Blacklight Retribution Review

Blacklight Retribution is an extremely competent multiplayer first person shooter. Set at some point in the future, two rival factions battle for control of resources, territory and inexplicably disused industrial complexes. Why? Who knows but it has stompy mechs so it's all good.

As there is no single player element to this game, we'll dive straight into the meat of the title. First off there's no character creation in the regular sense of the word. Instead you get a generic soldier which you can select gender then it's off to the training grounds to get you up to speed with the controls and basics of the game. From the outset you realise that this is a really good looking title, powered by the Unreal Engine, Zombie Studios have produced a very well polished shooter here. Movement feels crisp and responsive, the weapons feel purposeful and generally things feel very tight all round.

Going through the tutorial you learn about the first of the three in game "currencies", first up is CP or Combat Points, these are rewarded to you during every game you play for a variety of things such as killing enemy players, capturing points, hacking doors to open new routes in the map and taking down high profile enemy players which gives you even more CP due to the bounty on their head.

These CP points can only be spent in the current game you're playing and only at the depots that are scattered around the map, this gives you access to a menu where you can select heavy weaponry, extra ammo, health or even a Hardsuit. But be wary of your surroundings when accessing a depot as you're very vulnerable to attack while buying your goodies.

You learn how to use these depots and you're given a go in a Hardsuit in the tutorial in order to give you an idea of what they look like, how they operate and finally how damn fun stomping around in the mech is. One other vital piece of training that you learn, is your HRV or Hyper Reality Visor. This is your bread and butter awareness button, I cannot stress this enough but USE YOUR HRV. Once pressed you get a few seconds of a new vision mode where you're able to see your teammates movements, more importantly your enemy movements and most importantly the weak spot on Hardsuits; one feature that a lot of players seem to overlook.

Now it may seem cheap that there's essentially a wallhack in game, but EVERYONE has this ability, also if you use it too much in one go you get burned out and have to wait a period of time before using it again, so short sharp bursts to get your positions and off you go.

Back to the currencies we move onto GP. You're awarded GP at the end of each match which can be spent on the myriad of options out of game to customise your armor, weapon and loadouts. I'll touch more on that later but the final currency is Zen, this is the currency which costs you real cold hard cash and is standard across all of Perfect World's games. Again this is spent on the items, weapons and armor available in Blacklight Retribution.

Ok we've covered a lot of information and I haven't even touched on the actual gameplay yet, this is because there is so much content in this game. However let's waste no more time and get stuck into what you'll be playing. To begin with there are a number of multiplayer modes in Blacklight Retribution, aside from your standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch affairs we found that the more popular options were King of the Hill, Domination and Kill Confirm, we do have one final game mode in the form of Netwar. Now what do all these game modes do? Well here's a brief explanation of them all.

• Deathmatch (DM): A free for all mode, player with the most kills wins.
• Team Deathmatch (TDM): Not so much a free for all but the team with the most kills wins.
• Domination (DOM): Capture and hold data nodes to win the game. First team with 750 points or the team with most points at the end of the match wins. Capturing nodes consists of either standing near the node till you capture it (slower way and only will be done if enemy keep pouring in) or hacking the node (faster but hacker cannot attack while hacking).
• King of the Hill (KOTH): Activate specified data node points to win the game. First team that completely activate 5 node points or the team with the most node points activated wins. Activating a node point require players to stand near the node point, each player contribution 2.5% to the activation time. The timer does not reset/reduce if enemy kills all allied players at the point.
• Capture the Flag (CTF): Your basic base versus base game mode. Two teams fight to push into the enemy base and capture their device, then bring it back to their own base for a point. However the point is only rewarded when your own device is present at your base. The carrier cannot sprint, so teamwork is essential in this game mode, as well as a good defense. First team to capture the enemy device 3 times wins.
• NetWar (NETWAR): There are 4 domination points, one capture flag in the center. Hold at least one point, and return the flag to a fully captured node to bring extra points to your team. The mode is time based, and the team with more points wins.
• Kill Confirmed (KC): Kill Confirmed is similar to TDM, but kills only count if you "confirm" the kill. You can "confirm" the kill by being the first to walk over the body of the person whom you killed. You can also "confirm" any kills made by your teammates and "deny" any kills made by the enemy team.

Moving back to customisation you'll discover that your primary weapon is unbelievably customisable, the receiver, barrel, stock, sights, magazine and novelty tags can be changed with hundreds of options. Every item will alter the stats of your gun from range, to rate of fire and even the spread or recoil is affected so make sure you balance your stats to your own playstyle.
The same applies to your sidearm but to a lesser extent but there are still hundreds of combinations.

Armor customisations will change your run speed, health pool, armor values and your HRV resource pool and recharge rate, so again adapt these to your own playstyle. All customisation options can be unlocked early with Zen or by hitting the appropriate level, rented with GP so you can try before you buy so to speak and more importantly the items are balanced in such a way that you cannot buy yourself to victory. Meaning those who want to buy all the items at the start will not necessarily have an advantage over someone starting out in the game, at the end of the day it's still down to your own individual skill level out on the battlefield.

Overall, for a game that is free to download, free to sign up and free to play it's absolutely amazing, there are a lot worse F2P titles out in the market so do yourself a favour and give Blacklight Retribution a whirl, you won't be disappointed.

The game is developed by Zombie Studios and published by Perfect World Entertainment. Another in the line of free to play (F2P) games, BLR has in-game microtransactions as its funding model. You can grab this via Perfect World itself or via Steam. Also thanks to TotalBiscuit for the industrial complexes and the following humerous look at Blacklight Retribution.