It's just another F2P shooter, same old, not worth checking out, get's boring fast, and has crazy lag
First of all this game is extremely laggy. I can play CoD on higher graphic settings than this game and I get no lag, whereas this game lags like crazy even on medium settings while looking much worse than CoD on those settings. It just stutters and spikes all over the place for no reason a lot of times and makes the game impossible to play. It's not even the issue with my computer, this game is just and unoptimized, as in poorly coded.
The graphics themselves look cool, they're alright and some maps look great, but some maps and some objects like cars look dated. The maps that take place outside in particular look fake and plastic-like, making the map feel like a set and not a real city.
What's really great however, is the variety of graphics options; you can turn off the annoying stuff you might not like, such as motion blur and depth of field.
The map design is alright, but nothing special or amazing, none of them are really memorable. Some cool maps with some cool effects and cool elevators and different levels of elevation.
The music is weak, it's some techno-ish grindy robotic sounds and dubstep, and I found it got annoying after just a few games, you'll definitely want to listen to your own music instead. I even like dubstep, but this wasn't good dubstep.
The most important part, the gameplay, is boring. It plays like any other FPS out there and what it does to innovate doesn't change much and doesn't make for an interesting game. The core is exactly the same as CoD. Most players run and gun, and the gameplay consists of spraying wildly, dodging, sneaking and chasing.
However, the game has much higher recoil than many other FPS games, the bullet spread is very large and erratic unlike a lot of other FPS games. In other games, the recoil just makes your gun go up which makes for easy headshots, and the bullets almost stay in the same place; this game is NOT like this at all. You may or may not like this, it makes the game much more difficult and you'll want to aim down your sight almost always or you'll be spraying wildly, but if you're used to the recoil of other games like CoD you'll probably be put off by it and frustrated. So this game is less casual than other FPS.
Your teammates, of course, will never work cooperatively with you and other teammates to beat the enemy, this game isn't very tactical despite what I initially thought because of the ability to see through walls. So if you wanted to play a good team based game, you'll be disappointed.
As a FP2 you'll have to grind to get better gear, and so you'll endure your first levels dying to players with vastly better gear. Like any other FP2 game, the more you play, or the more you pay, the better armor you can buy to protect yourself with or the better equips to kill with like toxic ammo to kill much more easily and cheaply, reducing the need for skill level as the game gives you advantages for grinding, which I don't like; just because you haven't played as much as someone means they have an advantage over you, not in skill but stats.
Buying a gun permanently is expensive, but at least you can do it in this game unlike in Combat Arms where you if you're FP2 you can only rent.
The unique things about this game sound really cool; like mechs! But they're very OP and break the game, and they're extremely slow so you won't even have such an fun time playing with them. But if you want a harder game then you'll enjoy it, and running around to evade and outsmart the slow mechs and teaming up against them is fun, but this never happens and everyone just gets destroyed by the mechs one by one and no one tries to get the stinger to blow them up easier.
The only other unique gameplay element in this game is the ability to see all the enemies on the map; everyone has this ability and you can only use it for a few seconds and then it needs to recharge. It makes the gameplay more interesting and you feel cool ambushing people but it doesn't feel like a huge game changer, so if you worried about it being OP then know that it's not.
Some people might not like it because it makes sneaking around, and enemies can use it too to see you coming up, so it takes away a lot of surprise, you can't camp or hold your spot as easily.
The bottomline--
Blacklight Retribution isn't worth your time if you've already played shooters. This is like a poor man's CoD, with huge lag even on a decent machine that can run CoD on high with no lag, and it's actually worse than CoD in terms of having significantly better gear just because you played more AKA grind2win. Definitely not worth 5+ gigs of downloading.
It may be fun in a short burst or for the first few days but it won't keep your attention for long.
If you were looking for a futuristic and tactical or skill based shooter, there are much better options out there like Tribes Ascend or NeoTokyo, which has a similar theme and much better tactical and harder gameplay. And there are plenty more options like ARMA II. So basically, this game is alright, OK, and 'meh', kinda cool, but not great or very impressive.