Black Comments by Ellie Gibson

"Imagine, if you will, how would Burnout look if they had gone to the extreme and had bodies flying through the windows on every other crash... Somehow the lack of blood does not bother me... "

Awesome! When are they releasing that? I'd buy it like a shot!

There was a racing game which featured flying corpses, Flatout or something.

My take on the whole "we don't have body parts or blood splatter" thing is that it wasn't an artistic decision, but rather a tech influenced one. They are pushing the PS2 pretty hard. Bunging in yet more particle effects and multi part skeletons was just a little bit too much to ask. But they don't want to say that, so they call it an artistic decision.

Just my theory, but it happens all the time and most games are no worse for it.

EDIT: My typo rate is alarming today.

I don't need blood in my FPS games to make me happy. I need 1) a challenge from something other than a gazillion mobs at the same time, 2) some cover to duck behind, 3) a sensible health system and 4) allies and enemies with brains of something other than taramasalata.

Most games only provide #2. I'm currently playing Quake4 on the hardest difficulty available to begin with and I'm eating through it like a 5yr old and a bag of chocolate buttons :(

"it seems to be a bunch of American racist kids just swearing at me," he complains"

OMG HE'S RACIALIST AND YOUNGIST! LYNCH THE FUCKER! :D

Every time I read about this I get flashbacks of the Killzone hype. And we all know what happened then.

Apparently PennyArcade aren't too impressed with the Black demo.

They're really up themselves on Penny Arcade though aren't they? The first comment when boiled down was 'Another game let me shoot through walls' when I don't believe Black ever marketed itself as the only game to do it, the second comment doesn't think it's good or bad without giving a decent reason why. There's very little of substance to either comment in fact.

There was then a paragraph playing around with a pseudo semiotic vocabulary (which was mildly amusing the first time I heard it parodied 18 years ago) slagging off someone who either genuinely thought the demo was ace, or was indeed an employee.

As they couldn't possibly tell, it sounds like a lazy day for the artist.

I guess it wasn't too explanatory because they weren't passing it off as a review, just an opinion of the demo they'd got from pre-ordering - and who cares what it was marketed as if that's a failing? It'd be like moaning that some racing games weren't marketed as having passable AI when in fact they've got some horrible rubber-band shit going on. It doesn't stop them having shit AI.

er, what failing are you referring to, the failing of having walls that can be shot through??

Will pick this up on my Xbox, but as for games getting the feeling of guns just right, that accoloade goes to Resi 4 on the cube. Kinda concerned about the hype about this one, as someone said remember Killzone?

'There was a racing game which featured flying corpses, Flatout or something.'

Yeah, it was Flatout. It was done for show and comedy effect really; there were even a few [superb] mini games based around that feature (darts, long jump, high jump, etc).

Great game though, but bloody difficult. You can find it dead cheap these days (under a tenner, easily), I'd recommend you give it a spin if you get the chance.

There's also a sequal due out this year, which I was pleased to find out :)

I broke my 2004 (Yes 2004!) New Year's resolution and just bought the official ps2 rag (£5.99?!?!) in order to get the Black demo.

On the strength of the demo, I would describe the game as...quite OK. Things get shot, things blow up quite nicely, but none of this is any better than many other generic shooter I've played - e.g., Project Snowblind. Moreover, the scripted 'AI' of enemies brings make them march straight into your gun sights at the exact moment you will have learned to expect, a la Killzone.

The official rag still sucks, of course. They awarded the game 10/10, saying it was streets ahead of other PS2 FPSes like Timesplitters and Killzone, which they also awarded 10/10. (I see they've appointed that silly cunt Tim Clark as chief editor. No matter.)

You want games based on action films? I present:

"Action Half-Life

Action Half Life is designed to simulate the experience of being in an Action movie. Movies like Hard Boiled, Face Off, and Die Hard are the inspiration for AHL.

AHL aims for something called 'Movie Realism.' This means that you can take a few bullets and keep fighting. You can fall from a two story roof and only hurt your leg. You can bandage a wound in seconds. This doesn't mean you're invincible however, as hits to the head from large caliber weapons are instantly fatal, but a headshot even from a small pistol will put you within an inch of your life.

Of course, stunts play a large part in action movies, and likewise, play a large part in AHL. Dives, rolls, and long jumps can be executed for style and tactical advantage. There's nothing quite like diving through a window and capping the bad guy in the head before you hit the ground. This is a game of style and fun, not obsessive realism."

http://ahl.telefragged.com/

This mod is free, it's years old and far surpasses any other (retail or mod) game's ability to make you feel like you're in an action movie. F.E.A.R. came reasonably close, but AHL is the best, which is why people like me still play it.

Black, on the other hand, is focusing in on the shooting things aspect so hard they still don't have any idea which side of a gun the ejection port is on.

Black seems not to understand that if the game feels right, even simple DM multiplayer is immense fun, not because of gimmicky add-ins but because the game is fun to play.

Black seems to be blissfully unaware that FPS games are FOR PCs and have great difficulty not being painfully crap on a pad - anyone remember that thing about Quake III servers for the DC being accessible to PC players too?

Black apparently disregards the fact that many people simply enjoy causing messy deaths in games, and will miss it greatly.

And Black's publicity people need to be disabused of the notion that you're allowed to claim straight out that you're going to be better than anything else, then list a whole load of things that made many previous games work really well and say they're not putting them in, leaving no indication of quite what will make it as good as they say.

Black is FAR from God's gift to the FPS, and by this reckoning will struggle to be acceptable.

Golgo why did you buy the PS2 official mag it's like the worst mag ever! GAME are giving out demos for this for free all you have to do is place a pre-order which costs nothing and doesn't mean you have to get the game either.

Still I wasn't to impressed by this, I'll wait for the finished game before I make my judgement on it, but I'm already not impressed by the guns I played with in the demo, there was all this talk about how beefy they are but IMO they're just like every other gun found in FPS games lacking behind the might of RE4.