Blacklight: Tango Down

In a later game of Retrieval, or Capture the Flag by any other name, karma caught up with me and I found myself on the receiving end, trapped by players at both sides of my solitary spawn point, picked off the second I inched around the corners to try and retaliate. By the time of our inevitable defeat, my team had dwindled to just two players, and this is a recurring sight at the end of each match - one team still in full force, one populated by a few tenacious die-hards, as previously full lobbies bleed out through frustration.

"Aah!" crow those gamers who take bizarre pleasure in defending mediocrity. "You're playing it wrong! The Hyper Reality Visor is there to stop this sort of thing!" And, yes, it's true that you have a fancy visor that allows you to see the location of other players, as well as health and ammo stocks, for a few seconds. You're defenceless while doing this, but it is undeniably useful for checking the surroundings before making any sudden moves.

Trouble is, the problem often isn't knowing where enemies are - clue: they're right outside your base, camping like Kenneth Williams - but just getting lucky enough to break through their lines before their bully tactics do you in for the twelfth time. The simple fact is that while the visor is an occasional assist against such situations, it shouldn't be bloody necessary in the first place.

The visor is also one of several important gameplay features left curiously unexplained by the obtuse front end, unless you happen to stumble across it. This is a game so unjustifiably proud of itself that it doesn't even bother illuminating the few new ideas it offers or instructing you in how to make use of the things you unlock. A brief text flash informed me I'd unlocked "Ice Hex" as I hit the first rank, which sounded very exciting. After digging around in the menus, I finally found out what I'd won - a new skin for one of my weapons. W00t.

The later unlocks are much better, and the customisation is fun (if never as compelling or useful as the PR blurb would have you believe) but the fact that you have to work these things out says much about the blind spots in Blacklight's construction. This is especially true of the story, which is set in a crumbling Soviet state in the near future and revolves around a special operations military group called Blacklight. They're battling against The Order, a rebel group that has assassinated the president, as well as civilians infected with SIV (Sentient Insanity Virus) which turns them into slobbering maniacs.

You won't know any of this, however, since the game makes absolutely no mention of it, instead just throwing you into the fray and assuming you'll care about the different factions. I had to dig out the press releases and hit Google to piece together what backstory is on offer. Such narrative frippery doesn't really matter in a multiplayer game where shooting faces is your top priority, of course, but given the self-aggrandising announcements about graphic novels and movies set in the "Blacklight universe", this is a spectacularly ham-fisted way of introducing the game world.

And that's Blacklight in a nutshell, fine with broad strokes and bold announcements, not so great at the little details that really matter in the long term. If you're in the market for yet another grim dystopian Soviet-styled shooter, and haven't had your itch scratched by Metro 2033 or Singularity or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Killzone 2 - or if you're an FPS fan on a budget and have already downloaded Battlefield 1943 and Serious Sam 2 and Perfect Dark and Doom 2 - then Blacklight's unvarnished meat-grinder may hold some appeal.