Blacklight: Tango Down

[River_Rat_459]

Has anyone downloaded this? I'm curious if it's as bad as this review says:

Blacklight: Tango Down (PC/PSN/XBLA [reviewed])
Developer: Zombie Studios
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Released: July 7, 2010 (XBLA), July 14, 2010 (PC), TBA (PSN)
MSRP: 1200 Microsoft Points

You know how some good single-player first-person-shooters have really rushed and poorly designed multiplayer modes shoehorned in, just to fill some imaginary quota that dictates all games need to have multiplayer, even if it's bad? Welcome to the world of Blacklight, a game based entirely on that premise. With no tangible story, no explanation for anything, and no semblance of coherence, Tango Down is the bad multiplayer aspect of a good single player game, only without the single player part.

There is a mode possibly resembling a campaign, but to call it that is being generous. Designed for four-player co-op and not balanced for solo players in the least, the "Black Ops" portion of the game involves players taking on the AI in glorified multiplayer matches. With no adequate checkpoints, enemies that ambush you, and the player character's ability to take only a handful of bullets before dying, it's not long before one realizes that this "campaign" is nothing more than a collection of time wasting exercises.

The Black Ops levels seem thrown in for no good reason and I gave up on them since co-op only works with invited friends and I don't know people stupid enough to be playing Blacklight without a good excuse. Frankly, these levels are just for show anyway, since multiplayer is where it's at.

Unfortunately, multiplayer is only marginally better. With characters that feel like they're gliding instead of walking along the floor, a health bar that appears to be there just for show, and a set of maps seemingly designed entirely around the idea of spawn camping, Blacklight: Tango Down is pretty damn miserable at providing a decent online experience.

Imagine a parody of Call of Duty, where spawn camping isn't just the best way to win, it's the only way to win. A game where victory is about luck and not skill, because players are dead after absorbing about three bullets and have no way to really fight each other because everyone's apparently made of paper. Blacklight takes these frustrating problems to amazing new extremes, almost managing to impress in how terrible it's made them. Players have 175 hit points and I literally don't know why they're there, because the health bar has no use. If you're seen by an enemy, you're dead. You have no option to escape, because the time between getting spotted and hitting the ground is less than a second. You could argue that it's "realistic" but I argue that it's "shit."

It doesn't help that the maps are absolutely dreadful, mostly designed to reward spawn campers and snipers and screw over anybody else. It's not uncommon for one lucky team to "lay siege" to another team's spawn area, sniping or ambushing any player unfortunate enough to leave the safe zone, which isn't even all that safe since players can lob grenades over the wall or snipe from higher ground.

To its credit, Blacklight features a robust customization feature which is expanded as players rank up throughout their multiplayer careers. Armor, equipment, and various weapons can all be customized. There are also some unique little toys, like the Digigrenade which causes a huge ball of pixelation to appear and disorient enemies. Unfortunately, however, the different weapons on display are all moot due to the aforementioned wafer-thin flesh of the brittle player characters. It doesn't matter how powerful your weapon is when enemies die in one second flat with even the weakest guns.

Presentation is pretty damn awful as well, with really cluttered, unhelpful menus that don't really inform the player on anything. In the customization screens, there is no indication of where to go to find any of the new unlocks, and the weapon selection menus are messy and confusing. During the game, information appears in little black boxes that contain thin, grey, totally illegible text, so even when you do rank up and unlock something, you'll have no idea what you won.

If there's one way in which Blacklight impresses, it's with its graphics. For an XBLA title, one has to admit that Tango Down looks really quite good, with visuals that almost look convincingly retail. Of course, retail games do look better than this game, so the graphics really aren't worth buying the game for.

The easily pleased or easily fooled might convince themselves that Blacklight: Tango Down is an excellent game, thanks to the smoke and mirrors put in place by the developers. After all, a fully-fledged first-person-shooter with impressive graphics on XBLA/PSN is pretty outstanding, and it is tempting to forgive the game's issues due to the ambition on show. However, ambition and success are two entirely different things, and Blacklight just isn't successful at anything, save for constant irritation. The game looks good and aims high, but the problem is it's just not fun. At all.

Score: 3.0 -- Poor (3s went wrong somewhere along the line. The original idea might have promise, but in practice the game has failed. Threatens to be interesting sometimes, but rarely.)

ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://www.destructoid.com/review-bl...n-178661.phtml

[jack]

in other words a real suck fest....good to know :mrgreen: .

[Timmy_2_Tones]

You could argue that it's "realistic" but I argue that it's "shit."

Wow, Harsh is right.

[MaximusR3]

sucks for Zombie studios. The people from G4 were saying it looked pretty decent at E3 too

[jack]

kinda saw this one coming... it looked good in development but when the trailers came out it was all fluff.

[MaximusR3]

[jack]

[River_Rat_459]

MMMMMMMMM. FLUUUUUUUFFF.

[jack]

[Trained2Survive]

MMMMMMMMM. FLUUUUUUUFFF.

HAHAHA

[lawacr]

This game is awsome has a COD MW2 feel to it same controls ect. It is in the XBL arcade for the price of 1200MSP its a reasonable price for the game. It is a FPS multilayer with a few diff game modes. . [youtube:gmp8xivb]SlDll8jF4jA[/youtube:gmp8xivb]

[squidfamily1]

I just got the new game informer, the review for this was good by them but i thought i saw another thread here someplace that said it wasn't good. I'll check it out for PSN later

[indyred99]

I merged and moved the topics.
On another note I want to try this but we will see gotta wait for payday now.

[saviger]

I watched the video review at IGN and they like it:

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/1433 ... 70810.html

and the Trailer over at GT looks cool as well:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclu ... ango/64559

and its only 15BUX!!

[MaximusR3]

i'm seeing more and more good reviews turn up for this game, i wondering if Destructoid just had it out for this game for some reason because they seem to be the only ones to give it a really poor review

[jack]

well if that's true then, I will retract my previous statements .

[saviger]

so we going with 360 or PS3?

[jack]

good question.

[saviger]

good question.

Poll created!

[saviger]

with the overwhelming response on the poll, I went to PSN to try and download it....

Hmmmmm only thing available are some videos. I went to their forums and it seems that it has been out on the 360 and PC.

Buuuttt they are having match making problems and some other bugs, The plan seems to be is to integrate a bunch of fixes then release on PSN.

[saviger]

HEY! its been awhile for this thread.....buuutttt They finnaly released it on PSN way back in Oct. I'm downloading the Demo and will post what i think of it.

[MARDIGRA21]

I really couldn't get into it , when u sighted In it was weird that u don't look through the iron sights

[saviger]

yeah it sucks, I played through the 20min demo.

Had 3 crashes, and movement is laggy