This is probably one of the worst third-person shooters I have ever played. I believe it's best described as a cross between Mind Jack and Gears of War. Take Mind Jack's laughable story and repetitive level design, take away it's mindhacking. Take Gears of War and remove its memorable characters and epic set pieces, and make it's cover system dysfunctional. Add in some underwater sections, and you pretty much have Deep Black: Reloaded. Of course, that's not enough for a review, now is it? It's time to elaborate on exactly why this game blows.

I went through a lot of annoyance just trying to get the game to run. For those who don't know, the Steam purchase of this game is, in fact, BROKEN. It does not work properly, unless you either block the game with your firewall or disconnect your internet briefly. Was it worth it? Read on...

This game is the definition of repetition. There is very little variety to the levels. Just about every single level follows the same basic forumla: Go through room, kill enemies, go through more rooms, kill more enemies, go into brief underwater section, open underwater door, MAYBE shoot a couple baddies underwater, get to surface, rinse & repeat. Level design is bland, generally consisting of a number of tight corridors and larger rooms that all look the same. The enemy variety is very limited, as well. As the game progresses, you'll encounter a couple new types of baddies, but for the most part you're killing the same ol' enemies throughout the whole game. And while the same could be said for many GOOD games, too, how would you react if I told you that they literally couldnt think of more than one kind of boss? I'm not kidding. While there are a number of boss fights throughout the game, almost EVERY SINGLE ONE is against a giant robotic crab. The conditions under which they are fought are somewhat different each time, but the fact remains that they re-use this same boss throughout the entire game.

Now to tackle what the developers were basically trying to sell the game on: The underwater sections. As another reviewer put it, they are basically just to get from land point A to land point B, and sadly, they try to make this one of the strongest selling points. It really adds nothing to the game whatsoever. There are a couple of unique things you can do while underwater, such as hacking specific robots so that they will aid you, but good luck doing this while being shot at left and right.

The controls are frustrating, and the game's cover system only seems to work about 70% of the time. Most of the deaths you incur will be from the controls or cover system goofing up, and not player error.

The story is nothing memorable, either. Most of the game's story is told through short cutscenes that occur before or after certain missions. The problem is that the storytelling just feels forced. Very forced. To the point that it feels like they were just making it up as they went along, for the sake of keeping the game moving. Couple that with forgettable characters, and you've got yourself a plot that you'll forget sooner than a goldfish forgets it's lunch.

As for sound, there's not much positive to say there either. The voice acting is some of the laziest I've heard in a long while, and the soundtrack is subpar at best.

All of this may have been more bearable if the game was of a shorter length, but it drags on for far, far too long, which just magnifies the already glaring flaws.

Poor controls, a broken cover system, boring, bland level designs, very limited enemy variety, ONE TYPE OF BOSS (save for the final, which I actually could not bring myself to defeat), a forgettable story, and completely unmemorable characters make this one of the worst third person shooters I have ever played, if not the worst. There is literally nothing to inspire you to keep playing or attach the player to the game.

I would never recommend this game unless you just want to see for yourself how bad it is. It's one of those games that doesn't look terrible from videos or screenshots, and that you have to play yourself to see how truly bad it is. And this is coming from someone who's usually very open minded about games, and actually enjoys a lot of games that many others think suck!

Imagine playing a terribly generic game like this for 20+ hours, then getting to a final boss that completely and utterly destroys you, with no possible way to defeat it. That's what this game is on the hardest difficulty...a horrible, broken waste of time. I don't normally hate games...in fact, I have tons of bad games and love a good portion of them...but this one is a very clear exception.

EDIT: FYI, the reason I have 20+ hours into this game is because, on the hardest difficulty, it can take over an hour killing some bosses, since you will completely run out of ammo within a few minutes (even if you started with max ammo) and have to spend a short eterninty shooting the bosses with your weak, inaccurate, infinite-ammo sidearm until they die (and if you break cover for more than a second during this time, you die and have to start over). The endboss is the same thing, except with a 5 minute time limit (and the boss isn't even on screen for most of that time...and you have no cover...and you are surrounded by regenerating flying turrets. Literally impossible to beat).

Would not boot up at all. You might as well light your money on fire, then snort the ashes. You'll get more fun out of it, because at least the burning sensation in your throat will let you know that you're alive.

