games / Reviews
Blacklight: Tango Down (XBLA) Review
Title: Blacklight: Tango Down
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Developer: Zombie Studios
Genre: FPS
Players: 1 (2-16 Online)
Rated: T for Teen
Zombie Studios has tried to take some of the best aspects from today’s shooters and put them into their newest downloadable title.
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Blacklight: Tango Down has none of the single player that other shooters have. Instead, it focuses on the multiplayer that many gamers love. In addition to this, the team has also tried to add in some new features as well.
The game features seven different multiplayer modes to try out on 12 different maps. If you just feel like playing with friends, though, the game also features a Black Ops mode that lets up to four people take on waves of AI enemies while going through various checkpoints. Either mode gives you experience to help you level up, but Black Ops just didn’t seem to offer the fun that the multiplayer had.
Black Ops features some features not seen in the multiplayer, such as the Simon Says door-opening mechanic, and AI enemies running at you with clubs and other melee weapons. The latter really weren’t a threat since you wield guns, but can also easily be taken out with a melee. A lot of paths in Black Ops lead to fenced off areas, which made me wonder why these paths weren’t opened up to allow various ways to complete a mission.
Switching to the multiplayer, the game introduces a new feature called the Hyper Reality Visor, or HRV. The HRV allows players to turn it on for a few seconds to see where all friendly and enemy units are in a map, along with ammo and health boxes. While using, though, players can’t fire, which evens out the advantage the HRV gives. It also takes a short amount of time for the visor to recharge to use. I found the HRV to be a good system that allows teams to make quick strategies on the fly.
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Another difference from Modern Warfare 2 and other shooters is that there are ammo and health boxes on the map for players to restock when needed. Health will recharge a bit when out of combat, but the only way to get fully recharged is to stand by a box for a few seconds. Often, health boxes won’t be used much though, as a few shots from a gun can tear through players.
A place where battles start happening more frequently as a game goes on are the spawn points. The development team put turrets in the spawn areas to try and keep spawn-camping down, but teams start sitting right outside the spawns and kill people running out. However, smart teams can use the turrets and spawn area to their advantage to pick off people from inside their spawn until the team backs off.
Blacklight has four load-outs that can have one of five gun types, a pistol and two grenades. The five gun types (SMG, assault, sniper, shotgun and LMG) have thousands of different combinations thanks to various scopes, magazines, muzzles, barrels, stocks, camo and weapon tags that can be unlocked as a player levels up through 70 levels. Each item increases and decreases various aspects of the gun, allowing players to make the gun they want to.
The weapon tags are the most interesting aspect of the customizability. They add and decrease stats on the guns as well, but also add a little cell phone-type decoration to the gun that you can see during the match. The team can also add in numerous more tags through unlockable codes they release on Twitter. So far, the flags of Spain and Netherlands have been released to celebrate the World Cup.
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Besides the frag grenade and proximity grenade that can be unlocked, the secondary grenades are digi grenades and EMP grenades which play off the game’s digital world. Digi grenades create a glitched area in the map for a short time that players can’t see in or out of, similar to a smoke grenade, while EMP grenades shut down the visor of a player and makes it restart. I personally used the EMP grenade, as I liked the effect it caused.
Now that I’ve mentioned changes from the standard multiplayer shooter fare, it’s time to mention some of the bad changes about the game as well. The game features no lobby area for teams to get together. Instead, players have to try and join friends in matchmaking during intermission of games by using the social button the game gives. But, this also means that friends may not even be on the same team. Often, I’d find myself against two or three friends because I could never join up with them. For being a shooter all about multiplayer, this is a big oversight for friends wanting to play together.
Another problem the game suffers is small text on standard TVs. It gets a bit better on HDTVs, but it can still be hard to see who’s killing who or what you’ve unlocked after leveling up. The game also doesn’t really explain the two groups or the story behind them except briefly in the help section. Also not explained is the various gun stats and what they exactly do. I made various guesses at the stats, but didn’t really concern myself with them most of the time.
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The last problem I noticed is the time it can take trying to get into a match. Sometimes, I could get into a match within a few seconds, while other times I could sit in the search screen for minutes and still not find a game. Hopefully, this delay finding games and lack of a party feature will be fixed in a future update to the game.
Still, even with these problems, Blacklight is a decent experience for gamers that just like the multiplayer aspects of shooters. The graphics play up to the digital warfare the game has, which means bodies will disintegrate into data, the loading screen occasionally has data glitches and more. Plus, the gameplay offers quick paced action, which unfortunately gets marred with the occasional spawn-camping.
Probably the best selling feature for Blacklight right now is that the game is only $15. When talking to the developers, they compared it to getting a full game for the price of a map pack for other games (looking at you MW 2). It’s a good comparison, and one that may help pull gamers away from MW 2 or Bad Company 2 while waiting for the fall’s big titles.
Pros
Cons
The 411:
Blacklight is a game with a lot of potential, but a few key problems hinder the game. The spawn-killing can get annoying, even with the turrets to try and quell it. However, smart teams can use this to their advantage and still win games in their base.
Other problems such as having friends join with you and the delays that can sometimes happen while finding matches may also annoy gamers. Zombie Studios has made a decent online shooter for the price of a map pack, they just need to put in a few updates to fix some of the problems to convince gamers to get away from more popular shooters.
