So it has been eight months since everyone was suffering from Modern Warfare 2 fever. Do you remember when nearly all the gaming press were calling MW2 a candidate for best game of all time? Very strange to look back at now when the game has seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth even after two (rather expensive) DLC packs. It appears that the robust multiplayer modes of MW2 just haven’t stood the test of time, once everyone had earned all of the Perks and Upgrades they moved on to pastures new.
Step in Blacklight Tango Down for Xbox 360 Live Arcade, a futuristic first person shooter featuring two opposing factions; Blacklight (the goodies) and The Order (the baddies). Now there is a back story to the game which involves the assignation of the president and a missing Blacklight squadron. Can the Tango Blacklight team defeat The Order and find the missing squadron? Now from that you’d think there would be an expansive single player campaign, but no, this is almost solely based on playing online with others across your usual set of game modes; Deathmatch, Domination, Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing etc. Of course plain old multiplayer killing isn’t enough for anyone nowadays so we need XP and rank based unlockables.
Ranking systems aren’t new to anyone and as you’d expect every Kill and Assist you perform earns you a steady flow of XP points, if you want to score higher XP bonuses then you’ll need to perform headshots and multi-kills. As you progress rank by reaching XP milestones you’ll unlock new Weapons, Attachments, Equipment, Armour and Camouflage skins.
So far there’s not much to shout about is there? Just another run of the mill shooter you’re thinking, well hold one a minute, there is something you’re not expecting here. The Hyper Reality Visor basically is your golden ticket to seeing through walls and everyone has one. That’s right everyone has this impressive bit of kit which allows you to see the location of Health, Ammo and more importantly, the Enemy. All this right from you’re the comfort of your visor screen. But there’s a catch, you can only use the visor for a few seconds at a time and all the while you use it you’re very vulnerable to attack. You’ll need to learn how to use the HRV wisely and quickly if you want to succeed – or you could just forget about using it and storm around the place guns blazing, I found that worked quite well too.
Now for those who don’t want to just play deathmatch all of the time, fear not you are catered for. Blacklight Tango Down features four MW2 Special-Ops style missions to play through with up to three friends COOP style. So whilst these aren’t very extensive or varied (basically it’s just run, duck, cover and shoot ‘til the area is clear,) it’s a nice change of pace from a frantic multiplayer fragging because this time you’ll be against CPU controlled enemies and will using cover mechanics fairly frequently. It has to be said these missions are a bit basic and it would have been nice to have a bigger selection but what can I say? Sometimes I prefer a bit of mission based action because deathmatch gets boring after a while.
The game itself plays fairly well, the default controls are almost identical to every other FPS on 360 and will take little or no time to learn for the dedicated gamer. It’s smooth and fluid no matter how much is going onscreen, possibly due to the fairly low res models and textures which are adequate enough but don’t look that pretty when compared to many of the Xbox 360’s best shooters. That isn’t to say Blacklight Tango Down looks bad by any means but if you were worried that your graphic chip might overheat causing the read ring of death then worry not, Blacklight looks more like an original but high end Xbox game.
Weapons wise there’s not much to shout about here;
* Assault Rifles
* SMG’s
* Pistols
* Sniper Rifles
* Explosive Grenades
I suppose one standout tool is the EMP grenade. When thrown it causes no damage but instead explodes in electrical glory and creates a massive field which disrupts the visor (as well as the Hyper Reality function) of anyone in the nearby area.
If I had to find something to really complain about then it would the game lobbies, sometimes it takes an awful long time to get in a game and sometimes you’ll even have several host migrations in the meantime. This in itself isn’t that bad in the scheme of things and probably will be much less of a problem once more people purchase the game and get playing. And that’s basically Blacklight Tango Down for you.
To sum up, Blacklight Tango Down is a pretty standard shooter that features a wide selection of decent maps and a low price point (1200). In terms of originality Blacklight doesn’t fair very well but if you’re waiting for Call of Duty Black Ops with nothing to else play I’m sure you could get your money’s worth with up to 16 players online here. 6 out of 10.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 4:19 PM 
Last year there was an interesting trailer for Dead Island that caught the attention of gamers worldwide. It showed us a short yet horrifying tale of a family desperately running away from a horde of blood-thirsty zombies. It was a brief, gory and best of all – played backwards. Now after having finished the game I can safely say that the trailer may have been great marketing, but it sure didn’t give us a real idea of what the game really was. I don’t know about you but I wasn’t expecting a cross between Borderlands and Left 4 Dead.
