Blacklight Tango Down review

If you’ve never played recent Call of Duty multiplayer or want something a little more futuristic when it comes to shooting complete strangers in the face then you could download Blacklight: Tango Down onto your console for about $15. You won’t get any single player experience for your money but you will get a tight multiplayer game with a few different game modes and plenty of upgrades for your weapons.

You won’t find any plot as such in the game itself but by reading the blurb in the ‘how to play’ section you’ll learn that you’ll be playing as one of two factions; either Blacklight, a team of highly-skilled super soldiers, or The Order, a team of rogue US commandos. You’ll be on either team in deathmatch, team deathmatch, a take on capture the flag and domination modes amongst others.

Jump into the game and if you’ve played Call of Duty you’ll notice the controls are identical. Getting into the game is second nature as you spawn in your camp and then run about the maps trying to up your kill count and gain experience so you can get extra perks and upgrades for your visor and weapons.

Your visor can eventually see through walls with a handy upgrade but it can also be rebooted temporarily with EMP grenades that effectively blind you with the ‘blue screen of death’. Other grenades pixellate the surrounding scenery to disorientate you and of course there are good old fashioned ones that blow up and take your legs off.

When it comes to maps they’re not so big so as you get lost and thankfully there are not too many places to camp from, however spawn points are always in the same location so you can get picked off a bit cheaply by other players who’ve worked out where to wait and train their crosshairs.

There is a co-op mode called Black Ops you can play through too with your buddies but to be honest this is best left untouched as the AI’s not too clever and just takes cover firing the odd shot, whilst you edge ever closer and try to take them all out.

Of course it’s hard to recommend this over the sublime multiplayer deathmatch experience of Call of Duty but I have to judge this game on its own merits. It’s an affordable, tight multiplayer shootfest so it gets a very good 7 out of 10.

Related: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 review, Call of Duty World at War review, Blacklight Tango Down review on Youtube