The trailers for BLACK were quite impressive, though this could be because that part of them was in reality and the other part was in-game. Suffice to say the trailers left me excited…at the time, but time is a fickle thing and having only obtained BLACK sometime
last year it had mostly been forgotten by myself and the gaming world. So why review it?
Because we need something to fill the site up and if you’re actually looking to buy this game :O then I thought you should know a bit about it.

The main character, Keller, is an elite Black-Ops soldier who appears to have been arrested for…something. Frankly, the story is as clear as mud as you’re playing through events that have already happened. Not the best storytelling technique in my eyes as you know that Keller is at least going to survive, due to the cut-scene (live action I might add) at the start where he’s talking to some guy from some government. As I say, it’s not too clear. The main objective of the game appears to be to kill the leader of some-sort of group, named Seventh Wave, who are doing something naughty somewhere in the world. The Ex-Soviet Union looks to be the likeliest country as all the enemies shout loudly in Russian, immediately giving away their positions, allowing you to shatter their precious cover with an un-healthy dose of bullets.

Speaking of cover-shattering, BLACK focuses mainly on a few things: blowing stuff up,
shooting stuff up and blowing out doors. “But surely that’s the point of every FPS game?”
you say. Well, yes, but BLACK does it bigger, better and more repetitively than any other
FPS out there. The graphics are really very good, around “next-gen” quality. The
environments look battered and dirty, the weapons are sleek and smooth and the characters are quite good too. If you’re going to be killing terrorists of any kind then you want to be doing it in a very destructive and Rambo-ish way using insane amounts of ammunition and breaking almost everything that gets in your way. BLACK came highly praised for its ability to destroy the environments. It deserves the praise, it really does. Though the environments tend to look very similar toward the end of the game.

The weapons are another thing that BLACK focuses on. Though it seems to only focus on a few, mainly the G36C, MP5, AK47 and Remmington (shotgun). The assault rifles all seem pretty equal in their accuracy and power so it doesn’t matter which one you pick up. There are other weapons such as sniper rifles, machine pistols, HMGs, RPGs and one or two pistols though they seem to be bolted on as extras rather than being a key part of the weapon choices. The RPG can come in handy for blowing open emplacements, though they only seem to be there to block your path. The shotgun is only good for blowing doors off their hinges (as well as blowing holes in weak walls), which can be quite good if you blow the door, pop a grenade in, whip out your assault rifle and the hose the survivors with automatic fire.

There’s almost no shortage of ammo in BLACK, as the standard enemies carry similar weapons, so you can spray-and-pray through some of the smaller levels. The only beef I have with the weapons is that they seem to take ages to reload, especially the Magnum. Yes, it’s a powerful gun but I’d rather it was able to fire 6 shots off with reasonable speed than firing one, then having to wait for Keller to pull back the hammer with the speed of an arthritic bear. Sometimes you’ll spray fire into a room, fall-back to reload where-upon a particularly clever enemy (which are few and far between) will come running round the corner and put a clip into your chest as you stare gormlessly at the magazine of your gun. The reload animations feel drawn-out which can be frustrating in the middle of a gun-fight.

The enemies aren’t the smartest I’ve ever encountered but they’ll be a challenge in a confined space, especially if their are lots of them. There are only several types of enemy
for the whole game so you can quickly master how to defeat them and which weapons will work best. This isn’t that surprising as BLACK seems to be Criterion’s first game with anything other than cars in it.

The controls are tight and pretty intuitive but the complete omission of a “jump” button (and action) seems a little odd, though I suppose it stops you falling down massive holes in floors about 3 stories up. Actually, no, wait, invisible walls stop you doing that. To be honest, not having a “jump” option is actually quite good as it means you can’t go bunny-hopping around like a retarded BF2 player before leaping to the ground in front of your enemies and filling their groins with hot lead.

The addition of a multiplayer to BLACK would have been lovely, even a co-op mode would have been welcome. I like the idea of being able to run through the levels, tearing up the scenery with a buddy while legions of enemy troops fall before you eventually creating a
stylish carpet of corpses. The game almost begs for a multiplayer because the levels are
very linear which means almost no replayablitly and I can imagine that things like Team
Deathmatch and Assault would have suited the game brilliantly, oh well, hopefully in the
next one.

Well, people seem to have been throwing scores of around 8 out of 10 at BLACK. It’s good but it’s not great, I wouldn’t give it 8. Probably about 6 due to the lack of coherent story and lack of multiplayer. Otherwise it does everything else reasonably well, except graphics and ’splosions which it does brilliantly. We’re going to have to work out some kind of rating system here…maybe next time. ;)

P.M.

To start off with I’m going to review Call of Duty 4. Having played through the campaign and played a fair share of multiplayer I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a damn solid game.

The AI is much better than many previous FPS games, rather than running straight into your line of fire, they will move quickly between cover and generally never advance too close to your position unless “persuaded” by a grenade or two. They work together aswell, covering an advance and looking out for each other, most of the time at least.

The graphics are beautiful, even on my steadily ageing machine. They make the game far more dirty and gritty, you can practically feel the sand under your flak vest as you fight through streets in an un-named Middle-Eastern country, than any previous CoD or war related FPS.

I found Call of Duty 4 to be an enjoyable and exciting experience the first time I played it
but I think it’s biggest downfall is the replay-ability. As with most shooters
CoD4’s single player replay-ability is almost nill, unless you happened to miss the story first time round.

Now don’t get me wrong, CoD4 is a brilliant game, but it does have it’s faults, though they are few.

The multiplayer seems pretty solid though, with a nice easy ranking system to unlock more kit.
CoD4 succeeds where the Battlefield series seems to have failed. The environment is very interactive,
with the ability to jump over walls, through windows and such like. Grenade spamming doesn’t occur like it
does in games of BF2 (this is the only suitable game to compare it to.) due to the fact that you can throw them back, a wonderful little addition to some great gameplay.

Overall, I’d have to say that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best FPSs out there at the moment. It’s solid gameplay, excellent graphics, good story and terrific multiplayer make it a good investment, no matter what price you get it at. Though getting it for £150 or something is just stupid…

Anyway, I hope you found my first review reasonably good, feedback is always appreciated, just make a thread on the forums.

Thanks for reading.

P.M.