A decent shooter in its own right. But you can see why it's a $15 XBLA game.
Blacklight Tango Down is set in a futuristic/digital and semi-realistic looking world, the buildings and cities are dirty, the atmosphere is dark. There is not much story to it, but you can do 4 co-op missions, either on your own or with up to 3 other people. You can choose the difficulty. They are okay for the most part, quite hard on your own so you will want to do them with someone else. It's set objectives, go from point A to point B to C, etc.
At first you get to create 4 classes, but there are 5 weapons types: SMG, Assault, Shotgun, Sniper, LMG. You don't unlock guns, you unlock attachments which affect the attributes of the weapon. You can customise pretty much ever part of the weapon, more than just an ACOG or grip, you can customise things like the muzzle, butt stock, etc. each thing can effect the 3 attributes of your weapon/character: Damage/Mobility/Defence. You can give them different camo, and a unique item which doesn't affect the weapon but makes it "yours". You can also select different armours and colours, which also affect the attributes of your character. It's a deep system to say the least, people who like to customise weapons will be pleased.
Online has 7 game modes, from the standard deathmatch, to detonation (where teams try to carry a neutral bomb to eachothers bases), to last man/team standing (which does what it says). However they would probably be better if the game would allow enough people to connect. But in the few hours I have played, most matches would result in people quitting, and the game not waiting long enough for people to connect. Deathmatch with 6 people? Which then turns to 2? No thank you. You'll be lucky to get into a full match. Connections can also be funky at times, no dedicated servers and made by a small development team, so it was to be expected. When you die you spawn at your base, no team spawning, and it's always in the same spot. You can use the games selling feature HRV any time, which lets you see where characters are through walls using your visor. It's like constant UAV, but there is a cool down time between when you can use it, and you can't shoot when using it. However it reloads very quickly. It was supposed to eliminate camping, but people just stop and use HRV before going around corners which I would say slows down the game more, for what feels like could be quite a fast paced game. HRV is a double edged sword.
It has 12 maps most of them are small which was a disappointment. You character has no varied walking speed, you are either not moving, or moving fast, and then you can also sprint. It makes character movement feel floaty.
The graphics are average at the most; it uses Unreal Engine 3, and it's one of those games where you can tell it uses this engine, which is usually not a good thing. The game has a very dark setting with a few day time maps. It was quite disappointing as many levels look ugly, uninspired, and similar to the other. Weapon sounds are nice and make the shooting feel satisfying, the menu music is pretty crappy and quite dull. The menu gets the job done, but then the user interface is very cluttered with some useless information (we don't really need to know how much "sprint" we have left), and quite ugly with a high contrast of colours. Your characters visor is pretty cool, when you get flash banged and stuff it makes the visor go all funky, "smoke" grenades make an area all messed up with a digital effect, for the most part it's done right.
I don't want to go on too long about this game, because you can all play the trial and see for yourself. This game was getting a lot of praise for what it's doing in the DLC space. And I support them for that. But in the end it ended up feeling shallow, and a missed opportunity by the developers. If you've played the big shooters this gen, then this does not offer anything which will grab your attention. You will be right back ready for the next COD, Halo, Battlefield, etc.
In the end, you can see why it's a $15 DLC game.