Blackwind (PS5)

Blackwind feels like a game built to thrill a teenage boy, and not just because you happen to be playing as one. Decked out in mechanical armor with laser blades and guns built into your hands, you tear through enemies and leave blood and alien guts splattered in your wake. Even the story, while staying mostly in the background and not taking huge risks, does try to have a few mature ideas so Blackwind can have more going on than just the power fantasy. Even the developer referred to it was “war seen from a teenage perspective” which can have some of the glory and harsh realities that may entail, but Blackwind does feel like it wanted to be a lot more than what Drakkar Dev could actually realize.

In Blackwind, James Hawkins and his father are flying to the mining colony Medusa-42 to assist against the hostile local aliens known as the Raknos. James’s father is a scientist who has developed new Battle Frames, mechanical suits with built in weapons that will help to fight the fairly large insectoid aliens, but when their spacecraft is attacked, James is placed in one for his protection and ejected before it can crash. He’s technically not alone though, an on-board AI known as Blackwind able to help him come to grips with the weapon systems of his battle suit as the two go to seek out other human life and try to find James’s father. From there, the story is mostly about joining up with Earth’s forces on Medusa-42 and learning more about the ongoing battle against the Raknos, and while some of the directions it takes can feel quite predictable, at other points it won’t shy away from showing some of the grit you’d expect from an actual war rather than one sanitized for younger audiences. There’s not too much depth to the plot because it won’t linger long enough to really establish characters, but James’s perspective as a sheltered young man dealing with situations more serious than what he’s used to comes through and works well enough for a simple story that doesn’t want to dwell on anything too rough. It is for the best not too much attention is given to it, but younger players may find it close to other media made for kids on the cusp of puberty who want to experience more mature stories but aren’t quite ready to head to the deep end. Your AI companion can go a bit overboard in commenting on every encounter or air vent you find, but since it’s the same alert each time, it can at least become easily ignored background noise rather than a true annoyance.

More likely though, the appeal will come from the promise of taking control of that powerful mechanical armor James Hawkins is trapped inside until he can find his father. Blackwind is a twin-stick shooter, but while aiming weapons fire with the right stick and moving with the left stick will be a consistent presence, up close combat can be incredibly useful as well. While firing from afar gives you more room to avoid injury, getting in close with the energy blades on your arms allows you to deal heavy damage and knock baddies around. Defeating foes and trashing the military bases, deserts, and forests you travel through will gain you experience orbs that go towards upgrading your skills, and save points give you a chance to unlock new combo attacks, improve your existing abilities, and eventually expand on the other attack options you gain across the story. At first the Raknos aren’t too much to worry about, but as your arsenal expands and new enemy types are brought in, you’ll start to see use for new attacks like your homing missiles, a ground slam that shoots out a ring of fire, and Black Mode which slows down the action and powers you up. When an enemy is low on health, you can even perform a finishing move, each enemy type having a unique execution that can be rather brutal looking. While the abstract nature of your foes or the mechanical ones you encounter can soften it some, there are some intense looking impalements and one where you hold someone up by their head and pop it in a bloody spray. While the action is usually so zoomed out it can feel like it has pulled back a little too far, the zoom in for the executions makes sure you can see it well, something that can get a bit repetitive when it becomes the quickest way to reliably tear through enemy hordes.

Unfortunately, the enemy balance and design does lead to a battle system that struggles to find an enjoyable sweet spot. Once you start getting more interesting attacking options, your foes start fighting back with less than thrilling counters. Floating drones will unleash rapid streams of gunfire which will stun you a little if you stand in their path too long, and the ground troops with their own arm blades will start knocking you down, sometimes multiple times in a row where you can’t do anything about it. It can start to become risky to do anything but fire constantly as you run about, not able to use your more interesting blade combos, but that slam that produces a fiery ring also becomes your own tool to abuse as you can knock foes down and get yourself some breathing room by just doing that move over and over. Crowds will place multiple pesky foes together so you can’t afford to play in more interesting ways because one might get the drop on you and easily shears away chunks of your life bar, but there are a few better forms of variation before the game commits to this weaker type of difficulty. Large beasts that can stand their ground and chase you doggedly prevent you from relying on cheaper tactics and the game introduces them at an effective pace so they don’t warp the battle formula too much. Sadly, before you start getting to the tougher foes, the combat can feel rather repetitive instead, some encounters just feeling like time wasters instead of thrilling fights. Upgrades both chosen by you and provided by the story don’t feel like they’re the cause, enemy design seeming like the culprit since it can’t cook up too many foes that sit between the extremes of easy fodder or nuisances with cheap tricks.

