BLACK

• Platform: Xbox, Playstation 2
• Published by: Electronic Arts
• Developed by: Criterion
• Release Date: Feb 28, 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: No
• Online: No

Screenshot Gallery

Trailers and Footage

 

Black Interview

-- February 21, 2006 by: David Craddock

Imagine an FPS where you're given a ton of guns, a ton of ammo, and most of the mission objectives revolve around shooting lots of stuff. Stuff that blows up. Picture it: the storyline sits quietly in the background; objectives flash on the screen when and if you need to know about them; and you pretty much never run out of ammo. That was Criterion's Games' goal with PS2 and Xbox shooter, Black: shoot first, ask no questions later. Due out on February 28, Black isn't an attempt to revolutionize the FPS genre; it's an attempt to take it back to its fast-paced, visceral roots. I recently had a chance to talk with Craig Sullivan, Black's lead designer, about the game, and if Craig thinks it will have a chance to successfully permeate a market brimming with hundreds of faceless shooter titles. Before we begin, allow me to offer you a summary: Craig thinks the chances are really, really good.

The first thing you should know about Black is that the dev team is extremely goal oriented on one thing: creating a fun, immersive single player experience. In a genre that emphasizes multiplayer, the team believed that their game might get lost in the shuffle if they decided to follow the rest of the flock. "Our ambitions were pretty high in terms of what we wanted to bring to the table," Craig says. "We realized very early on that we had to be laser-focused on doing one thing really well, rather than doing lots of things just as well as anybody else out there. It was a decision we made quite early on that we would ... focus on doing a really cool single player experience, and then see how people took to that, and see how people liked our interpretation of what we think an FPS should be about, then see where to go from there."

In short, Craig and the other developers lament the fact that they've essentially played the same FPS over and over (and over) again. Weaponry, movement, characters... essentially all the same, and in a word, Craig was finding it "tedious." The goal of Black is to give you a shooter that changes the way you think about shooter games. "We've never made a shooter before, so what we're trying to do is give you something really fresh, something you've never played before, give you the experience of pulling the trigger on an amazing machine gun."

So... no multiplayer. Bummer? Nah. As noted, the devs decided to make the single player experience all that they dreamed it could be and more. Tons of guns, non-linear game play, fully destructible environments.... Where to start?! How about the guns... because there are lots of guns. One phrase that has been used to describe Black is, "gun porn." That's essentially what this game is all about: a pleasurable, darn near orgasmic shooting experience. Pistols, shotguns, AK-47s, RPGs, grenades.... Weaponry is what Black is all about, and there's plenty to be found. Some of the guns even offer modifications to up the already staggering amount of killing options the game offers. During some time I got to spend playing the game, my favorite weapon quickly came to be the AK-47. It's fast, it's deadly... and it has three different firing modes. Press the fire toggle button, and gun switches to burst fire. Press it again, and it goes to single shot. Finally, a third press returns it to its automatic roots. With a single weapon, I essentially had a three-in-one gun!

Weapon mods are something that isn't at all new to games, but the reason the Criterion guys decided to include them may be. The dev team went to Las Vegas and spent some time firing the weapons they decided to include in the game, and quickly discovered the mods weren't just a video game type thing. "In having fired the real weapons, [adding modifications] is the kind of thing you can do," Craig explained. "You can switch fire modes, and I didn't know I could do that until I actually got my hands on a few assault rifles. It seems weird to me, after having the real experience, that I couldn't do that in a game before, at least not very much."

The more popular reason to include weapon mods was choice. Criterion wanted to make sure that players got to play through Black any way they could dream of. "As long as the game and level design support it, we can give you the choice of playing [however you want]. Some people will want to go through and play quite slowly, on single shot, and conserve their ammo even though there's lots of it in the [game] world. While other people will just want to run around like lunatics and blow the crap out of everything. It's your game; you spent your fifty bucks on it, so it should be up to you what you do in the constraints of the game. If we give you a weapon that, in real life, you can fire in three different modes, we [wanted] that in the game." Oh, and if you run out of ammo, you can press the melee attack button to just smack the enemy in the face. Because sometimes, smacking someone in the face is the only way to solve a problem.

These days, when I hear "destructible environments," I can admit to getting a little bit nervous. After all, how many times has this kind of thing been promised in a video game? About as many times as it hasn't happened, I'd wager. Black makes sure that it isn't yet another "fully destructible shooter" full of fully destructible empty promises. I started one level on the top of a building. I peered down the stairs leading to the street only to find two enemies standing on either side of a car. I sprayed wild shots (with my AK, of course) and ended up shooting the car. In the car battery. Which caused it to explode... a lot. "We didn't wanna put anything in the game that wasn't fun to shoot. So, everything in the game is made of metal, or masonry, or plaster, or wood, and it all has a cool effect when you shoot it. Some of the bigger objects will explode, and some things will completely come apart. We wanted to make it as much fun as possible to miss the enemies, not just hit them."

So I blew up a car. Awesome, but what about other stuff such as entire buildings. Oh yes. I lobbed a grenade into a building supported by pillars. The grenade erupted and shattered the pillars, causing them to topple onto enemies standing nearby. Freaking. Awesome.

The destructibility of the environment factors heavily into the non-linear gameplay. " There are some secrets in the game where you just go and wreck partition walls, and it gives you an advantage because you can skirt around the backs of the enemies," Craig said. "We're using [the environment] as much as possible. We didn't want to make a game where, you can just kind of shoot through the floor and make a huge floor and just keep going until you got to the end [of the level]. We just wanted to make something that was just really cool and exciting and destructive, and where possible, we could [allow for] the destruction to hurt your enemies any more."

Besides sneaking behind enemies to surprise them, the game also allows for many different paths to be taken in order to achieve objectives, or even if you want to try a different way to get from one location to another. "To a certain extent, we try to give you as much choice as makes sense in a game like this," Craig said. "What I [as a designer] didn't want to do was have massive, open environments so the player could run and get lost or distance themselves from the action too much." Black is careful not to let the player stray too far from the action, however. "We've tried to be creative in a way that you can approach different situations, but you can never stray so far from the action that you're shooting at silhouettes off in the distance ... just because I think that kind of game play is something that we're not building on in Black. Black is about close-up and in-your-face [combat]. ... You will get a level of choice and a number of different ways you can approach a situation, but it's still contained and supports what we wanted to do with Black."

As awesome as Black plays, looks, and sounds, (oh dear Lord, the sound!) I couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't saved for next-gen platforms such as the Xbox 360 and/or PS3. "We always had this dream of doing an amazing shooting, shooting that was as powerful as the shooting we experienced when we shot guns for real in Vegas," Craig explained. "Shooting is cool, as we'd seen in amazing action movies ... and we're thinking, 'that's really cool, we want to do that.' We've got an amazing team here, and the technology's phenomenal. If we would've sat around and the programmers were saying, 'We just can't achieve [this] on PS2 and Xbox,' we'd have been like, 'All right, we'll stick it on 360 and PS3.' At the time, [the team said] 'We'll absolutely nail it for you,' and we really think we did."

Nailed it? Seems so. This game has got a lot riding on it. As mentioned, it's an FPS, and there are a ton of those floating around any gaming platform at all times. Does Black have what it takes to succeed? We'll see, won't we? Look for gun porn to spray onto your system at the end of February.

Comments