Short lived, but definitely action packed.
The story itself is pretty weak and poorly written. Throw into the mix the fact that the actors are terrible and it's very difficult to follow what's going on with the story, and you've basically got an action only fps. But atleast it's solid action. The difficulties in Black really don't differ as much as they should. To the best of my ability to discern, all the enemies are the same on easy through hard (I didn't get around to playing the insane commando difficulty!), the only differences is the amount of health packs (lots on easy to none on hard) and the submissions. The submissions are cool for me, because they remind me a lot of the game Goldeneye 007, where you go from basic mission objectives, to lots of secondary missions required to advance on harder difficulties.
You'll probably be disappointed with the length of Black, as I beat it in about 5 1/2 hours on normal difficulty. You see a lot along the way, but 5 1/2 hours just seems unacceptable to me. And of course there's no multiplayer to back up the campaign mode. The only thing that might bring you back to this game would be occasionally just wanting to kill lots of people and blow things up, since the only unlockables are silver weapons (unlimited ammo) and the really hard mode.
Black can be somewhat nice to look at, though, toting somewhat impressive graphics as far the fps genre goes. Lots of explosions, some pretty massive, great lighting and dust effects, and even a blurring effect when you reload your weapon, simulating how your attention would be cast toward your weapon while managing it (although it seems to me that a good commando should be able to reload his weapon and focus on the combat at the same time). I was a little disappointed at the lack of individuality of the enemies, only a handful of types, and each of the same type looking identical. Load times, though, are well managed. You won't see any loading during play, only right at the beginning of levels. And it's small enough on the PS2 version that just the slight break from gameplay should be soothing. You'll also hardly get any slowdown, or break in the framerate. It only happened to me twice during very action packed sequences, and it really wasn't bad at all.
You'll also appreciate the solid audio Black has to offer. I played with the Dolby ProLogic II sound option, and could really swear I was in combat (of course, between the horribly acted cutscenes). The voice acting during gameplay isn't too bad, not detracting from the experience, and the music is immersive. One of the greatest features of Black is the guns. Black has lots of guns, each one sounding perfectly realistic, from the chains of the gatling gun to the whistle of the rpg flying. It's very cool to hear an rpg launch, be able to hear where it's coming from, and be able to retaliate it.
More about the guns (since they're just so cool). The first gun you get is the pistol, which is fun, powerful if aimed right. But each time you get a new weapon, it's like the coolest weapon, until you get the next one. So many guns kicking so much ass, like remington shotgun, ak-47, grenade launcher, rpg launcher, gatling gun (m274 or something like that), and the awesomeness of the m16. You can even pick up silencers for most of these guns, adding some nice stealth aspects to the game. The enemies can be really hard to kill, though. All of them have armor, it seems, and shooting them in the body can take an entire magazine to drop them. Thank God for the Remington and the rpg! The grenades pack quite a punch, as well, but it's too bad that commandos seem to have such sissy throwing arms.
So, I'm going to steal the next part from gamespot (who stole it from EGM):
The Good: Tons of cool weapons, great in game audio, solid graphics, explosions, good loading times.
The Bad: Game length, no multiplayer, little replay value, not much difference in difficulties.
The Ugly: God awful acting, bad story line.