Black

by Electronic Arts

Product Features

• BLACK operatives do not hide in shadows or sneak behind walls waiting for the right time to engage their foe - they destroy the wall, enemy and anything else that gets in their way
• An explosive arsenal of weaponry lets you experience the awe-inspiring power of the world's most exotic lethal firepower
• Reduce cities to rubble in a world where virtually nothing is impervious to your bullets -- if you can see it, you can shoot it!
• Visceral, destructive action sucks you deep into the gameplay as you blaze and blast your own path through open-ended enviornments
• Use destructible worlds and explosive objects to take out enemies in cover, frag multiple enemies at once or just wreak massive destruction for its own sake

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0009351R0
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches ; 5.4 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: February 28, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,981 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #39 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Action
  • #98 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > All Games
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PlayStation2

From the Manufacturer

Join the world's most brutal and enigmatic strike force. The Black tactical squad operates under the cloak of complete anonymity and deniability to protect the U.S. from threats foreign and domestic. It answers to no one, allowing it to carry out brutal and overt operations around the globe.

Features:

• Overt action: Black operatives do not hide in shadows or sneak behind walls waiting for the right time to engage their foe--they destroy the wall, the enemy, and anything else that gets in their way.
• The guns are the stars: an explosive arsenal of bleeding-edge weaponry lets you experience the awe-inspiring power of the world's most exotic lethal firepower.
• If you can see it, you can shoot it: reduce cities to rubble in a world where virtually nothing is impervious to your bullets.
• Get your blood pumping: Adrenaline is your friend. Visceral, destructive action sucks you deep into the gameplay as you blaze and blast your own path through open-ended environments.
• Black-style kills: use destructible worlds and explosive objects to take out enemies in cover, frag multiple enemies at once, or just wreak massive destruction for its own sake.

Product Description

PENDING

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BIG BADDABOOM !!! MIGHTY BIG BADDABOOM !!! :-), February 28, 2006

By 

The Reverend (USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Black (Video Game)

Having been hyped to death in articles and newsgroups online and offline the truth is finally out: Black is coming to your living room, playroom, bathroom or wherever you keep your PS2.
Can Black live up to the hype? The answer is: Mostly yes, but just mostly. It depends on your personal expectations from a game in general and shooters in particular if you'll love it or just like it. It also depends simply on what mood you're in.

Developed by the same dudes, who brought us "Burnout 3 Takedown" and "Burnout Revenge", which were all about action and not so much about depth or complexity this is about what you can expect from Black.

The game does not bother too much with the story. It is some kind of flash back in which you, an imprisoned secret agent slash mercenary slash heavy weapons dude slash run of the mill underground hero, recalls what happened to him before he got there. Apparently you were trying to track down and eliminate some terrorists, which in turn is your goal throughout the couple levels the game throws at you. That's about it. They might as well have been a little more specific about the enemy - why didn't they just pick evil groups such as: Nazis, Anarchists, militant Communists, militant Capitalists, the Beast Buy (TM) corporation, parents who raise their kids to become arrogant self-serving brats and are proud of it, or worse: anarchistic Nazi-Communist-brats from Beast Buy parents! - but hey: they didn't choose any of these but simply picked "some terrorists" as the enemy to keep things generic. That's cool, too: at least we don't need to read the "Evil villains weekly" then to understand where the bad guys come from...

So what are you gonna do in the game? Easy: You have a nice arsenal of weapons, which fortunately look and sound terrific, and you use these to blow up hordes of enemies.
The action is intense. The best thing - and that's what the game has been praised for all along - is the fact that you can blow up scenery pretty much everywhere. Everything that looks only halfway destructible can somehow be destroyed. Often it just takes a couple of bullets to pulverize tomb-stones, blow doors out of their frames, punch holes in walls or make pillars, monuments, roofs, stairs and whatnot explode or crumble to pieces!!!
There are clouds of dust and debris where your bullets hit. Vehicles explode when they take too much damage, barrels of fuel incinerate everything and everyone around them when shot.
And, of course, there are destructive and explosive objects all over the place - especially close to dense clusters of enemies (these guys love to live dangerously and hang out around anything that has an inscription like: flammable, breakable, explosive or toxic... sad, sad, sad... but good for you - just don't brag about it too much, soldier!)

Again: the experience is an incredible adrenaline rush. The graphics are fantastic, the sound is awesome (crank up your subwoofer and Dolby Surround!!!) and the action is fast, furious and brutal - even though no blood flows in this game - which I think is cool, there doesn't need to be blood to make a game stand out: hello Rockstar and your "Warriors" (which I really dig, except for the over-the-top brutality).

The levels look super pretty. Almost all cool PS2 effects are being used such as: fog, smoke and other particle effects, colored lighting, light-tracing (light-beams come through windows, canopy of trees, cracks in walls etc.) motion blur (hello Burnout Takedown!) and a realistic damage-response to every object (wood splinters, bullets leave holes in metal, porcelain shatters etc.). There are nice themes as well such as: an old cemetery, a factory or industrial complex, a military installation and several more.

The action is best comparable to the game "Darkwatch". Black, too, has great action, easy and responsive controls, awesome visuals and sound (the visuals actually surpass Darkwatch by far!).

The problem is that Black does not have much depth. The game remains a pretty generic shooter, far from the complexity of "Project Snowblind". The campaign is relatively short. You should be able to play through it in about 6-8 hours, depending on how much time you take to marvel at the visuals - or not. The mission design is also pretty old-school: get to the end of the stage or area (and there's not exactly a variety of ways to reach the goal) by shooting everyone in sight and - congratufrigginlations - you have made it to the next stage - press rewind and play again.

