28 Nov, 2011
Title: Blackwater
Platform: Xbox 360 (Kinect optional)
Developer: Zombie Games
Publisher: 505 Games
Tagline: It is like Call of Duty, without the polish, controls, mission structure or multiplayer
Family Friendly: Click here for more information.
Value: Pass, maybe a rental just to try it
Creating a first person shooter around the Kinect was going to happen eventually. It was just a matter of who would do it and how well would the Kinect work in that sort of environment. Well, Zombie Studios is the one to take on that challenge first with Blackwater. Blackwater tries to do some neat things with the Kinect, and to some degree the ideas work well enough. But the lack of confidence with the Kinect controls paired with a lack of polish in the game as a whole make Blackwater an affair to completely forget.
Blackwater is a title based on the exploits of the private military contractor that used to use the name (Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services a few years ago). The story, which is paper thin at best, as a four man team working its way through a war torn country trying to protect clients and governements that it has been tasked to protect. There is a lot that can be done with this story, but Blackwater never really looks to explore past the dude-bro, guns blazing popcorn movie feeling. Sure, I don’t come to my shooters for Shakespeare, but I at least want some sort of narrative that makes me feel like I have a purpose to all of my mayhem and violence. Blackwater scratches the surface of conspiracy and acts of no-good, but it is nothing that you will ever pay attention to at any point in time.
But no one comes to a Kinect focused shooter for the story. No it is all about trying out the new control scheme, and for the most part, the controls do work as advertised. Shooting consists of you pointing an arm straight at the screen, which works as your targeting reticule. Keep on a target for a second and you will take him down with a hail of bullets. Blackwater also plays out as a cover shooter, with the person having to move left, right and crouching behind cover to dodge bullets. All of the Kinect controls do work as advertised, although the grenade gestures were a bit confusing. However, nothing is conveyed to you in the game. I had to reference the manual to get most of my instruction to play the game.
While the Kinect controls are good, they are not foolproof and Zombie Games must have understood this, as they have haphazardly added normal controller support to this game as well. I saw Blackwater at E3 and normal controls were never discussed, making me thing that there was a lack of confidence in the Kinect to make this a viable shooter on its own. Funny thing is that the Kinect controls seem to work better than the standard controller, as I routinely had things like camera control stop working at points, and other times, things were muddled with shooting controls. It is strange to say that Kinect works better than a controller, but in Blackwater, this caveat holds true.
Bugs do crop up at many other points as well, when it comes to Blackwater. Several times during cutscenes, I had the graphics completely stop drawing and dialog would continue. Yes, the screen went completely black, but the dialog continued along. This was a random occurrence, but it ended up showing off the other glaring issue, which was terrible checkpointing. I would have to redo entire missions because a cutscene would stop playing and the checkpoints would end up being non-existent.
It is not all bad though in Blackwater. You are part of a four man team, and each person has their own specialty, which you get to control at some point during the mission. This helped keep things fresh and original, as you would go from holding an assault rifle at range, to close quarters with a shotgun, to extreme range with a sniper rifle. You also get the option of branching paths through each level, which allows you to replay Blackwater several times over with the different paths. Collectibles are all over the place as well and stick out like a sore thumb, but with its guided nature, you end up missing many of them as they show up for a second and are then out of your vision as you move to the next encounter.
Blackwater does show that a Kinect based first person shooter can work, even if it is not perfectly executed. It mixes things up enough to make it interesting, but it never challenges on any other aspect of the game. It also doesn’t help that Blackwater is fundamentally broken with things as simple as checkpoints and loading cutscenes. Blackwater is something that might be fun to try over a weekend as a rental, but don’t even think about dropping hard earned cash on it. It is just too broken and boring to make a long term investment with it.
The Good:
- Kinect implementation is pretty good
- Varies gameplay nicely with branching paths and shooting mechanics
The Bad:
- Poor controller controls
- Boring throwaway story
- Broken cutscenes and checkpoints
Family Focus
While Blackwater does deal with a war torn environement it is never overly violent with its gameplay. You kill numerous badguys with gunfire, melee combat and grenades, but the bloodletting is at a minimum. It is a question of where you stand on war games, but overall, anyone over the age of 10 will probably be fine with this title.
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