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[Game On!] Blacklight: Tango Down, Out Now on XBLA -- Futuristic CoD??
Bamelin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Just came out today, 1200 funbucks, thinking about grabbing it --
Hands on At E3
Jake Lyons wrote:Preview from E3: Xbox Live Arcade is an ever evolving platform that seems to upgrade itself year after year with surprise hits and blockbuster titles available via digital download. Within the past 12 months we have saw superb titles like Shadow Complex, Battlefield 1943, and Trials HD sell better than some full priced games with a lot more hype surrounding them. It has been no secret that Zombie is working on a multiplayer only title for the XBLA called Blacklight: Tango Down. A few months ago MSXBOX-World had an opportunity for a little Q & A time with the lead developer Jared Gerritzen (check out article here http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/featur...-Designer.html) that shed some light on the subject. Here is the basic rundown: For 1200 Microsoft points you get 12 maps, thousands possibilities for weapon combinations, and 70 experience levels to gain all wrapped up in visually striking FPS. Besides the multiplayer there will be 8 co-op missions for friends to enjoy over Live. All of this sounds great, but it would be worthless if the gameplay was total garbage. Luckily at E3 we got some hands on time with Blacklight: Tango Down (B:TD) to see if Zombie could back up all the talk with a game that works as well as advertised.
One of the worst scenarios as a consumer is paying for something that isn't quite what you expected, sort of like ordering sweet and sour chicken in Chinatown only to find out it wasn't poultry at all, but the neighborhood cat. It might be good at first, but after a while there is that unsettling feeling in your gut that you've been duped. This is something that I was concerned with going into the demo because of all the information I've been reading on B: TD has gotten the hype machine churning within my own head. At the outset, I was impressed with the visuals and how well they looked for an arcade title. The best way to describe it Modern Warfare graphics on the arcade, they were crisp, clean, and ran without so much as a hiccup even when digi-grenades exploded and mayhem was ensuing on screen. Deathmatch was the only mode available, but it worked impeccably with the 4 systems they had running to allow a 4 person free-for-all.
The controls felt tight and just the way a fast paced shooter should feel with no floaty aiming receptacle or hindrance in the characters movement. If I had to gripe about one thing in particular it would be how the grenades are thrown, it felt more like a 6 year old girl was throwing them than a combat ready solider. There wasn't much arc and definitely no distance unless you were looking at the heavens to heave a hailmary pass. However the gunplay is on point, there is no question whether or not you are hitting you're target because headshots drop in one pop. Many of today's FPS games use a regen health meter that requires the player to hide until he is healed, but in B:TD only a portion of the health bar is recharged. In order to gain back a full health meter the player must search the map for medical crates to heal. Ammo crates work using the same principle, but you can pick up enemies weapons if there are no crates nearby. Each weapon gives the desired effect in every category: distance, damage, and sound. A sniper rifle is utterly useless in close quarters, just as a shotgun can't hit an enemy running across the map. One tip I learned early on is that the HRV is your friend as well as your enemy since it allows you and others to see the movements of everyone on the map. It is great for setting up ambushes based on what weapon you are using, but remember that if you saw them they are just as likely to have done the same. This is where the digi-grenades become effective as they render the HRV ineffective, giving the player who deployed it a window to go in for the kill. Every map has a different ambiance that lends to the fighting style a player can choose and has multiple levels to fight from, but there isn't one area that is more secure than another.
Weapon customization is everything it was promised even with the limited amount of extras that were unlocked. Each time you unlock a level a new weapon is unlocked and in turn that weapon can be dismantled and combined with other weapons. This includes the barrel, magazines, scopes, and many other parts to give you a "gun garage" like no other game has offered. There are literally hundreds of ways to loadout a single weapon with add-ons and charms. What is a charm you say? Think of them as B:TD's version of perks which allow for positive and negative point values to a wide range of attributes ranging from accuracy to movement speed. The charms hang on the gun itself much like soldiers of yesteryear and today have them hanging on their weapons as a memento to a loved one, place, or memory and include such things as necklaces, ribbons, or items strung together on a thread.
Playing deathmatch only feels more like a tease than a treat and with the continued vague "SUMMER 2010" release date, B:TD will have gamers waiting anxiously for it to hit the virtual shelves in the marketplace. Rarely do we find games that live up to the hype they have generated, let alone an arcade title, but Zombie backed up all the talk with a 10 minute demo. This game has the opportunity to redefine how multiplayer games are delivered to the public and it will surely be a hot summer title.
http://www.msxbox-world.com/xbox360/features/article/426/Exclusive-Blacklight-Tango-Down-Interview-with-Jared-Gerritzen-Project-Lead-and-Lead-Game-Designer.html)
On the off chance this game actually gets a following I've spruced up the thread abit.
Anyone bought this yet? Mixed reaction over at GAF, but a few of my clannies are saying it's really good .... similar in some ways to CoD. The demo gives you 60 minutes playtime of the full game (I think)
One of my buddies impressions:
Blacklight: Tango Down
Now let me start off by saying I have only had the time to mess in the menus, play tow rounds of competitive multiplayer, and one single player mission. With that out of the way, this game shows much promise. To me it has what I loved from Modern Warefare, and leaves out the parts I disliked
The tempo of the game is not break neck fast, but a much slower, tactical pace. You have a visor to use by pushing the up direction on the d-pad, which highlights certain things on screen (a la ODST ) like ammo crates and enemies. The thing that seperates this HUD from the one on your shock trooper is that this one allows you to see through walls. Now before you start thinking this would break all camping, as you could see corner campers, you cannot shoot while in this visor mode, and it has a limited timer and then must recharge.
