Black Squad Review

Josh G

The Steam store and the internet as a whole is cluttered with free FPS games that are deemed Counter Strike clones. They range in quality greatly, from low quality glitched games onto top tier games. Luckily Black Squad is in the upper echelon of this genre. For some reason free realistic FPS games that are team focused & objective based are very popular in Asian markets and don’t have as much success in other markets such as North America.

Black Squad is different than Counter Strike in many ways, including the gun play. Almost all SMGs and assault rifles all have an red dot sight or scope. Since each automatic weapon has a zoom in feature, the gun play and aiming feels way different then Counter Strike. Another aspect is that Black Squad is much easier enjoy from the start due to low recoil and tighter weapon spreads than what CS has. I was never able to master CS because timing the tap fires and constantly trying to time crouching while tap firing to decrease weapon spread and the cross hair also had a quite a big learning curve. Black Squad is more noob friendly and anyone can casually enter matches on their first day and have fun due to more predictable recoil & bullet spread patterns. The character movement is more similar to Counter Strike than Call of Duty because there is no sprinting option. The gameplay feels almost like a mix between Counter Strike movement and Call of Duty aiming, so it is very easy to learn. Having bot matches available also makes it very easy to practice learning new guns.

One of the pros besides the solid gun play is the amount of content and variety that this game provides. There are over 30 weapons and 9 primary game modes with many more sub game modes using mutators (sniper only, shotgun only etc).

The game modes are:

Team Deathmatch – Regular PvP TDM and TDM with Bots

Survival – Team with the most rounds survived will win the match (many options like Sniper only etc)

Capture – Occupy the control point to win

Demolition – Protect your zone or destroy the enemy target (also has a 2vs2 Demolition option)

Assassination – Depending on your team, you will either guard a VIP or attempt to assassinate the VIP

Destruction – Destroy the enemy base to win

Airborne – TDM with added features including parachutes and score streak abilities such as turrets

Conquest – Essentially a large scale version of the Capture mode.

AI Defense – Protect your teammates and target from the AI waves.

One of the other notable positives of Black Squad’s content quantity is that there are a total of 43 maps! This is great to see so many maps, it reminds me of old school games like Unreal Tournament that had dozens of maps. This is seriously impressive because many new $59.99 AAA FPS games have less than a dozen maps and then try and demand extra money for DLC, and keep in mind Black Squad is completely free. The only downside is that not every game mode has many maps dedicated to it. For example there are 20+ maps for TeamDeath match & Demolition, but only 3 maps for Assassination.

The content is plentiful for a free game and the devs aren’t greedy, in Black Squad the grenades are rented, but weapons can be purchased with earned XP, and the guns are permanent purchases. Black Squad is also optimized to work with lower end computers, so it feels like a well polished game. Overall it’s a great package, and I can’t complain too much since it’s free; however something does seem somewhat stale with the gameplay because I never find myself getting addicted to the game or making it a top choice to click on whenever I launch Steam. Something is missing and I am not sure what. I only play this game here and there in small doses, which I find odd, since I have so few complaints about the game. In conclusion though I DO recommend trying this game, if you frequently play FPS games.