Blacklight Retribution

Blacklight Retribution

Take firefights to a futuristic new level in Blacklight Retribution, a free-to-play FPS. See through walls with the HRV, deploy mechanized Hardsuits, and customize your weapons to dominate the opposition. In Blacklight, mastering the futuristic tech is half of victory. You’ll need to carefully balance your loadout, from the extreme customization possible in designing your firearms, to the equipment you carry and the in-match bonuses you can unlock. The Hyper Reality Visor (HRV) allows you to look through walls and spot enemies, and attack from where they aren’t expecting – but be careful, because you’re vulnerable while using it. The other half of victory? Raw skill, same as it’s always been. Good hunting, Agent… Use a variety of upgrades in each match, including calling in the hulking Hardsuit mech. Powerful but slow, this armored suit packs a one-shot, one-kill railgun and a high velocity minigun to clear rooms… fast. Scattered across the battlefield are Weapon Depots that supply your team with additional ammo, heavier weapons such as a Rocket Launcher, or provide the ability to call down airstrikes and Hardsuits. An Agent’s gun is their livelihood. Choose from 1000 different gun combinations by modifying your receivers with customizable Stock, Muzzle, Barrel, Magazine, and Scope, Camo, and Weapon Tags. Whether your play style is run and gun, or survivability, or long range sniping the choice is yours to make in fully customizing your armor loadout. Combat is engaged on a number of different 7 different game modes across 9 beautifully detailed maps. Game modes includes classics such Team Death Match, Domination, Capture the Flag, and Kill Confirmed while introducing new favorites likes Netwar.

Blacklight Retribution Review

When it comes to delivering basic bullet-flinging fun, Retribution gets the job done decently. Matches move along at a speedy pace, with only a few seconds passing between kills and respawns. The Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes are rounded out by familiar Capture the Flag, Kill Confirmed, and Domination offerings. Perhaps the most unique of the bunch, the latter puts a fun techie spin on point capturing by having you hack nodes with a timed numbers matching game–a frantic and amusing exercise in concentrating under pressure when there’s a firefight erupting all around you. When everything clicks in a given match, the momentum of battle can be intensely absorbing, even if there’s not a lot of wow factor.

Diving into the action is usually quick and painless, except when it isn’t. Playing Retribution on the PS4 means occasionally suffering through agonizing waits to find a game in progress. At times, the player base is anemic. I’ve regularly been stuck fiddling around for several minutes at a clip waiting for a quick match search to drop me into an active game, only to have to back out and try again. That’s aggravating when you just want to get to the good stuff. Once you’re in, however, you can stick with the group you’re playing with for faster access to repeated matches. But even then, there is no guarantee you’ll be fighting against more than a small handful of opponents. Retribution’s straightforward combat is at its best when you’ve got a map full of players locked and loaded to face off against. It’s a shame that’s such a rarity at the moment.

Temper your expectations, however, and you can squeeze a reasonable amount of entertainment from Retribution without paying a cent. While they’re not as spectacular as the more high-end kits at your disposal once you level up and shell out some real-world green, the standard assault rifle, frag grenades, and other essential gear you start off with do a fine job of taking down adversaries. I spent many hours blasting away with only the limited freebie arsenal at my disposal and had quite a bit of fun along the way.

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Summary
Strapped for cash and looking for something punchy to play on your PC? Blacklight: Retribution has its fun moments to balance out the frustrating ones. But with a few unpleasant quirks, some missing features, and a borderline draconian pricing model, it's hardly a must-have shooter for kicking off the new wave of current-gen gaming.
Good
  • Solid shooting mechanics
  • Item balance keeps non-paying players competitive
Bad
  • Hardsuits are clunky and awkward
8.3
Great
Gameplay - 8.6
Graphics - 8.4
Audio - 8
Longevity - 8.2

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