Incredible
Forget about intros, forget about the weird story, just skip it to start playing:
Basically you are a Soldier in Yugoslavia and your goal is to kill every man who gets in the way and detroying things like a wepaons factory or passing a minefield etc. Criterion has given you one hell of an arsenal to defeat your ennemies, but to keep the realism (more or less) you can only carry two guns at the same time. Your ennemies are pretty skilled, they attack in groups and to kill a guy with a bullet proof vest be prepared to give him some lead, a lot of lead (or a single headshot). During your mission, depending on what difficult you play (there are 4 different ones) you must complete some secondary objectives, which consist mostly of either destroying or finding something.
Be prepared to spend some time in a mission as this is not a game that you can play for just five minutes to complete a mission. The levels gigantic and overpopulated with ennemies. The graphics are pretty nice (I played it on 360) although they can't compete with current PC games. A nice thing is the weather changing during a mission and sunrays shining through holes in the roof. But most of the time you will be in massive firefights, seeking for cover, ammo and healthpacks to effectively defeat your foes. As I played Black I really felt like in a real firefight, everything seems so realistic, with the adversaries shouting in russian, crouching behind cover and trying to ambush you from all sides.
One downside for some people might be the lack of a jumping ability thus you really must find corners or shelves that offer your cover. But remember that many console shooters don't offer jumping ability and it sin't something you really need while playing.
The major downside might be that Black only offers a single player campaign and no multiplayer but I prefer it that way than programming some lame multiplayer maps in the last minute which offer bad handling and little action. I would have liked a co-op mode for the single player missions but that is still up to Criterion.
Eventhough the game can be played through in less than ten hours it does have a potential replay value. Black reminds me a lot of classic shooters like the all time favourite Goldeneye or Perfect Dark that used to offer similiar adrenaline rushes and killing sprees. I especially recommend this game to anyone who has an Xbox 360 as it is a lot better than PDZ or other FPS and also people who do not have Xbox live as you only play alone.
So if you want your Black hawk down like game set in yugoslavia, or simply destroy all environments here it is.