Introduction

Black is a 2006 first-person shooter video game developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts. It was a console-only title, released on both Xbox and Playstation 2.

This game is sort of an exercise in distilling a first-person shooter to it's purest form. The base gameplay of an FPS game is shooting guns and in Black, all of the focus is on that experience. The guns are the stars of the show. Compared to the characters and environment the weapon models are incredibly detailed; the developers even referred to the game as "gun-porn". So much effort was put into making satisfying sound effects for gunshots and explosions that the game was nominated for a BAFTA for best audio. The player's interaction with the environment is almost entirely by way of a bullet, environmental destruction and particle effects are not in short supply. However if all this sounds great, there's a downside. For a game with no multiplayer so it can stay entirely focused on it's single player experience, the actual story is an afterthought and there are only 8 missions. For many people, myself included, this makes the game seem more like a tech demo than a triple-A title.

At the end of the day, what this game does, it does well. Join Cletus, Swordfishhh, and I as we put a few thousand rounds down-range and cause some serious destruction. Don't forget hearing protection.

01 - Veblensk City Street
02 - Treneska Border Crossing
03 - Naszran Town
04 - Naszran Foundry
05 - Tivliz Asylum
06 - Vratska Dockyard
07 - Graznei Bridge
08 - Spetriniv Gulag