Game Reviews

There are plenty of gamers out there who just care about multiplayer, and it was with those players in mind that Zombie Studios created Blacklight: Tango Down. Imagine downloading the multiplayer mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 directly and you’ll get the idea of what to expect. No single-player mode, no disc, and no $60 price tag. But is it worth paying $15 to go fragfest-only?
There’s little question that Blacklight: Tango Down offers up a multiplayer gameplay experience that’s on par with many bigger-budget shooters. The guns have a satisfying feel to them, the maps are all well-designed, and there are a bevy of multiplayer modes to choose from. As with most top-tier shooters these days, there’s a ranking system that rewards you with new levels and unlockables as you earn experience points from kills. There aren’t a lot of new ideas on display here, but the ones that Zombie included are winners. The main innovation, the HRV, allows you to see the position of enemies on the map, but you can’t shoot while using it. The HRV discourages camping and is perfect for a quick tactical assessment, but its drawbacks make it difficult to abuse.

Despite the generally solid gameplay and the unique online-only focus of the game, things are far from perfect with Blacklight: Tango Down. It’s hard not to count the game’s disc-quality graphics as both a plus and a minus. It’s one of the best-looking downloadable games you’ll ever see, but once you consider that it's trying to resemble a game that shooter fans can pick up at the store, you’re inviting comparisons to those games. If you saw a friend playing it without knowing it was downloadable, you’d probably assume it was simply an dated-looking disc-based title. That aforementioned comparison to Modern Warfare 2 only stretches so far.