Ignition has released some new screenshots and a piece of artwork for upcoming FPS Blacklight: Tango Down. The game is releasing on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, joining the ranks of several other titles like Hydrophobia that are bringing retail-quality gameplay and visuals to the console download market.
As you may expect, the game looks pretty damn good for a downloadable console FPS. While it clearly won't be giving Killzone 2 a run for its money, the game is still pretty impressive for what it is. Blacklight should be a pretty decent little game and I'm interested to see how it works. I hope these recent top quality offerings on PSN and XBLA succeed. It'll be cool to see more developers putting deep and engrossing games on the download market, rather than silly throwaway nonsense.
Ignition Entertainment has revealed the first insight into the back story, setting and weapons of their upcoming multiplayer-focused first-person-shooter Blacklight: Tango Down, currently in development at Zombie Studios.
Blacklight Tango Down is a fully featured Unreal Engine 3.0-powered game set to release this summer exclusively through Xbox LIVE® Arcade, PlayStation®Store, and through digital distribution channels on PC, making it one of the most advanced games ever released solely through downloadable channels.
WHAT IS BLACKLIGHT?
Blacklight: Tango Down is set in the near future and revolves around a special operations military group called “Blacklight.” Blacklight is the SECDEF’s (Secretary of Defense’s) personal direct action team comprised entirely of “Tier One Assets.” These elite soldiers are extraordinary operators recruited from all branches of special operations, including Combat Applications Group (Delta), SF, DEVGRU (SEAL), RANGER, and CIA MSP. All combatants are hand-selected and trained specifically to be equipped to deal with fast-moving, ambiguous and unstructured situations. This is the player’s role in the game.
THE WORLD OF BLACKLIGHT: TANGO DOWN
Blacklight: Tango Down’s near-future setting is not that different from our own time and will appear hauntingly familiar to gamers but also distant enough to be surprising and unsettling. It is a universe that has been overtaken by the exploding speed of technological progress and is left suffering from the unbridled failures that those advances create.
The technological overbuild has created a bleak environment which has transformed once vibrant and familiar cityscapes into dark and endless virtual billboards and danger zones. An ongoing viral epidemic ravages society and the military’s drive to control and use the virus as a weapon has only created more devastating strains. Civilians and governments struggle through ongoing unrest. Order can only be imposed through force and fear.
The military’s attempts to weaponise the virus has lead to what some call “Q-Fever” or SIV (Sentient Insanity Virus) and the people it infects are known as SIVs. The virus destroys a person’s humanity, transforming them into frightening creatures that are less capable of utilizing tools but are far more aggressive and impervious to pain.
SCIENCE FACT, NOT FICTION
Blacklight: Tango Down is set in a universe that is based in Science Fact, not Science Fiction. The future combat technologies and weapons featured in the game are based on the bleeding-edge military developments and breakthroughs of today. Whereas currently, in our real world, these items may exist only in the laboratory or in conceptual designs, in Blacklight: Tango Down, these advanced military tools are deployed mainstream and make up the military reality of the game.
This “science fact” equipment includes exciting new future weapons and support systems, like EMP grenades that disable opponents’ electronic visors, Digi-Grenades that distort the optics of enemies, reactive body armor and widely customizable weapons. The most iconic piece of Blacklight technology is the “Hyper Reality Visor,” a head piece that uses its own electronic pulse and nearby electro-magnetic fields to render the world in a new way, allowing soldiers to see what is otherwise invisible.
Contest:
3:20 PM on 04.06.2010 | 
Sexualchocolate approves.
If this is the quality we should expect from press release shots then I dont want to think what the actual game will be like.
BUNGIE <3
Pretty visuals are just that: pretty visuals. They don't make the game more intense, more balanced and necessarily more fun. It is as much about art style as it is the actual resolution of the graphics being used.
I, at the very least, will give them a chance. FPS games are really boring me to death these days, but we'll see...
Jokes aside, I think I want this.
I mean it got good reviews but it's not like it's talked about as an OMG game, and it's probably the most generic fps out there
Best regards, Katya, CEO of free dvd burner, iscsi mscs