A Second Look @ Black

(Images taken from EA.com)

Upon its release, Black was labeled as "gun porn," a kind of game with so many guns that it should have been classified as such. It was touted as having cinematic quality gameplay, destructible environments, an award-winning soundtrack, and an engaging story. The world was your playground to blow up as you saw fit. And for the first half of the game, it does this well.

Black puts you in the shoes of Sergeant First Class Jack Keller, who in the opening live-action and proceeding (unskippable) cutscenes is being interrogated while in chains. What unfolds is a story of betrayal, disobeyed orders, and uncovering international terrorist plots. Or something. It is really hard to follow because the story does little to draw the player in. Let's face it: all you really care about is shooting stuff.

As Keller, you and your team are running through a war-torn city in Russia attempting to hunt down the leader of a high-tech and highly-trained terrorist organization. Along the way orders are disobeyed, plots are uncovered, enemies are mowed down, and things are blown up. Its a typical summer blockbuster story held together with duct tape. 

The gameplay is as simple as a formula can get for an FPS game: pick up a gun and shoot your way through the levels. Staying undetected isn't needed as it only means you have to shoot less bullets. One drawback is that once enemies know your position they lock on and know where you are even if you approach from a different position. They're less like human AI and more like scared hunting dogs. Their shooting is relentless, never running out of bullets but they lack intelligence, the only way to quickly dispatch them is with a tricky headshot. In this game, you need to aim for the upper part of the head rather than just the whole face. One would think a helmet would be more likely to stop a bullet than someone's nose.

Multiplayer is non-existent and in exchange each map is very large, taking around 45-60 minutes to complete, depending on how you want to play or how many times you die. The total game clocks in around 12 hours. That isn't bad, but when compared to other games of the same era, which some had longer campaigns and multiplayer, its a wonder why the graphics weren't touched up in replacement.

There's no button interference, no jumping or sprinting, which makes backtracking a boring task. The ability to screw on a silencer to some weapons is mapped to one of the face buttons. You can look down the scopes, reload, melee, and crouch. The usual. There are a lot of objects littered throughout the levels and all of them can be destroyed, meaning you'll be hard pressed to find cover in a SNAFU.

The orchestral soundtrack is a great one and lends itself well to the environments and the overall mood. On the Xbox, you can switch it out for a custom soundtrack so you can feel free to blast away enemies with whatever tunes you fancy.

Since the guns are the main attractions, the attention to sound detail is perfect. Each gun has its own unique and powerful sound. There is honestly nothing quite like letting loose with an M249 machine gun against a small horde of oncoming enemies.

The voice acting is awfully dry and doesn't show any emotion behind the acting. The cutscenes are the same way. Any talking is just ignorable at best.

The level designs range from several bombed-out cities, to a bridge, and finally a jail. Its not much and its not impressive at all. The "destructible" environments include anything from cars, crates, pillars, gas tanks, a few walls, and red barrels. The game rarely gets intense and the best moments usually come from a large explosion. You never feel above the enemies, you are just as easily taken down as they are. Some levels can be a bit confusing to navigate since it never directly tells you where to go. Sometimes you just have to hunt for the way yourself. You will also find yourself stuck on more than one invisible wall several times throughout each level. You can't just walk off the sides of stairs, the only times you can fall is from certain areas, otherwise there's an invisible wall to protect you.

All this serves as a distraction from what the game really is: a shallow FPS that was caught up in the hype of the genre at the time. Linear levels, poor AI, a typical selection of guns, and a poor story to hold it all together. What it has is a long, narrow-minded, even ignorable story, repetitive gameplay, a meager selection of guns, and the type of brooding similar to an emo teenager: its just a phase, and once you're halfway through this game you'll want to move on to something else. Gathering all the intel throughout the game unlocks nothing more than the requirements to advance to the next level in hard and black ops modes. They serve no purpose in the story and generally don't matter to the overall package. The end of the game comes abruptly with a cutscene and the credits roll. That's it.

