Ooo! Pretty! Look! Things blow up! Again and again and again... and again... and again... sigh....
7:15 p.m. "Wow... this is a really, really long intro. And what's with just the black screen and white credits? Kinda dull... at least the score's pretty good."
7:20 p.m. "Live action cutscenes?! I thought they stopped doing those years ago... Okay, this is getting old. If something interesting doesn't happen soon, I'm skipping the rest of this... " (skipped cutscene)
7:25 p.m. "Wow. This looks really, really good for an XBOX game. Oh crap! You can blow away their cover! Nice! Okay, the blur on the screen when you reload is a bit of an issue. Have to remember to take cover before I do that. This is pretty good other than that. Great sound."
7:30 p.m. "Blowing stuff up is RAD!"
7:40 p.m. "Okay, these cutscenes are just unnecessary. Skip skip skip"
(Several hours of mindless repetition later)
11:25 p.m. "Why am I still playing this game? I've got a STACK of games waiting for me, and I'm wasting my time on this? Okay, I get it. Blowing stuff up is cool. Fine. What's up with this little dot reticle? OH COME ON. I HAD that headshot. Where do I have to shoot him? His left nostril? I SHOT EVERY OTHER PART OF HIS FRIGGIN' FACE."
(More mindless hours later)
2:25 a.m. "Point gun at bad guy. Pull trigger until gun goes click. Hide. Reload. Reload some more. Wait to finish reloading. Repeat. Shoot at red things. Red things go boom. Things going boom is the entire point of this game. I get it. Really. No, I'm serious, I totally get it. Does the phrase "Beating a dead horse" ring any bells? No? How about this: "Artificial Intelligence"? I see by the look I imagine on your face that you're drawing a blank on that one too."
And that's about it. Yeah, there was a bunch of other stuff like "Hrm, what am I going to do tomorrow?" and "If you kick a puppy, do you AUTOMATICALLY go to hell, or is there like a 3 puppy grace period?", but all of that stuff isn't really germane to the topic at hand.
Black is a fun shooter for the first couple levels, and there are some great firefights later in game, but for the most part... well, it just gets a bit repetitive. It looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, but the gameplay is just not there. After you've shot your 10,000th bad guy full of holes with a sub-machine gun (okay, sometimes it's a full BLOWN machine gun, but the difference is minimal in this game), the fun just kind of goes out of it. There just isn't enough variety to maintain a constant level of tension or even simple interest for the 6-8 hours it takes to finish the game.
Rent Black to see what the xbox hardware is capable of, but save that hard earned cash for a game more deserving. Black is just too simplistic, and there's absolutely zero replay value. Despite all of the crap blowing up in the game, Black just doesn't have enough bang to justify your bucks.