Blackwood’s ultra-slick gameplay videos have likely enticed you here. You may have swiped right on combat that seems to evoke John Wick and Max Payne. It’s important expectations are quickly tempered; Keanu Reeves is not turning up to this date. Instead, a slightly weird, Robert Pattinson-Tommy Wiseau hybrid named Anton is pulling up a chair for the leading role in a game that feels like it would ask for the bill after ordering starters.
Anton’s glassy, fishlike eyes are the first sign of an imposter whose double life as a DVD store-owning contract killer isn’t quite the action movie-inspired thrillride the marketing would have you believe. It’s not the catfish of the century – there’s some charm here – but Anton Blackwood is shifty. The soft, introspective delivery of his lines are representative of a man who may have hooked you under false pretences.
Act 1 in this three-part series takes an exciting premise and conveniently quick-cuts before reality sets in. Blackwood looks insanely fun at first glance, the kind of game that will have folks saying ‘HELL YEAH’ prior to searching for it on Steam. It’s unfinished, though, and wants to kick you out the door as quickly as possible – probably before it becomes totally clear its quirky nature might just be deep-rooted character flaws.
Blackwood has plenty of attractive ideas that are whiffed on execution. This is led by Anton’s ‘clean’ work routine being so mind-numbingly boring that it’ll have you wanting to fuse his careers together and begin uppercutting patrons who keep spilling coffee in his store. That single goddamn coffee, dropped in the same place, day after day.
You wake up, throw on some clothes, and head downstairs to the shop. Then you begin meaningless chores that somehow fail to beat the excitement of vacuuming in real life. You can pet the cat! That’s cool (and note: got some excitement going on social media). But where’s the video of Anton mopping up the same four spots of dirt? Or wiping the one poster that gets so grubby it appears to be an aphrodisiac for dust? Why haven’t we seen the animation of Anton trying to clean the clothes rack by completely missing it? Who keeps knocking the same two comic books from the shelf? WHO SPILT THAT COFFEE AGAIN?!
It doesn’t get any better when actually processing a DVD sale. Amelie, your assistant, naturally runs the cash register while you tend to the aforementioned tasks, but if you decide it’s time to get serious with some scanning, most of your shift will be spent waiting to fulfil an action that takes a couple of seconds. Time in the shop moves like Neo in The Matrix, except that the repetition of objectives, voice lines and a handful of licensed songs will have you hoping a stray bullet penetrates your skull to end the monotony.
There’s zero thought needed when stocking DVDs, aside from a quick check of what genre is trending before purchasing more to capitalise. The easiest way to improve your shop’s status is to literally wait by the door, see what genre each buyer likes and then recommend one in that category.
The entire store experience seems massively rushed, like it was built as a demo, and forgotten about after it was decided the juxtaposition of Anton’s vocations is a great selling point. Customers will bring t-shirts and vinyl to the counter, but there’s no way to ever choose to stock them. Hats, magazines, and mugs are on the shelves. They never move an inch.
Although developers AttritoM7 Productions previously mentioned on Steam that Blackwood features no AI-generated assets, those in the shop are reminiscent of designs that do.
Movies rip off real films, with life-like actors and parodied titles on the front. The vinyl section is quite gross, and potentially a legal minefield, with Michael Jackson and Bee Gees front covers that look nearly identical to the real thing. There’s even one of those deadeyed cartoon posters your nan puts on Facebook welcoming people into the store.
It’s also quite hard to distinguish whether or not the script suffered the same fate. It feels quickly churned out. There’s not a great deal of narrative to really get into in Act 1, but the important bits are cliched and poorly written. Again, we’ve been told no AI was used when we checked with them ourselves.
Anton’s delivery is actually quite interesting – he’s introverted and a little sullen, but any depth of personality is missing. At one point, another character even says, “I thought you’d have more to say” to a guy who looks like he’s more focused on holding in a deuce than helping to build on the narrative.
Most story beats happen around the combat sections, which are triggered by Anton’s computer that is hooked up to the dark web in the apartment block’s basement.
Blackwood’s marketing has consistently pushed a deep, choreographed combat system that flows through balletic movement and crunching takedowns. There’s a number of factors stopping that coming to fruition, but the most prominent is a blow that’s hard to recover from: the hand-to-hand combat is stale.
The simple dodge and parry system is inconsistent, lacks bite, and amplifies mindless enemy AI that will try a jumping spin kick metres away before throwing very little up close. There’s no real back-and-forth, no feeling that you can exchange hits rhythmically, or interrupt a dangerous attacker mid flow.
Thugs execute a couple of repeated animations, before giving you time to wallop the living hell out of them until a takedown option appears above their heads. A single button press then launches into one of the finisher animations that propped up the trailers. Looks cool in isolation, but seriously unfun to play.
Gunplay is far more entertaining, with a loud, bombastic style that ramps up the energy and snaps enemies to the floor. Shots rip through the environment, sometimes creating a real spectacle as bodies fly, glass shatters and walls crumble apart. It’s these instances that best deliver on the action film dream.
Even so, the aggressiveness that wins fights can sometimes cause inescapable death traps appearing, with checkpoints that save just as enemies start blasting you out of cover. In one instance I had to turn the difficulty right down as I was caught with three gunners instantly turning me to putty in the entrance of a room.
Anton’s evening work is broken up into a disappointing lack of main missions and repetitive side jobs, mostly communicated via email. There’s some standout moments, such as a car chase over the Brooklyn Bridge, and stuntman jobs on a movie set. You’re also invited to many Fight Club-style tournaments, with one Last Man Standing variety broken enough to ruin the premise completely due to a timer which kills you if you don’t eliminate opponents quick enough. The problem? Some foes glitch into the wall.
Bugs run throughout Act 1, which could see credits roll in a couple of hours if you stick to the main tasks (and when the menu actually works with a controller).
One early scene takes Anton to a densely populated subway that is full of NPCs who are clearly meant to be walking while holding their phones. Not one device was visible. NPCs are massively copy and pasted, with the exact same outfits and designs multiplied to a crazy extent throughout levels that needn’t be so busy.
A persistent sound issue also worked against various scenes. An early exchange in the shop was ruined by the store cat sitting in front of Anton and loudly meowing through the chatter, while a tense shootout in the final mission was overpowered by screaming civilians who kept shouting the same couple of lines. It’s as if the sound is coming straight from your brain. The audio isn’t muffled by going into the next room or getting further away.
However, Blackwood’s fatal problem is that many of the game’s features simply don’t matter. In the lead up to release, developers AttritoM7 Productions spoke about how reloading with one bullet left in the chamber would give you an extra shot. The practicality of that actually meaning anything during a level when you’re spraying full assault rifle clips in 10 seconds is next to none.
Similarly, you’re told to shower and dress Anton, but it seemingly makes zero difference if you let him honk. The gap between success and failure in the shop is minimal, in that achieving either doesn’t change the game. The passage of time is meant to be important – you’re shown to be working through 24-hour days – yet the news on your computer never updates. Amelie barely bats an eyelid if you leave for hours to, you know…murder a lot of people.
These are small examples that build a world of zero consequence in Blackwood. You will walk off the Act 1 cliffhanger and back to the store like nothing happened. Anton’s mop-hugging days and thug-popping nights never feel connected. The potential is clear – but by god – the next part needs to start with the DVD store being blown to smithereens, taking the chores and that GODDAMN coffee spillage with it.