There's no multiplayer, and the short campaign will either leave you wanting more or a deep feeling of disappointment. The back of the box says to "Get creative with your kills." The problem with that statement is that there is little creativity to be had.

There is no "wow factor." Even reloading takes away from the game as it seems to put an emphasis on it. The background blurs and Keller takes his sweet time to do it right. This becomes a major problem when in the middle of a firefight, instead of focusing your reticule dot on the next target, you can no longer see them because it wants you to pay attention to the action of reloading the gun. It's embarrassing.

Its not "full" of anything, even itself. It never has moments where its confident in what its doing. It doesn't do much to draw the player in to its world of shady black operations. If I could at least say one good thing about Black is that it sticks to its guns, literally. Every enemy drops a weapon that you can collect so you're never close to running out of ammo. It tries, but at the turn of the hardware cycle, trying wasn't enough. More weapon selections, more areas, a more detailed storyline, and a bigger emphasis on play style is what would have made this a great game.

If you're a fan of the run-and-gun FPS genre then Black deserves at least one playthrough. You can find it either on the original Xbox or PS2 for cheap or as a downloadable "Xbox Original" on the XBLA for $10. Despite all this it, its not hard to justify as a purchase for anyone else. Its a good, solid action game with long levels, amazing sound quality, and steady gameplay. It is definitely worth at least one playthrough.

Keep Playing

A Second Look @ Enthusia Professional Racing.

(All images are from Gamespot.com. YouTube video is not mine either.)

Enthusia Professional Racing, made in-house by Konami, attempts to blend arcade and simulation racing. It does this rather well by keeping the arcade aspect in the menus while the racing is fully simulation (minus vehicular damage).

This wouldn't be such a bad thing if it weren't for the fact that the player may spend the bulk of their time in the menus trying to figure out the probability system in their favor.

As the game is first started, you're treated to a walkthrough of the menus. Skipping this may be a bad idea as it teaches the player about the probability system, which the game seemingly runs on. It's all about whether or not the player's car has a chance of winning the race, and this is explained during the walkthrough. Don't let these words fool you though; you can still win a race at a harder difficulty but only by roughing up the other cars and driving harshly.

It's an ambitious title that strives to show off what it does. Ambition doesn't cut it as the game is littered with problems that are hard to overlook and limit the overall enjoyment.

One problem lies in the fact that each race is only a few laps, you may find yourself participating in the small-fish races that can give you the odds in your favor. There is no limit to this and its a smart way to upgrade your vehicle to tackle the harder races and improve your odds. If you're feeling daring you don't have to stick to the easy stuff, you're welcome to try the harder races in order to acquire better cars.

This presents a few more problems: Before the start of the start race you can place a “bet” on which car you think will win. This has no bearing on the outcome, leveling up, etc. and is generally useless in the game.

At the end of the race a raffle is presented wherein the cars that participated in the race are displayed and a single one is highlighted. The player presses a button and probability takes effect again as to whether or not the player acquires a new car. This is THE ONLY way to get new cars since there is no purchase system. Konami lost the point with this game when more focus was put on the probability system and Enthu points rather than the gameplay.

The Enthu Points present another problem: Enthu Point are points you get for racing; they deplete with each scrape, each time you go off the road, or each time you hit another car (or when another car hits you). Other than that they exist to gauge nothing. The points refill with each successful win or when you take an in-game week off from racing. If the total points reach zero, it will force you to take a week off. Your Driver level determines how many points you regain during this process.

No matter how many Enthu Points you acquire, one bump or slide off the road will take away the same amount of EP, forcing the player to pay more attention to their driving. This is the question that begs to be addressed when concerning the Enthu Points: if the same amount of EP is taken away for each mistake, why have it so the total number of EP raises with each level? To put it another way: if you have 100 Enthu Points, bumping another car might take away 10 points. Meanwhile if you have 1500 points, bumping a car seems like 150 points are taken away. No matter how many Enthu Points the player has garnered, it seems they're penalized for the same percentage for each mistake.

