The ultimate experience for shattering glass and shrapnel. :D
Gameplay: Black is focused on shooting and explosions. Black delivers both with an interesting presentation. You are Sergeant Jack Keller. You go into an interrogation room in chains. You're being drilled by a tough interrogator. These are live-action cutscenes in between each mission. The interrogation scenes set up each level/mission. It can be really hard to get what's being said in the cutscenes, as the developers use a kinda "shadowy" double-talk. But once you can decipher the dialogue, the story is quite interesting. And there's even a twist at the end. This presentation is very well done, and unexpected when you first pop the disc in. But anyway, you get lots of weapons to utilize to blow the living crap outta everything. The disappointing thing is that everything that can be broken will be destroyed in the way the developers decided. You can even sometimes see the "seams" of where things will break apart. It's kinda disappointing. The weapons all have different "classes." There's assault rifles, SMGs, shotguns, pistols, explosives, and the like. This is done so that ammo can transfer to multiple weapons. For example, if you trade an AK-47 for an M16, you'll have all the extra ammo of the AK for the M16 since they are in the same class. I like the way this is used, and it can save you in many situations. You can also store ammo for all weapons. Like, you can pick up shotgun ammo, and save it, so that when you do pick up a shotgun, you'll have lots of extra ammo. And you'll need the extra ammo, as guys are ridiculously strong. You can litterally unload an entire clip into some enemies, and they still won't be dead. Even for Black, this is unrealistic, and can be quite annoying and crippling at times. Both you and an enemy can have the same weapon, and it'll feel like their's was upgraded with some really good stuff, as enemies do too much damage to you, and you do too little to them. The environments are greatly utilized and designed. The developers always made sure that you could be killed, but in the end, you still have the upper hand. The gameplay is fun, exhilirating, and just about everything it was supposed to be.
Ah, the graphics. Easily the highpoint of this game. Guns look ultra realistic, and the environmental detail is truly astounding. Enemies are rather bland, not having more than 1 or 2 different models for each enemy class. Textures are quite good. Some can look maybe a little bland or murky at times, but they still look nice and detailed. There is NO slowdown in the Xbox version, and very little slowdown in the PS2 version. Just enough to notice.
The sound is great. Guns really give a kick and roar, and explosions sound very nice and boomy. Most of the in-game dialogue is in the form of radio chatter, your guy reporting his status and such. The radio talk apparently echoes in Keller's head, as it sounds like all the enemies in a level could hear what he's saying. There really isn't much more to the sounds, but what is there, is top notch.
There are four difficultys. Easy, Normal, Hard, and Black Ops. You can go through all these difficultys, but there's little reason to go back, other than unlocking weapons with infinite ammo for that difficulty level. And the single player campaign can usually be beaten in 5-6 hours. But you'll still be poppin' this disc for a while, simply because of the pure craziness and intensity of the battles.
Overall, this game is a good, explosive time, that FPS fans would be hard bent to pass up, but if you're unsure as to whether you should get it, you might want to wait for the price to drop.