.

Oh damn, I think I've reached the point where I quit the first time I played the game. Something about this level made me walk away and never come back, but I can't quite remember what it was. My theory is that I walked into one of those mines.

At least the game plays fair and warns you about the minefield before you walk into it... as long as you've got the volume up. You also need to pay attention to what you're seeing as the mines are a bit subtle.

Here you go, here's a better picture of them. This is one of those times I'm glad I'm playing the game on a HD TV.

It only takes one shot to detonate them and they usually take out several of their friends in the blast. I'm paranoid about moving forward though. Especially considering if I step on one I lose all my progress instantly.

Oh damn! I love when I shoot one barrel near a building and it takes out half the windows. So much glass flying.

Explosions have gotten a lot more fun now that I'm out of the minefield and I've reached a checkpoint. Also look at this place I'm in now:

It's like I've wandered in Half-Life 2 or something. Which incidentally also came out before this.

One thing the game does well is making it seem like you can go everywhere and you just happen to keep choosing the correct path instinctively. I've played a lot of games where I kept getting getting shouted at for not going the way the designer wanted me to go. Or where the levels were so awkwardly designed that it was easier to find the secrets than it was to find the exit. In this I'm always making progress.

I haven't seen MacCarver in a while, but that's fine as she's giving me sniper support. Every now and again I'll hear a shot and an enemy will just drop dead. Though when I head inside the factory I'll be on my own. 

Okay this foundry looks cool. They've gone crazy with all the spotlights and rays of sunlight through the windows. There's still a very sensible number of enemies on screen though. In fact I can't remember ever seeing more than three of them in any place at the same time. That's maybe the biggest giveaway that it's a late Xbox game not an early Xbox 360 game. Well, that plus the lack of achievements.

They've mixed up the gameplay again for this bit as I'm wrecking bits of machinery for a change. In this room I had to destroy metal smelter control panels and then leave the way I came in. It's one of the rare occasions I've had to do a tiny bit of backtracking.

Okay here are my stats after the first four missions.

That "14% game completion" stat is a bit misleading as it's only got eight missions in total. The game's still a decent length though, as it's taken me 3 hours to get halfway through.

I've gotten 212 headshots, which means my other 3680 shots were divided between the remaining 271 enemies; 13.6 bullets per kill. There's two ways to play: taking enemies down with carefully aimed headshots, or by wearing them down with sustained fire. Sometimes I tried both of them on a guy, missed both times, and threw a grenade over instead. That usually got the job done.

The game's surprisingly sedate if you play it cautiously and methodically, as it gives you plenty of time to line up shots. Even when there's incoming fire it's often coming from far enough away that it misses more often than it hits. In fact the game could really do with some dramatic or tense music to set the mood, as most of the time all you can hear is the wind.

Oh plus it doesn't mention this, but despite all my whining about the lack of checkpoints, I never actually got Kellar killed. Though those checkpoints were maybe 15 minutes apart, so you can guess how much each death would add to your total playtime.

CONCLUSION

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Black is mostly about two things: trying to see the enemy and trying to hit the enemy, which isn't always easy using a controller. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather live without obnoxious amounts of auto-aim and I appreciate how it keeps the guns steady enough to for you to earn each satisfying instant-kill headshot fairly, but if this had a PC version I would've been playing that instead.

Actually it's just occurred to me that Black is about two other things: huge levels and loud guns. This is a six hour game with eight levels, so whenever you start a level you're making a bit of a time commitment. Unfortunately it has fewer checkpoints than a game with 5 minute levels! You're not necessarily going to die all that often, but when you do you get punished for it. I don't know, maybe the developers were roguelike fans.

I'm pretty sure they were fans of guns as they really went the extra mile with the firearm sounds. I've read that they pitched enemy weapons at different levels so that their guns would harmonise, though I couldn't hear any of that over the sound of my AK-47 as I drilled into the bullet-sponge enemies. The game technically has a soundtrack, music does appear on rare occasions, but my rifle was always the lead instrument. The constant drone of gunfire is actually a bit much when you combine it with the aforementioned 40 minute levels.

Here's a list of things that Black isn't about however:

• Regenerating health.
• A huge variety of weapons and enemy types.
• Convenient checkpoints or quicksaves.
• In-engine cutscenes, elaborate scripted sequences, or spectacular set pieces.
• Keycards, switches, lifts, or anything to interact with or wait for.
• Cameras, alarms, or forced stealth sequences.
• People to be escorted or objects to be defended.
• QTEs, minigames, or bits where you have to point the crosshair at targets on a fuzzy video screen.
• Friendly fire.
• A jump button or a sprint button.
• A 'skip video' button, subtitles, a compelling story, or closure.
• Turret or vehicle sequences. Or tanks.
• NPCs to talk to or hang out with.
• Colourful environments.
• Multiplayer.
• Confusing mazelike level design.
• Messages whining at you for going the wrong way or straying out of bounds.
• Boss fights.

But it does have separate grenade and melee buttons. And redefinable controls! Plus it has explosions if that's what you're into. It's got a bit of exploration too but you don't really need to do it unless you're completing optional objectives (which become less optional on hard mode). And 99% of the primary objectives are 'Go somewhere, kill people'. You're just thrown straight into a war zone with the barest amount of context and you have to keep shooting anyone that makes your crosshair turn red... whether you can see them or not. It's hard to spot the tiny grey people against the murky grey background at the best of times, so when the game shows off with its smoke effects it seems just a little bit cruel.

I think the selling points of this one would've been the solid straightforward shooter gameplay and the graphics. This is one of those games that came out so late in its consoles' lifespan that it does a passable impersonation of a next gen launch title, as long as you don't get too close to one of the three low-detail enemies it's able to put on screen at once. This is two years after Snake Eater and it features a 40-minute-long seamless forest level with all the godrays you could want like that's just something the PS2 could've done all along.

It's just a shame that it has such a lack of feeling in it. It's got a strange lonely atmosphere even when you're with a team and it does nothing to make you invested in the plot or get your blood pumping. I never felt like I was achieving anything, I was mostly just anxious about getting shot and having to replay a whole chunk of game again. It's that lack of checkpoints that really spoils the game for me. I mean I never actually got Kellar killed, but knowing that that death would be such a huge setback made it stressful. Stressful enough that it took me until 2022 to give the game a second chance. It's pretty good though, I enjoyed it. Might even be worth a look yourself if you haven't tried it yet.

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I wrote words and you read them so it would appear that our business here has been concluded. Though before you leave you might want to consider leaving a comment about Black in the box below. You could also take a guess at what the next game will be, but honestly I don't expect anyone will get it this time.