The Free Ride mode is limited to what you have unlocked so far, meaning new tracks and cars are pretty much off limits unless you work to win them.

There is another mode called Driving Revolution which is a take on Konami's Dance Dance Revolution series. The player is given a preselected car and tasked with driving down a three-lane highway, passing through certain marker gates along the way while trying to make the best time. It's a mixture of skill and little bit of luck (bringing in the probability system again).

The racing is, for the most part, straightforward with the physics and speed being as closely accurate to the real world as Konami can muster. Each car handles, accelerates, and brakes differently from each other. The upgrade system has a small but noticeable effect on the cars.

The tracks consist of real world and original designs, each one requiring a different way to master driving through. It's not tough since the course map provides the player with enough warning of which corner is coming up, its up to them to remember when to brake and accelerate.

There is no damage and, seeing as how there is no monetary system involved, this is a good idea. Since the computer AI is anything but intelligent, you'll have to deal with them bumping into you in their attempts to drive the correct line. The AI is lifeless in that it doesn't fight back, its programmed to just go, to never make a mistake, to accelerate and brake perfectly, to recover from when the player cheaply runs it off the road and continue along as though nothing has happened.
There are two camera views: a close chase camera and a bumper cam with a rearview mirror. The bumper cam is the only way to see what's behind you since there is no button to look back.
Also, you may want to make sure you take a drive properly as there is no restart, only retiring. Doing so forfeits any Enthu points recovery and the chance to unlock a new car.

Enthusia shows off its potential in the graphics department by featuring some of the best graphics seen in a racing game on the PS2, potentially rivaling Gran Turismo 4. There are rarely any jagged edges on the environments, which are unique in their own rights, and the cars are smoothly designed. The game feels to run at a steady 30+ fps (I could be very wrong in that description) even with several cars all going full speed. The car models shown in the menus aren't the same during gameplay, however, but its hard to take notice of the other cars when your main focus is directed towards the driving.
Cars gather no dirt on the off-road courses, similarly the dust isn't kicked up behind you. During the wet courses the rain runs down the screen and back up when speeding. The reflections on car windows are dulled down to pixelated blocks but the reflections on the cars themselves are nice. Lighting during the night levels is nice, but nothing to get excited over. The ground reflects the light during wet night levels.

The soundtrack has an interesting mix of songs, the menu music is piano-techno mix, something of the arcade variety. The in-game soundtrack mixes it up quite a bit with songs mixing techno with rock guitars, its tolerable but best taken in small doses.
The car's engines seem to drone, increasing in pitch when accelerating and decreasing when revving down. Sadly, it's just unnoticeable.
What may be noticeable is that there are no crowd noises. The game feels lifeless and because of this you get a sense of loneliness. No one's cheering you on because no one cares.

FINAL LAP:

In the end, Konami took a bold step in an attempt to blend arcade and sim. It was, however, a misstep. In essence it can be seen as a game you would play in an arcade with a sim racing engine, it just can't make up its mind to figure out which side of the fence it wants to reside on.

If a sequel is ever put into production, Konami should learn from they're mistakes and rid the game of the Enthu points, complicated menus, probability system and focus more on the driving.

The game is littered with problems, sure, but it's not a bad game. The roster of cars is a strong one, the racing is accurate and fun, and the probability system is tolerable, even ignorable.

Konami attempted to make a community behind the Enthusia brand name with a website, which is no longer active, that was meant to be a community hub for Enthusia players which held events, contests, leaderboards and other news. It was just mediocre when compared to other racing games of the time (Gran Turismo 4, Forza Motorsport, even R: Racing Evolution) which had more reason and depth to them.

Even with the game being as old as it is, it would make a perfect addition to the Sim Racing Aficionado's collection. All others would be better off sticking with the more AAA titles.

Keep Playing.