(Sorry for all the video game stuff at the moment)
A couple more things that that popped into my head whilst playing Black…
1 . Sometimes it feels like Op Wolf (I really wish that when you die it would say “Sorry but you are finished … here”), Virtua Cop* etc. the way the enemies dodge between cover and have fairly predictable attach patterns etc. the whole thing is very gameish in spite of the slick ‘realism’ of the graphics. 2 approaches, learning the patterns and positions of enemies or the more advanced improv techniques (running around t random and gunning targets down in a twitch game style). This is a good thing from my point of view, though I expect FPS officionados may look on this primitivism with some distain.
2 . The game feels British to me despite the fact that it’s quite generic. For a while I’ve been trying to pin down, in my head, what distinguishes UK games from their US and Japanese counterparts esp. as the market becomes ostensibly more homogenous, it’s a feeling I can definitely recognise but trying to work out what the contributing factors are is difficult. One concrete example I got from Black is the sense of humour. The game is for the most part pretty deadpan but yesterday I picked up a terrorist intel document (a mechanism the game uses to get you to explore and replay the levels) entitled
Plan to poison Woking beer festival
LOL? I nearly LMAO! (please shoot me now)
*initially I typed Virtua Cope which entertained me greatly. Probably nobody else though.