Fantastic testosterone-fuelled action played out amid a third-rate political action thriller storyline.
Game-play makes this game one to recommend despite its shortcomings - the action feels just 'right'. All the mechanics of the movement, aiming and weaponry are smooth and intuitive. Enemy AI, while not great is enough to test the skills of any player, given that they need lots of ammo to take down.
The guns feel great to use, from the smallest of pistols to the overkill of the M16.
The graphics are fantastic as well, great to see the PS2 delivering this visual spectacle 6 years after its debut.
Thumbs up to Criterion for making a great 'feel' to the FPS experience.
As for the storyline, Black relates this through filmed cut scenes (and radio chatter throughout the missions) that combine enough cheese and male angst that should satisfy lovers of bad cut-scenes. For those who want well thought out stories and exciting characters with dynamic situations - try another game...
Specific to the story, it is one of your run-of-the-mill pro-western, pro-American hunt out the terrorists who want to threaten the world, with the usual hate filled dialogue about 'bastards' and 'killing them' whilst at the same time appearing to be self-righteous do-gooders - complete with four letter expletives for extra bad arse attitude.
This time the enemy are Russians/Ukrainians.
Fortunately there is no flag waving here - this storyline is generally not offensive on a political level.
While this reviewing personally can take these pro-American ultra-violent storylines that preach a disturbing supremacist self-righteous world view with a grain of salt and laugh it off as just simplistic machismo-cheese, I wonder what the effect it has on the apolitical male teens that lap this up. Something for a more serious forum dedicated to the social impact games have on people I guess...
Back to the less disturbing parts of the game, one humorous part is where radio chatter from the character you play (a typical numb-skull try-hard-tough-guy American marine stereotype) sounds like he's talking on a megaphone, which has the effect that you're alerting the enemy to your presence.
Also throughout the game you hear the shrill sounds of a female voice on the communicator, it appears she is part of the 'Black' team or a fellow operative on the field - some of the dialogue she screams into the earpiece is something to behold - especially how hard she tries to compete with the males in a male world of taking out 'terrorists' and 'bad guys' by yes..you guessed it: using four letter words.
In conclusion, I like this game - and this is coming from someone who really dislikes pro-western political propaganda creeping into games. Take the story as one big really bad Z-grade action thriller from the 80's and early 90's. combine with excellent fluid game-play spread across 8 missions (that are re-playable by going through each of the difficulty levels) and you've got a white-knuckle action shooter. For that, I give it a guilty pleasure rating.