Very much like Burnout Takedown / Revenge appealed to the casual action-oriented racer, who just wants to pick up the controls, open a can of beer and go go go WITHOUT reading an instruction booklet (with endless paragraphs on how to tweak and modify cars) - Black delivers the same kind of gameplay in the shooting sector: pick up the controller and have a blast - but don't go looking for much depth, mission variety, strategy or other brainwork.
Admittedly, there are moments in the game, where a little strategy is needed and the game forces you to take a careful approach, search cover, outsmart the enemies - but in general the enemy AI and level design feature the RAMBO or COMMANDO approach. But the game hardly forces you to carefully plan your actions (as Killzone did), which in turn makes Black a whole lot faster - which may not be a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

So here's the verdict: 4 out of 5 stars
Pros:
- Presentation: sound, graphics, frame-rate - gets the best out of your PS2!!!
- Intense action - like your favorite action flick made interactive!
- Quick frame-rate for the PS2 (only occasional drops)
- Destruction galore!
- The adrenaline - oh, the adrenaline! Replay value may be found in the sheer action of the game
- Good Dolby Surround and Widescreen support

Cons:
- story is a mild excuse for the action
- enemy AI sometimes so pathetic it makes you want to drop the weapon and give the guys a hug out of sheer compassion for their low IQ!
- Hardly any replay value, unless simply to re-live the action - which however you might just want to do
- Too short! Come, on guys, you could have given us a couple more stages!!!
- Not very deep, straightforward shooting

Get Black for the action, because it's easily better and more fun than Darkwatch. Or get it if you want to show off the PS2's real power to yourself and your X-box-ensnared buddies.
If you like it a little smarter, get Project Snowblind instead. If you like it a little slower, get Killzone! If you like it a little cheaper: get Area 51!

If you want to play it real smart: be patient and wait a couple months until Black is considered a "classic hit" and thrown at you for $20 and lower!!!

Either way: enjoy the game!!!

Your Reverend.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A truly INTENSE first-person shooter!, March 10, 2006

By 

D. Fox - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Black (Video Game)

Okay, there are many great parts to this game, but first I want to spill the reason for the 4 instead of 5 stars... The developers did an outstanding job with every aspect of this game except multiplayer. Despite how terrific this game is, it would be nice to play head to head in a battle or play a co-op through the lengthy missions. Yes, that's right, this is only 1 player!

Okay, now for the meat of the game... This is a truly intense FPS. When I say intense, I mean INSTENSE!!! If you have never played a game that really got to you and made your hairs stand on end this is the one for you. However, not for the faint of heart, this is sure to keep your senses stimulated. The graphics are truly awesome, and they are much better than you'd expect on a PS2! The sound is equally amazing!

There are 8 missions, yes 8. But, don't be fooled. This is by no means a small game that you'll beat in a matter of days! The first mission lasts about 15-30 minutes while all the others vary from anywhere between 50-90 minutes. Each of the levels begins with a continuing storyline about a Black Ops secret operative who's being interrogated by a high ranking military official. If you care nothing about the stories in these games, the other content will make up for the minute or two you have to listen in on the conversations before you play. Don't worry though, after you beat a mission and come back to that one you can skip the commentary.

A nice aspect of this game is that you don't know all of your objectives before playing each mission. You are given new primary objectives as you go through each level, just as a real soldier is given new orders in the battlefield. The realism of this game is completely outstanding! One note...this is not a game that promotes a stealthy assault. I actually prefer those types, but I soon realized that this is a guns blazing run-and-gun type game.

In each mission, you will be able to choose to complete secondary objectives. A certain ammount of secondary objectives are necessary depending on what difficulty setting you're playing on.

That brings up the next topic. There are three difficulty settings to begin with. Easy, Normal, and Hard. Playing the game through all 8 missions on Easy will unlock nothing. Playing the game to completion on Normal will unlock the new silver weaspons. With this unlocked, any weapon you pick up will be a silver version with unlimited ammo! Very nice! After beating the game on Hard, you will unlock the last and hardest difficulty setting...Black Ops! Believe me, anything above Easy is very hard for any FPS fan!

Overall, the storyline is good, weapon cache is superb, audio and visual effects are stellar, and the action is amazing!

Highly recommended to any FPS fan!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BLACK-Ops, May 20, 2006

A Kid's Review

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Black (Video Game)

BLACK is one of the best FPS`s on PS2 it may be a run n gun,but with a twist you have a DESTRUCTABLE environment that see`s you blowing up alot of buildings,vehicles,explosive barrells and statues along with enemies of coarse.
Since BLACK is going to be a series(a trilogy,to be exact) as Criterion and EA confirmed it,the game ends in a cliffhanger,Not to mention there does need some gameplay improvements like More weapons,maybe some multiplayer(Both online and offline),and BLACK 2 also needs to be concidderably longer.
I await the sequel.(I hope it comes out on PS3)

Pros:
-Good characters
-good story
-Destructable stuff.
-Some extra guns
-Shiny graphics
-Theres gonna be a sequel:)


Cons:
-Not long enough
-Not enough weapons
-No Online/offline multiplayer

Overall-BLACK is one of the best First Person Shooters available on PS2,Its worth evey penny.
8.8/10(88%) GREAT game!

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