Blackwind does try to spice up exploration some though, there being many hidden armor skins for your Battle Frame and their coloration, whether original or a reference to something from another science fiction property, often looks rather cool and worth the effort to seek out for it. Some areas you explore do involve a lot of shallow backtracking, but there are little puzzles and side paths to earn boosts to your health or energy used for special attacks as well to motivate you to take a break from the uneven fighting. Sadly, one idea Blackwind has for designing its puzzles involves a little drone that pops out of the Battle Frame, and it’s not an idea with a lot of legs. The drone can sometimes be used in the occasional interesting cooperation puzzle, because while it can also be controlled by a second player instead as a constant combat helper, sometimes you do need to activate mechanisms in two different spots to clear the way to something useful. A bit more often though you just pop out the drone to go through vents, where you shoot bugs that aren’t much of a threat to reach a room you can’t access otherwise. It’s too dull to be a nice break from the action and even when the drone fights foes tougher than vent bugs it feels too skewed in your favor for there to be much excitement.

The drone at least doesn’t have the outright technical issues that come from the game’s efforts at platforming. Your Battle Frame can jump, this not only a way to set up your all important slam move, but it is used for little platforming challenges despite the camera often being positioned directly overhead. Precision isn’t too much of a requirement, but sometimes when you jump onto something, you can get stuck. This can happen during a fight where now you’re a sitting duck when you were just trying to use something beyond your dash to escape, but if you land on the wrong environmental object, you can become truly trapped and need to reset to your last save. Since saving is only done at set points you can lose a fair bit of progress because you accidentally leapt onto the wrong thing during a jumping section, but Blackwind also has some more curious issues that discourage exploration. While save points also let you teleport back to earlier places so you can grab any extras you missed, going backwards can also confuse the game. It will start playing scenes from earlier and change your current goal to ask you to do something you’ve already done. There are times where finding the path forward isn’t totally clear and required backtracking moments may send you down the wrong path, the confusing regression to earlier plot points not helping with finding your bearings. Resetting to your last save or just finding where you’re meant to be can fix these, but even battles can sometimes have weird issues like one boss who won’t know how to fight back if you just stand right up against their front. Blackwind starts feeling like a game where you worry a little you might experience a glitch when your finishing moves cause you to clip through walls, but thankfully true progression impeding issues are rare enough the game doesn’t become defined by them.

THE VERDICT: Blackwind can’t quite find the right balance to make its hack-and-slash-and-shoot action consistently interesting. When the enemies evolve beyond fodder they start dishing out too much damage or repeatedly stun you, forcing you into fighting in less interesting ways to survive. Some exploration pulls you away from the repetitive fighting at least even if it can have its buggy moments, but the moments where the action evens out into fights where you can face a challenge and use your interesting skills aren’t common enough to make you want to stick around and see the end to Blackwind’s simple albeit surprisingly bloody story.

And so, I give Blackwind for PlayStation 5…

A BAD rating. The forest section, not only just an appreciated visual break from the drab bases and barren alien desert, also might be where Blackwind comes closest to actually figuring out how to make its battle system work best. The large beasts that try to get up close and personal introduce a wrinkle to combat, plants fire shots from afar, but you can still mix in your blade attacks without too much fear of getting locked into repeat stuns and incoming fire isn’t going to tear through your health so quickly you have to always be dodging. There are definitely times Blackwind can be basic in a tolerable way, mowing through easy enemies with cool moves providing some entertainment value even when the execution moves can start to become repetitive, but Blackwind starts demanding attention during battle in less exciting ways. Constantly doing your jump slam isn’t a great way to fight and having to lure one enemy at a time away from packs that would mow you down if they attacked all at once makes the back end especially dull and sometimes frustrating. Exploration doesn’t ever go away and while drone sections are bland, at least extra skins and other bonuses feel like exciting finds. Blackwind’s story will likely be pointed at as a bit juvenile and shallow because it feels at odds with the more violent parts of the plot, but young players are always looking to play something more mature than they are and the simple steps and little surprise choices make it feel like it will work with such an audience while being easy enough to shrug off for older players. Still, that means Blackwind is struggling a bit to present a good reason why you should play it, the Battle Frames looking cool and having nice animations for its attacks but the world they fight through doesn’t always give you the room to enjoy those aspects.

Blackwind is about on the quality of a short-lived animated show that might be remembered fondly by people at the exact right age for it, but it doesn’t do much to grab anyone outside of a very specific range of people. Its outright bugs and rough approach to difficulty does mean it’s a bit more unapproachable than a show you just sit back and watch, but it also gives you the ability to tear through tons of enemies yourself and see some flashy execution moves. Whatever type of player might like it will also more greatly enjoy other hack-and-slashes or twin-stick shooter fare though, Blackwind never finding its footing when it comes to determining what kinds of challenges it wants to provide.