Black Shot Review

Josh G

Black Shot is another free FPS that is often referred to as another free Counter Strike wannabe. There are plenty of Steam reviews that show many players hated this game and view it as low quality product and than there is a small loyal community of die hard Black Shot fans. I am in neither camp, it is far from being my favorite game, but I don’t think it’s terrible. This is a weird review for me to write because I have mixed feelings about Black Shot.

Black Shot is a free to play FPS with realistic weapons and gameplay somewhat similar to Counter Strike. There are technically 13 game types, but that is misleading, since there are 11 in reality because the other 2 are just slightly modified editions of the main 11. The game types are:

Battle Royale (3 maps)

Team Hardcore Match (5 maps)

Solo Weapon Race (3 maps)

Team Deathmatch (17 maps)

Search and Destroy (17 maps)

Team Flag Match (10 maps)

Weapon Race (4 maps)

Domination (2 maps)

Free for All (3 maps)

Running Man (2 maps)

Throwing (2 maps)

The Quasi-unique Game Modes:

Snowball Fight (Throwing Knives Replaced with Snowballs) (1 map)

Ultra Rapid Fire (Modified Team Deathmatch) (2 maps)

My personal favorite game mode is Weapon Race, because this mode forces all players to use each type of weapon throughout the match. Each several kills that you get will force you into using a different weapon, so by the end of the match you will have used a sniper rifle, pistol, assault rifle and shotgun. Most guns don’t have any optic sights or any zoom feature, so you will strictly rely on the crosshair. You will have to tap fire at distance, but at mid range combat, the recoil is so manageable in this game that you can just hold down the left mouse and easily spam away with decent accuracy. The recoil in Black Shot somewhat reminds me a little bit of another game I recently reviewed called Black Squad. I found for me personally that Black Shot and Black Squad are both easier then Counter Strike. For some reason I have an awful time trying to master Counter Strike’s firing spread and recoil patterns and poorly time my tap firing. However in these lesser known CS imitators I never have any problems (guess I’m weird like that). Even though the aiming and gun play is smooth in Black Shot, the movement and jumping feels clunky and poorly done. A big complaint is that the game is laggy, but even with the annoying lag the fire fights are still somehow enjoyable. I can actually land sniper shots with a second of delay.

Black Shot offers over 40 maps which is a very impressive map count and the maps do all feel different with unique themes and layouts. This is an older game, but even when it was released these graphics were already dated. Over all these years the devs haven’t released a patch with updated visuals such as high resolution textures or higher polygon models. The map selection is diverse and the maps work well, but some of the map’s visuals are mediocre. The visuals are good enough for a basic free game and the upside of lower scale graphics is that Black Shot has very low system requirements.

Another downside is that this game is classified as pay to win. There are 2 currencies in this game, there are gold coins and gems. Both gold and gems can be used to rent weapons, however the weapons with the best stats (accuracy, recoil, damage, etc) will require gems and gems have to purchased with real money. Gold however is earned freely, you will acquire gold while playing in matches and that acquired gold can rent guns, but they will be basic guns with slightly worse stats than the ‘gems only’ weapons. It is a free game and the devs need to monetize it someway, so I am not outraged, but just know up front it is classified as a pay to win model. Another drawback is that this game does have gas grenades that can be spammed and sometimes ruin certain parts of the map.

The last major drawback of Black Shot is that sometimes the devs randomly remove content from the game. There used to be more maps such as a carnival map and a very cool Japanese map called Ryokan. There was even a nice outdoor field map called Circle of Destiny that was removed. All 3 of these maps have been removed even though many players loved them. My favorite map was Ryokan and it was also a fan favorite, I miss the map to this very day. Not only do great maps get removed but entire game types are sometimes removed. There used to be a co-op bunker defense game mode. You and your teammates would work together defending your building from AI enemy waves. It was a great game mode and the only PvE option in this game and it still got deleted. Sometimes when you see there is an updated patch downloading for Black Shot, your first immediate thought is fearing your favorite parts of the game are being removed. However this downside could be worse, after all the content purges it’s absolutely amazing that there are still 40+ maps and 10 game modes. However I am still not sure why this company is hellbent on randomly removing content.

On paper this game doesn’t sound good after reading my review so far (bad graphics, laggy, pay to win and removed content), but for some reason I still enjoy it (sometimes). I don’t find myself wanting to play this game all the time, but a few times a month I fire it up and enjoy several rounds. Not my favorite game, but still not a terrible game. I guess I am an odd person who keeps downloading so-called Counter Strike knock offs and ends up partially enjoying them. Yes, I am aware Destiny 2 is now free and I am still downloading p2w CS clones. I keep asking myself this question: What am I doing with my life?