The Gamer's Quarter

[boojiboy7]

So this is all about Black, which did get some discussion on this board, but not a lot, and certainly not a lot after the fact, so here goes. It is all dhex's fault for talking about explosions and FPS gaming.

Black may be the best game about making red things blow up ever made.

Sure, ostensibly, you are there to hunt down some terrorists, kill a bunch of bad dudes, save the free world from the free trade of weapons or some shit. Honestly, it is a plot of a bad 80's action movie, only slightly tinged with a little bit of Tom Clancy, and as such only takes place during the (filmed with live actors) cutscenes that set up stages. The game makes sure you watch them once, and moves on with what it is doing. Black places you in the role of some super anti-terrorist dude, supposedly on a team of super anti-terrorists dudes though each of these super dudes manages to not be particularly super in the slightest, getting offed or lost or whatever over the course of your somewhat random escapades which take place somewhere between the Middle East and places that formerly were known as Soviet.

Note, I use dude not as a gender-based term, which it admittedly is, but mostly for its connotations about the particular attitudes of the characters involved in this whole mess.

The general lack of attachment to the super dude protagonist might also be tied into him being a tank. He can't jump, doesn't move fast, and doesn't really need to. He can duck, so I guess that is some sort of agility. The levels are linear enough that he will fall of a ledge and not be able to get back up, just so his only choice is to move forward.

The human characters and their particular interactions in forwarding the plot are only there as a concession to modern gaming, honestly. The actual characters of the game are the weapons you pick up and use to destroy the not-wide-in-the-slightest variety of enemy dudes that come your way. The choice of the game as a first person shooter makes this readily apparent. Your gun takes center stage, and is very clearly meticulously modelled to look as simultaneously realistic and badass as possible. Each gun plays like a separate character in a fighting game, with its own little quirks of aim and damage that you learn to take into account while firing round after round into the chest, heads, and limbs of people who aren't given so much as a name, let alone a motivation or development.

The guns act as characters too in how they develop over the course of the game. Individual guns are only to be found on certain levels, and the game is designed so that these levels are the only place those specific guns are effective. It is almost RPG-like in how each area only has the tools you need to get through it. You never find the ring to turn things into ice in the ice dungeon, because what you really need is to melt that door blocking your way. Similarly, you don't find a rocket launcher in the tight hallways of an abandoned asylum; you find it on a bridge that happens also to be conveniently covered with land mines separating you from your enemy. As you get to the later levels in the game, the basic guns available on any level become stronger and stronger. As you beat the game, you unlock even stronger versions of all the guns in the game (namely, unlimited ammo variations and such).

Now, if one is to regard the guns as characters, one has to imagine that there would be other characters for the guns to interact with. OK, sure. Here's a bunch of bad guys running in front of you. Shoot them! But wait, Black isn't so basic as that. Killing a man in Black can take in innordinante number of rounds drilled into him, unless of course you get that lucky head shot and he isn't waering a metal mask to cover his face (yes, there are guys smart/dumb enough to do this). Were this an RPG, the guns in Black might be the plucky youths (who of course are missing fathers etc.) who all want to talk to every person in the town and cannot fathom why the evil wizard hell bent on controlling the world would want them dead. These youths would want every person they can find to be their friends, and yet sadly, no matter how many times a player walks up to that townsperson and presses X, nobody will help these gunly youths out.

Except maybe Mr. Explosion.

You see, Mr. Explosion stands in all of the RPG towns in close proximity to the townspeaople, always dressed in red and ready to help any plucky lad along his way. If Black trains you to do anything, it is point the gun and the red thing and sqeeze the trigger until it explodes. This training is patently useless on any real battlefield, as if something is red, it is probably bleeding, and therefore shooting it more might be a waste, but whatever. Black is a video game, and doesn't care.

So what Black is, despite seemingly being a first person shooter about fighting the war on terror in the heart of Randomistan, is a game about the interactions between guns, explosions, and an unidentified army of random guys. Three characters, none of whom are actually part of the plot of the game, all of whom will in some way or another make you laugh.

Despite being released on two systems, Black is an Xbox game only. Not due to any of the usual graphics differences between the Xbox and the PS2 (though there are a few minor ones) but mostly due to the soundtracks. The soundtrack present in Black is usual orchestral bleah, but the Xbox makes the difference here. Sadly, 360 users miss out on this, as the 360 doesn't integrate the custom soundtracks into the game in the same way the original box did.

When I played through Black, not only did I find myself playing the same stage repeatedly just to get things perfect, but I also found myself debating over which songs to play while doing it. The stages are even paced slightly differently from each other, so that I found myself wanting to plan out a playlist for the stage to line up with the action on the screen. Which is where Andrew WK comes in.

He is terrible, but wonderful in a get drunk and break shit kind of way. The asylum stage was perfect for the album I Get Wet. Having loaded it onto the Xbox, the first track starts with a little grinding guitar and kicks in with full drums and synth and screaming right as I showed up to the gunfight. Explosions all around and dudes dying quick to the pound drum machines and screaming white guy worked way too well.

Other stages required more subtle approaches, as there were sneaking portions and such that really demanded something more toned down. So I provided that. I debated with friends about it. I planned it.

This might be the most interesting part of Black, in that not only was the actual playing of the game so damn fun, but it also became kind of a meta-game, in which friends and I would toss out soundtrack songs, when they would work best, and try them out if we could. The best songs got to stay, and others got added in. We never finished the task, and only barely ever got any sort of list compiled at all, but the process itself, being both completely outside of the game and integrally a part of the game, leads me to suggest that the PS2 version should never have been made.

So yeah, I'm kind of interested in seeing if anyone else thought this much about this remarkably stupid little game. I could probably go on for way longer, but this has gotten too long to start a thread with anyways, so yeah.

[dhex]

you rather made that sound excellent.

have you played far cry?
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[Mr. Mechanical]

I liked how whenever you threw a grenade and one of the bad dudes saw it they'd shout "GRENADA!" in faux russian or whatever. Also, I love the little "dink" sound a bullet makes when coming into contact with a helmet during a perfectly placed headshot.

Black is a wonderfully tight, focused little game that doesn't peter out near the end like most other games with high caliber production but instead just keeps amping up the explosions and the guns and making the levels larger all the way to the very end. It was one of the few games I've played in the past year or so that I have impulsively played through every difficutly setting and gotten every objective. Essentially, one of the only games I've ever bothered to get that coveted 100% in the stats menu. And I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't loved every single minute of it.

I like how after you beat it on Hard mode and start playing Black Ops it starts you off in every level with an infinite ammo M16 with a grenade launcher attachment. That pretty much sums up the whole game, right there.
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Mr. Mechanical

[dark steve]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[DaleNixon]

Best last stage in a game. Ever.

[Joe]

I spent a lot of time when this game came out hyping it up to people. I'm glad someone aside from me enjoys it. It's in no way revolutionary, but it cuts the FPS game down to its most essential parts, and throws some beautiful graphics and lighting effects on top of it.

Black is probably one of the more underrated games of this generation.
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[stotelheim]

I really liked that it felt like a spiritual sequel to Goldeneye. It's one hell of a game, although I always do horribly at it if I put on the music that works best. I just can't contain myself, and I don't hear all the shots or explosions that would clue me in as to where the enemies are and that I'm being shot at.

[boojiboy7]