Modern First Person Shooters, marvelous aren't they? In case you didn't pick up on it, that previous statement was a sarcastic statement, most modern FPS's (Didn't know how to make that plural) are just your basic Call of Duty rip off. You know, modern military shooter, crappy campaign, Aim down sights, kill minorities etc. The only thing that game makers even try to do to make these games better is to put as much into their multiplayer as they can and as fast as they can: I am not saying that the multiplayer is bad, I am saying that the game itself is not worth the 60 dollar price tag for a game that only offers one worth while feature.
This is where Blacklight: Retribution comes in: Blacklight, which is what I shall refer to it as from here on, is a free to play first person shooter that takes place in the future: My guess being somewhere between 20 and 100 years into the future, I can't really tell. I will get more into the setting and other bits later, but first thing's first, this game is not call of duty in the future: there are some similarities but, there are very few. First similarity is that in both games there is an ADS ability, (ADS means aim down sight for future reference) both have a sprint button and both have weapon customization, and I would say that is where the main similarities end.
Core Concepts
The first thing that you will notice in game is that this game has fairly Cyberpunkish design with the environment and characters, which i find really cool, I guess I really like cybepunk and steampunk, but don't tell anyone. Something else that is very different is the weapon and equipment rental: What? You want more? Ok, I guess I gotta go into some detail: Since Blacklight is a F2P game they had to find a way to make money off this game, so what they did was made it so that you couldn't necessarily buy every weapon or equipment off the bat with the in-game money, known as GP: in fact unless you do a lot of saving it is pretty much impossible, and it takes a long time. One way that they made this not shitty is by allowing you to rent the weapons, equipment and upgrades: Renting costs significantly less for you but you only have the weapon for a limited time. I bet you are asking yourself, "How are they making money like this?" well you don't only have to use GP, you can also use Zen, which is essentially just paying out of pocket, the upside to Zen is that every weapon or upgrade costs an insignificant amount of zen, also you are able to access the weapons that you were unable to access at lower levels.
Gameplay
Now, usually my reviews have a "story" section, well not in this case: You see, this game is a strictly multiplayer game, which is a good and bad thing. It is bad because you don't get to know the story, you don't get to hone your skills against A.I. and you have to have an internet connection in order to play. The good things about this is that the game is focused soley on the multiplayer, which means less shortcomings. This also means that the part of this game that most people buy modern FPS's for is the only thing there is in the game. Remember when I said earlier that this game is different from CoD? Well these are some of the reasons why: First, the weapon customization is far more in depth than in CoD, you can almost customize everything, from the scope to the barrel right down to the color of your weapon. Another big part of this game is this ability called HRV, which is the ability to see other players and equipment through walls, but it isn't horribly broken, you can't shoot and it takes awhile for it to recharge. Lastly, is the pacing of each round, as compared to CoD, there is much more emphasis on teamwork than call of duty and also the game moves faster: Also camping with a sniper rifle is very difficult to do for more than a couple of minutes. Also there is a mech suit which I don't think CoD has.
Music/Visual Presentation
First thing I gotta say is, HOLY HELL! THERE IS COLOR IN THIS GAME! Yes folks, this game is not just washed out shades of brown and gray. This game is, for the most part, very colorful which always adds points in my book. The characters have the right amount of color to contrast their neutrality and there are subtle splashes of color and lighting that really bring out what they want brought out. Aside from the colors, I really enjoy the design of the environments and the characters: The environments are vast and well designed for balance. The characters remind me of the ODST from the Halo series, but they aren't ripping off their designs. They might have ripped off my designs because I have characters that are pretty similar to some of those on that game. Blacklights runs on the Unreal Engine, and graphically looks amazing, I never would have thought a F2P game would look this good. The music in this game is all some sort of variant of Dubstep, which I typically don't like, but in this game it is so fitting: I couldn't think of more fitting music to be honest. I literally have no complaints about the visuals or the music in this game.
So, that is my review of Blacklight: retribution, would I recommend this game? Of course I would, it's free to play for god's sake, if you have a decent computer at least try it out, it is a good game. But I do warn you, this game has quite the learning curve, it takes awhile for you to get even half decent at it. Prepare to get killed a lot and get pretty damn frustrated.