I was gone for a little while from the gaming world and I missed some pretty cool shooter titles. I finally got around to playing a few of the newer titles and some of them cracked me up to no end with the witty banter, colorful, often hilarious mechanics behind disposing of your enemies, and amazing environments. With that in mind, I picked up Deep Black: Reloaded with a sense of optimism at what looked to be a pretty cool action packed shooter. That optimism was ill placed as Deep Black spiraled into frustration after what seemed to be a pretty good start.
The game started out with some witty banter between your character and a topside contact while going underwater. I immediately felt that the graphics were pretty sharp. There were no real glitchy areas or bugs that I found above ground, and the underwater sequences were very smooth. Entering into the water and how the character transitioned felt solid but I didn’t really like the fact that I couldn’t ascend or descend with two different buttons. This proved to be a huge issue especially when getting shot at by enemies. You could try to take cover by pointing up or down with your mouse while in the water and then and ascending or descending, only to be killed whilst taking better cover to attain better shots. The character you play wears a mech suit similar to something from Dead Space or Crysis, but it provides no benefit on land. In water, you can jet around quickly with it; not like it matters much in some cases.
Coming across some of the games predictable encounters you will find that underwater enemies really are a challenge to combat. The crabs you will end up facing seem to shoot plasma blasts that can home in on you. Once you get hit by a blast, you will be shocked for a moment leaving you vulnerable to other enemies’ attacks. One of the main points of this game is to use the strategically placed barriers for cover while you wait for that perfect moment to pop your head up and get a shot off. Underwater, this is basically impossible as the splash damage from enemies or the homing blasts will still inflict damage. Taking cover is either not an option or simply not worth the time it takes to utilize. The time spent taking cover means the enemy (in this case drones) will have rapidly closed in on your position, destroying you. The snake bots that are reminiscent to the bots from Terminator: Salvation are not even a threat. They move up to you and — assuming that nothing underwater is shooting at you — can easily be dealt with by spamming the action key.
Above ground as stated before you’ll find conveniently placed barriers for taking cover. Approaching enemies also use this cover and will communicate with each other during battle. The scripted lines they use are repetitive and unnecessary, though, since the AI doesn’t seem to follow them anyway. Shouting out “reloading” or calling out your position is done often at the worst possible times. In one level I had just started, I took cover right after the loading screen and watched an enemy soldier from my cover. He had no visual on me and kept on patrolling with his back to me, all the while shouting out a bunch of different sayings; and this was at the start of a level.
Dealing with above-ground encounters are predictable and often times cheap. Using your weapons often times means you’ll end up getting shot up by the enemy who seems to have a surprising amount of health for the gear they wear. Using grenades is pretty much worthless as the time spent throwing them can get you killed. Taking the time to kill one enemy usually means you have to wait about a minute or two recovering your health before you can take out another, adding to the frustration. Taking the time to utilize different weapons also doesn’t really matter too much. Almost all of your weapons are weak with maybe the exception of the rifle equipped with a 40mm grenade launcher. DB:R says that it’s one of the most accurate and hardest hitting weapons; again I would disagree to an extent. Strongest is certainly true; accuracy is another story, as it’s on par with the weaker SMG.
One of the most frustrating encounters in the entire game was a level where a giant crab bot is in the center of a room with panels all around it that need to be deactivated to lower its shield. The panels need to be deactivated one at a time and reactivate as the shield goes off and on. During this entire experience, the robot will be shooting at you and you have minimal cover from which to move. You literally cannot move without being shot as you have no sprint option; you have to simply absorb the damage while you move and wait to regenerate health once you reach cover. The weapon you think that would be needed to destroy a fifteen foot tall robot crab would be the rocket launcher. The game itself says the rocket launcher does a high amount of damage; I laugh at this and say “nope”. The rocket launcher is probably the most worthless weapon in the game and here’s why: you can’t take cover with it and the damage of the weapon compared to the grenade launcher is laughable. Mobility in the game is important, apparently, but too bad you don’t have any outside of water.
The game started out great with witty banter that simply disappeared after the first level. The graphics were impressive with some fun underwater play in the form of using a harpoon to grab enemies above water while drowning them. Now, while playing the game I felt maybe I was missing something or not playing correctly. I tried to change up my strategies while playing, but overall it simply didn’t matter. The change in strategies just added to my frustration, as I found a few new ways to die each time I tried. During one level where I was in another intense beating my head off the wall situation with a crab bot, the only way I could beat it was to stand inside an iconic trailer and throw grenades close range while the bot was stuck somehow on the trailer. He just couldn’t get around the trailer’s side, and it allowed me to finally kill it after dying at least ten times trying to figure out different ways to move past that part.
The game simply doesn’t allow for you take many others paths in how you play but what the developer planned. It seems to be a lesser clone of Gears of War in terms cover usage mechanics, and could have attained something better if it wasn’t for the game damage balance issues. The underwater areas are pretty forgettable with the exception of the homing plasma blast crab robots and occasional speed boost through a current of water. Deep Black Reloaded could have done well if they managed to make even the underwater areas more interactive in terms of imbalanced firefights or perhaps fine-tuned the cover system a bit better. Either way, I won’t be looking to replay this game at all. Again I ask though, can I have a sprint button at least?