Strategy First has made it clear they do not wont to Fix the game....

since ¨They never respond to mails


Stay the Hell away From

Strategy First



Strategy First would like to have your money

Strategy First is give a ♥♥♥♥ about fix the problem



Sergey Titov same as Strategy First

It's not working and there is no sign the developer will fix it.

If you want to play it anyway, check this:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/204760/discussions/0/792924952651389438/
But well, even so, you won't be able to unlock the achievements.
(Don't ask me why some people can unlock the achievements, I also wanna know. Tell me if you know how.)

Don't accept this challenge.

THIS GAME DOES NOT WORK! DO NOT BUY IT! I tried the firewall fix, the lua editing fix the launcher from the demo, the launcher from the THETA crack, I even tried restarting steam in offline mode and removing the internet cable as some of you suggested, all I got is an error mssg after 5 min of being in game (if even) saying my resources are corrupt. Sucks, cause game does look interesting. Game developer no longer associated with game, publisher does not list it for customer support. Check the community hub and see for your self if you dont believe me.

This appears to be an instance of broken abandonware. After spending a few hours trying to get this to run and researching some of the yoga moves that other gamers were attempting just to bring up a splash screen, I deleted it.

Please take note of the publisher: Strategy First.

Pros:
- Purchased on sale.
- Easily deleted.

Cons:
- Money would have provided light and warmth if I had actually burned it in the house.

Provided you can actually get the game to run for more than 5 minutes at a time, you'll soon find out that it wasn't worth the time or money required to do that. Gameplay's your standard third person cover shooter type deal minus a sprint ability that would make crossing the game's dull gray facility environments even more of a bore. Guns sound decent, nothing special but certainly not terrible, voice acting's pretty awful, you hear the same things from the enemies over and over again, with drawn out and rather hilarious death screams, and the script in general is up there with the likes of Global Ops: Commando Libya and Rogue Warrior, only with less profanity. The underwater sections are alright, giving you a third dimension to worry about, but the enemy AI is so simplistic and these areas are so few and far between that they don't change much.
Speaking of enemies, you've got your standard assault rilfe guy, shotgun guy, rocket guy, the commando that carries the gun of the same name, snipers, and all sorts of robots and turrets that are tedious as hell to kill. Tedious is pretty much the defining word of this game. When you die during one of the too-lengthy boss fights, you redo the section right before which often has you walking down a corridor or pressing a couple buttons and getting to hear the terrible dialogue again and again.
And the icing on the cake is that it crashed and deleted all my save data in the final act of the game. GG.

This game is missing files, and will not work without downloading a crack. Even then, it crashed within the first five minutes, and it doesn't have any control customization.

Oh boy, I guess I'll write a review on this since I have nothing to do at the moment.

Do I recommend this game? Hell ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ no.

This game is the ONLY game (so far) that I ACTUALLY wish I could remove from my steam account. I don't even want a refund, I just want this filth removed from my account forever.

Where to start... The game is just for lack of a better word... boring. The environments you fight in very quickly become "exhausting" to be in, and you just end up wanting to get to the next area as fast as possible in hopes of something different. The enemy is a complete joke. They pretty much stand there waiting to be slaughtered like mindless zombies. It takes zero ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ strategy to fight the enemy in this game. I'm not asking for f.e.a.r. level Ai, but holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Christ all mighty don't give me target dummies either. The first boss I fought (I use the term boss very loosely) was absolutely pathetic. Combat literally consisted of "strafe between the pillars, shoot, strafe, shoot, strafe, shoot, dead." It was like fighting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Atlas at the end of Bioshock. The only thing this boss had going for it though was that it took forever to freaking kill, and even that is hardly a good thing when the combat is mind numbing.

The story is just sad, I mean they didn't even try. You know what though I'll be honest, I can't critque too hard in this area considering I didn't even finish the game, but the basis of it did not impress. Let me sum it up for you. Mysterious unknown private military organization has some sort of weapon (if I recall correctly, it's been a bit since I've played the "game"), it's up to you to find them and stop them. That's it. That's the story. The voice acting makes me want to puke, really. Not so much the voice acting, but the script really. I mean... oh god. It really sounds like I'm just focusing on the negatives of the game, and trying to make every potential annoyance a big issue, but sadly all there is to this game IS annoying ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

I don't know, perhaps it's not my kind of game. This doesn't change the fact however, that I would probably be more entertained sticking my hand into a jar of acid than playing this game.