A free game which is flashy and futuristic. Technical issues and scanner ruin the game though. Way too many glitches.
This game does have nice graphics; as expected from a game made with "Unreal" engine. However, there are quite many technical problems which hinder the game.
First of all, everytime I run the game, it gives me a warning along the line of "Your CPU doesn't meet the requirement". Which is complete non-sense since mine is a i7 type. Well, you could argue as long as I can enter the game, it should be fine. Yes, no problem getting into the game, but there are some in-game technical problems as well. On many occasions, after joining a game, for some reasons, my account froze up and eventually got disconnected from the server, and couldn't log in for about 5 - 10 minutes. Needless to say, that's quite annoying.
The other strange problem is this game does not seem to be compatiable with some graphic cards. While my ATI card can run it without problem, the Geforce counterpart seems to be having some issues such as those little "blackbox", strange screen flickering and sometimes white screen. I do have the latest drivers and both cards are still quite new to be fair, it's strange.
Like many FPS games, you need to level up your characters to unlock gears, but also like many FPS games, the latency problem can really ruin your mood. Whoever is the master server host needs to do a better job than this. For in-game play, there are many different gears to choose from, providing you meet the level requirement or use real cash to purchase the game currency, or simply buy the "Hero" classes, which are geared with some nice goodies. For all non-hero characters, you could customize them with all sort of guns, armors and misc stuff such as scopes. In my opinion, the most controversial function in this game is its "Scanner" option, which is bound to "V" key by default, this function let you see through all obstacles, meaning you will know where your enemies are no matter where they hide. Sure, some people love it, but some also hate it with a passion. For me, I hate it. It doesn't feel right to have this kind of function in a FPS game. Furthermore, spawn-killing has become quite annoying, especially when the scores between two teams are close. What does that mean? Player spawn point is totally random, meaning you could spawn right next to your enemies and vice versa. At worst, you'll probably get killed over and over because of that. I don't mind if the result of dying is because of my lack of skills or mistakes, but dying because of bad spawning is just hard to take.
This game uses the infamous / famous ( opinions vary ) Punkbuster, and this punkbuster doesn't really like my gaming keyboard too much so far, though, that's just a minor issue. Despite the use of Punkbuster, cheaters can still be found, but thankfully, there aren't many of them as of now. As I said it earlier, the lag is annoying - you could shoot or even headshot a person many times but instead of killing that person, your character might be the one who got owned.To top it off, there is a weird framerate lag in game which isn't caused by anything user-end, but the server's latency. For example, if the server becomes unstable ( which is not uncommon at all ), your framerate will drastically decrease, result in a horrible graphic lag. Also, crash-to-desktop isn't that uncommon as well so be prepared. The battle system is very much like the other popular FPS games, but with a futuristic layout and equipments such as being able to confront enemies in a robot, which can be purchased from the in-game terminal ( depot ). So far, I feel those players who spend real cash do have the cutting edge, that applies to all free-to-play online games pretty much unfortunately. Without getting this into cash vs non-cash users debate, by playing a free to play game, you guys probably know what to expect...better just leave it like that. They have reduced the price for all of their items recently, however without spending any real money, you will have to play more than 5 hours a day just to maintain ( renew ) your gears, with one exception - if you're using the basic gears only, of course you wouldn't have to spend to renew.
For more details about in game combat, the customization will let you choose all sort of different armours, weapons ( including bullet, handle, scope and even land mines or other goodies ). You can freeze or burn your enemy to death, depends on what kind of ammo you use. On the other hand, you can also cloak yourself and ambush your enemies. If what you're looking for is a realistic FPS game, this game is definitely not your cup of tea.
This game is a bit of everything. Basically, extract a bit of everything from all those FPS games out there and you have this Blacklight, and Zombie is maybe trying too hard to impress in fact. Generally speaking, it isn't awfully bad but definitely an uninspired one, in my opinion. Bottom line is the game doesn't have a healthy population; there are only a limited amount of games which are filled with players. You could host games, but as there aren't enough players as it is, chance is your game probably won't be filled anytime, if at all. For a free to play game, it's ok, just don't expect too much.
Edit: As of 24th Aug, 2012, even with their 30 days promotion ( 1000 USD daily giveaway for 30 days ), the amount of players in game is still unacceptable. It is worrying that a relatively new game has attracted such a low amount of players. Zombie / PWE also reduced the GP rewards ( GP is the in game currency used to purchase everything ) in the aftermath of a game, pretty much an indication the company is going after the typical pay-to-win way. Finally, I would like to add that unless Zombie / Punkbuster work together to fix the glitches or hack prevention, this game will forever live under the shadow of those more popular FPS games out there.