Blacklight: Tango Down was a huge hit for fans of first person shooters. When Blacklight Retribution was announced as a free to play online MMOFPS, our ears pricked up. See how it fares in our latest review.

Blacklight: Retribution isn’t your average online shooter. There are lots of people out there who would cringe at the thought of playing a free-to-play online shooter. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm one of them too. The flood of substandard, badly named and outdated-looking F2P shooting games over the last few years haven't exactly done a good job of putting them in a good light. More often than not, it's always the same basic formula that Counterstrike created over 10 years ago, plus a few aesthetic tweaks here and there (sometimes with top-heavy and scantily clad female characters) and a cash shop to give wealthy players a way to pay-to-win.

Read more of Adrian Liew's Blacklight Retribution: The Official Review.

Few things:

Call of Duty is 9v9.  The reason why it (and this game) have such small matchups is because of how small the levels are.  Battlefield has HUGE fields of battle with vehicles.

You kind of brushed on customization but it doesn't seem like you actually did it.  When you customize you can change a lot of options on your weapon (like 7-8) and it actually visually changes your gun.  That's something really innovative and something you will find in no other shooter.  Customization in most games means changing your scope.

The game has six maps, that's a lot.  Battlefield 3 launched with 9 maps over 5 game modes... and that was considered an insanely high amount of maps.  Games that are online competitive generally have a hand full of maps so that people can practice levels and develop strategies for them.

LoL has, four maps?

Starcraft 2 has six maps?

As for grammar I don't think it's a big deal in a genre that uses accronyms and call words.  After you get an eight kill streek in most games you get some message like "EPIC!"  Really epic?  Should it not be "this is epic" to be proper grammar?

I don't know, I think you need to play this game more... or maybe more FPS games.  It feels like you ran out of things to talk so you started rambling about something that honestly does not matter.

"Blacklight: Retribution isn’t your average online shooter. "

I found it ironic that the article started with that very sentence, then you look at the score (7.5) and the word AVERAGE in large letters below it.  Just found that funny, thought I'd share.  :)

I agree with the review.  I have tried this game a few separate times now, just can't get into it though.  For me it's the 8v8, a bit too small for me.  I prefer at leat 16v16 or so for my FPS.  Just what I like.  The games graphics/look and the music/SFX were damn nice though for a free game.  I will give the game another go at some point though, please increase match size though :) 

As far as pay to win, well it's a very fine line both this game and Tribes: Ascend straddle.  Most things can be earned with regular gameplay so in that sense it's pay for convenience.  What is annoying though is from what I can see, a person who just boots up the game for the first can be somewhat powerful just by spending money in the item shop...ugggh I don't like cash shops in games...

How is this in any way a MMOFPS ??? I dont get it..

Its a multiplayer FPS game nothing massive about it, i wish companies would stop splatting MMO in front of their games to try and get the wow fans to play it..

Originally posted by Caldrin

How is this in any way a MMOFPS ??? I dont get it..

Its a multiplayer FPS game nothing massive about it, i wish companies would stop splatting MMO in front of their games to try and get the wow fans to play it..

I agree, it's getting old.  What's even funnier about this is that it's not massive at all, it's 8v8 and seemed a bit cramped to me.  There is no persistent world, which is the basic requirement for being called a Massive Multiplayer Online game.  This game is a lobby shooter with some character development.  I guess all this time I had been playing Battlefield I was playing an MMOFPS, sweet!

I didn't like Blacklight too much. For some reason it had this weird delay on my pc, and even with that delay people were horrible at the game. I would come out of a deathmatch like 21/0 it was really annoying. Then people would call me a hacker. It just made the game not very fun. On top of that, they have a cash shop that sells things you can only buy with cash, that you cannot physically earn in game, that are somewhat overpowered.

aim bot saucefest

Why the hell is this on this site? Are you going to do a review of Battlefield 3? Its more massive and multiplayer than this game. This site's reviews are an increasingly less funny joke.

Originally posted by Panther2103

On top of that, they have a cash shop that sells things you can only buy with cash, that you cannot physically earn in game, that are somewhat overpowered.

 

Get your facts straight.  Yes there is a cash shop that sells things you can only buy with cash, those things are just cosmetic skins for your character and weapons.  Nothing "overpowered".

You can't buy anything with real money(ZEN) that you can't also buy with the in-game currency(GP).  This is not a pay-to-win game.

Originally posted by Caldrin

How is this in any way a MMOFPS ??? I dont get it..

Its a multiplayer FPS game nothing massive about it, i wish companies would stop splatting MMO in front of their games to try and get the wow fans to play it..

 

I agree.  It is a multiplayer FPS.

This game, in no way, is a pay-to-win since you can get every upgrade simply by earning GP, the ingame currency. Like Mrwendel mentionned it, the only thing you really have to spend ZEN is for permanent skins and other cosmetics...

And even with your first rifle, you can do great in matches. So, I have to say that this game is worthy enough to spend some time on it just like Tribes. These 2 games might be the best F2P FPS for now. But just like some others here, I find it sad the maps are so small and limited to 8vs8.