Review: Blacklight: Retribution (PC)

[OmegaZX13]

I hope they bring in Australian servers. It looks like a fantastic game but I can't for the life of me play with high latency.

They stated they were going to bring them in, but the question is when that'll be I guess.

Fingers crossed for sooner rather then later.

Agreed.

[realOne]

I've been playing this game since last year in the closed beta then onto open beta and there have been quite a lot of changes to what the game is like today, My lvl 30 rank and all unlocks carried over from the beta which was great to see them reward us from testing the game.

This is a great game especially for anyone who enjoyed the first game Tango Down. Though the first game did have its downfalls like console lobbies which meant you had to wait for all played to ready up to start a server and you couldn't join any game that was already in progress, mouse acceleration always on, menus were very console orientated, GFWL did is cause quite a number of people to have problems. The good news all these problems are now fix in Blacklight 2.

Also Aussie servers are coming, it was posted in the official forums a few times over the past months from the dev team. Even though the game is officially out of beta they are still working on things like stats, ranked matches, private servers & more in-game gear etc. so once these are done they will host more servers in other regions.

[hamjas]

The full installers up to date on GON now, so we dont need to use all our precious quota downloading it.

[TobbyGnome]

Yes, thank you!!!

[aihtdikh]

I have been playing BLR since open beta, and I agree it's the most polished F2P FPS I've seen (except TF2, of course). Lots of fun and gameplay feels smooth, even though the ~200ms ping does mean I'm dead before I see the enemy with some regularity.
I can no longer connect to the US servers (and the EU servers give me ~600ms ping) - I had assumed they had region-locked the game, and given up in disgust. Now it sounds like this is just something wrong on my end, so I'd better apologise to the publishers for the uncharitable things I called them in my head, and put in the work to get back in the game.
And if the promised AU servers do eventuate, then damn, there goes all my free time!

[Theyleon]

Just had a brief play, seems quite polished. Combat is fairly COD like, although more like 4 then the newer ones. The gun customisation system looks fairly in depth - you can change parts like barrels, stocks etc individually, although it remains to be seen if it actually makes much difference in the end.

The hardsuits are thankfully not too overpowered, they go down pretty quickly if 3-4 people lay into them with rifles, and they also have a weak point. The built in wallhack that is the visor mode is also interesting, although it will make flanking rather hard against people who know to use it.

[DarkMellie]

Downloading now!

My newborn and wife are still in hospital and I don't have time to actually play (particularly with xbox witcher 2 out this week)... but the original Blacklight was just so damned good, even without any Aussie players on XBL, that I can't say no to a free sequel.

This should do much better and last much longer than, say, Section 8 Prejudice.

Unsure if file on mirror is borked... downloaded the 4 gigs, now it's patching a further 4.2 gigs.

EDIT: nah, it's fine, just took about 10 minutes to sort itself out. Also, it's a great game... way better than the original. Extremely slick visually, it's got the concept art firmly in hand the entire way through.. like how on my G19 keyboard it lights up the little monitor with the red skull logo through to how it displays the top players of each round (which is the best I've seen it done since Killzone 3).

[James Pinnell]

EDIT: nah, it's fine, just took about 10 minutes to sort itself out. Also, it's a great game... way better than the original. Extremely slick visually, it's got the concept art firmly in hand the entire way through.. like how on my G19 keyboard it lights up the little monitor with the red skull logo through to how it displays the top players of each round (which is the best I've seen it done since Killzone 3).

More games in general need to take advantage of that screen. I was stoked to see it being utilized in BL:R.

[Ylekyote]

Hey guys, just a quick heads up.

1) my name is Andy Kipling I am the EP on Blacklight from Zombie. Saw the article and saw these posts so I figured I would respond. If you want to hit me with more questions (I can't say I will make it back here) you can do so on twitter @AndyKipling or via the playblacklight.com forums (i am ylekyote there too).

2) the 4 gig patch may be misleading. Our patcher is odd in that it says "4 gigs worth of files were modified" but when the file is actually examined and patched, it may only download and modify a few kb. We are working on this so it is not so misleading.

3) you may want to try downloading the latest installer as we tend to rebuild the installers if we push a big patch. We dont want you to have to download 3 gigs and then patch 4 gigs. too much.

4) regarding AUS servers, PWE (the publisher) has said they are working on it and have been for some time. So I do expect these to come.

5) We, at Zombie, are also actively working on private servers/matches as well. Two things that I wanted to address from that review.


Anyway, thanks for checking it out.

Cheers,

Andy

[zombiespragui]

I played the beta a few weeks ago, and my sli gtx 570's couldn't run it on medium specs. Not sure what the problem was, but I'm hoping theyv'e fixed it since launch.

And yes I agree - this seems like the best f2p ever made. It's not nessecarily pay for fun.

Did you try upgrading your drivers for SLI. There was a new set of drivers a bit back that increased performance.

[zombiespragui]

Got the client from node, but it need to patch 4gb worth of data... Pass.

Yeah it's a 2 gig client download, then surprise, 4 gigs await thee.

I think the client is quite out of date, it's from the Open Beta - maybe we could rally Cas to get the latest client? (http://blacklight.perfectworld.com/download/client - 4gb direct download)

It feels slightly sluggish due to the latency, but it's actually quite good considering it's an FPS shooter on international latency.

The thing i find the most clunky about it is the customization. Maybe i'm going through a dumb phase, but the whole menu system based around progression and unlockables is about the most unintuitive pos I've come across.

I didn't think it was too bad - the stuff you can use is available at the front of the list, the rest is unlock/pay/out of your level range. It *does* get easier after you play for a while.

You can D/L the game at playblacklight.com direct or torrent. Also don't look at the patcher as a barometer of how much your are d/ling for a patch. Right now that size is the size of the files it's checking against and not what you are d/ling. Most patches are around 200-400MB and usually smaller.

[zombiespragui]

Also, about the hardsuits, they can be easily taken down with the flamethrower from the depot. Burn out the pilot and then steal their Hardsuit!

Remember use HRV to find it's weak spot and shoot it there. Also communicate the weak spot to your team. You can also use the AV Rocket on it which will help a bunch. Another point is that they pilot cannot use HRV while in the hardsuit.

They aren't as overpowering as you first think when you realize the other ways to take it down.

[DarkMellie]

Thanks for signing up to say hi, fellas!

I'm still playing BLR every night, absolutely loving it.

[Bronze_D]

Also, about the hardsuits, they can be easily taken down with the flamethrower from the depot. Burn out the pilot and then steal their Hardsuit!

Remember use HRV to find it's weak spot and shoot it there. Also communicate the weak spot to your team. You can also use the AV Rocket on it which will help a bunch. Another point is that they pilot cannot use HRV while in the hardsuit.

They aren't as overpowering as you first think when you realize the other ways to take it down.

Bringing a hardsuit down is not the problem, we don't have a problem taking it out in itself.

the problem comes when the pilot of the hardsuit actually knows how to aim well, as the hardsuit is equipped with one of the few weapons in the game that will OHKO any player not in a hardsuit ie: the railgun.

When well handled the hardsuit with a good player essentially snowballs the team's lead, he'll basically tag near the other players of his team or other players naturally tag with him and OHKO anyone that enters his view.

[Theyleon]

Balanced or not, I simply find the game less fun when the hardsuits come out. Considering how much of the playerbase seems to avoid deploying them, I would guess I'm not alone in this.