The customization that people loved from the Modern warefare series is in here too, and to a much larger level. You can adjust your primary and secondary weapons on numerous levels, from the sights to the magizines, to even adding your own little decals to the side of it. There are a couple of different suits for each faction, each with different stats.
The graphics are what you would come to expect from a full retail release, and everything has a real cool vibe to it.
Overall the game is a great buy at 1200 points, as it shows more polish than some big budget retail games. If you are a fan of slow moving team based games, then you will not be let down by this game.
After a few days I will review this game properly
Thinking about getting this, anyone else?
Bamelin on
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Definitely recommend it, worth the $15 bucks
For a downloadable game there's a decent enough visual style, reminiscent of FEAR multiplayer, all except the Blacklight uniform which is a blatant ripoff of ODST armor. The Order uniform looks a lot better and more original, so that's what I used in the Deathmatch games I played.
The gameplay just didn't pull me in, though. Deathmatch was about running along the edge of the map firing from the hip, the visor and digi-nades being fairly useless in this kind of fighting. I never used either, and I dominated. In contrast, Team Deathmatch was nothing but camping in elevated, covered positions. The soldiers of the future seem to be plagued with wimpy throwing arms, so dislodging these people with a grenade is impractical at best. Objective game types may be better, but the matchmaking never found one for me.
Anyway, you can play for an hour for free, and it's only a 750mb download or thereabouts, so anyone who's curious should at least try it out.
I dunno. Seems like a stinker so far.
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Picked this up. It's good.
Let's get a PA tag set up and start raping the world!
Also, the sights/aiming are pretty bad.
Halo and CoD will live on in their bullshit success and another quality title bites the dust.
I think the aiming is really nice in this. Overall I like the game for it's purity. Gun vs gun action with no issues like airstrikes or overly plentiful grenades.
I may aswell stop trying to coax PA to give a shit and try to squeeze as much out of this as I can before everyone goes back to calling in helicopters in CoD.
Biggest problem I have with the aiming is that LT brings up a zoomed-in crosshair, but it's still above the weapon's actual sight ring, which is distracting. When I press LT in a contemporary shooter, I expect to find myself looking down the iron sights.
If I stuck around long enough to unlock red dot for all my weapons, it probably wouldn't matter. But I wasn't sufficiently impressed to make a purchase of it, after an hour with the demo.
The game is passable. I agree that they oversold the customization, sure there are a good number of scopes and whatever, but it looks like some are worse in all regards? The hell? There isn't a minimap (that I've seen) so what is the point of a speed and damage dropping silencer? Sure, there are a lot of those weapon tags, but from looking through them it appears that roughly 3 each have the exact same effect, just a different graphic. Having only one weapon of each class feels....eh.
From a gameplay perspective, it just feels a little loose. On the wharf map, it felt like I moved too fast, kinda Quake-ish. Aiming seems a bit sluggish. You die stupidly fast, faster even that CoD it feels like. Luckily I got a tag at level 2 that seemed to double my HP. Aiming down the sights probably gets better once you unlock some actual sights, but until then it feels weird. And the reticle bloom while aiming goes from nothing to quite large after a few shots, rather than gradually expanding over those few shots.
Oh, and minor gripe, but pressing sprint while being crouched does nothing. You have to manually stand up before you can sprint. Breaks the flow enough to be annoying.
Yeah, the sniper rifle sights are fine, but that offset on the AR sights really threw me off. I'll give it another shot tonight and see if I can unlock something better.
It's not great but it's not bad. The game plays out like a "pure" old school PC shooter. The customization aspects are fairly plentiful ... but like other people said you don't get the insane grenade spam and multiple helicopter spam you get in other games. Game is really about shooting mans and thats it.
I think that the one hour trial is probably not going to be enough time for most people to get a feeling of the customization aspects of the game ... by the end of my hour I had just barely unlocked a couple items.
I like the map builds alot, the subway one is intense. Camping pays off in this game, however, the balance to that is the helmet ability that let's you see though walls to see where everyone is on the map (has a cooldown timer after each use).
edit: regarding silencer -- I think the silencer ability's use is that it muzzles gunfire flashes. I often got a "heads up" I was walking into something hot by the gunfire flashes around the corner.
Not alot is coming down the pipe over the summer so this might serve for me as a transitional game until a better shooter hits.
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Digi grenades look super cool though.
A full room always ends up near empty by the end of the round because people are horrible.
Shooters are in such bad shape right now imo. This would be great if the maps were slightly bigger and the games stayed full. CoD is a nightmare I feel is my only option because everyone loves it's buggy glitchy hacky spammy campy bullshit.
Are there any GOOD shooters out there? No. FML.
Which is a shame, because cheap "modern shooter" with weapon customization seems like such a great idea.
Kinda my thought. It looks cool and there are good ideas, but the execution of them seems off, for lack of better phrase.
Anyone else on steam thinking maybe? Only way I can see myself playing this is if we get a group together and it's fun.