It's almost certainly morally reprehensible to say it but what the hell: guns have an irresistible allure. Anyone who hasn't at some point in their life fantasised about shooting something to bits with a machine gun is either a liar or a girl. However much you educate people about the death, destruction and misery they cause in the real world, there's simply no way of getting away from the fact that man has an innate fascination with heavy weaponry. Especially people who play games. By the time he's 21, the average FPS player has probably fired more bullets than an entire battalion stationed in Basra. Bearing this in mind, it's with no guilt whatsoever that we introduce you to Black - a fetishistic journey into the cult of the Rat-A-Tat-Tat. A world where the guns are the stars and everything else is just a target.

Before we get the pacifists' backs up too much, here's the disclaimer: our love of guns is intrinsically tied up with the way they're portrayed in films. Black breathes the same air as macho action movies like The Matrix, The Rock, Navy SEALs, Predator, The Terminator and (yes) Universal bloody Soldier. In this sanitised fantasy world, guns make people more powerful and sexy. It's this Hollywood fakery that we buy into. We want to have a go with the really loud, lethal guns we see in films. Black knows this. Black relies on the knowledge that we'd jump at the opportunity to get hold of an MP5 with unlimited rounds and something to shoot at. A car, a tree, a brick wall and "I wonder what happens if you shoot at those gas tanks..." KA-BOOOOOM! "I seeeee..."

And that's what Black is. A big, dumb Hollywood action movie chopped into neat, themed portions, with an even dumber plot nicked from the dustbin of assorted Hollywood action movie scriptwriters. It's got the emotive string-laden orchestral theme, the glossy production values, plenty of special-ops parlance (where else do people talk about 'intel', 'clicks' and 'wet jobs'?) and the most astonishingly lavish explosions on the PS2 we've seen. More importantly, it's relentlessly entertaining. If ever there was a game that wanted to be Hard Target, The Delta Force and [______] rolled into one, Black is it. (Feel free to insert your own personal favourite big, dumb blockbuster in the space provided. And no one's allowed Under Siege 2.)

The guns, then. Normally, we'd introduce the main character first, but he only really features in-between missions. We'll come back to him later on. So... from the first weapon you pick up to the last, you'll remember them all like a first kiss. Glock, MP5, Magnum, M16, MAC-10, Remington Shotgun; they all have their own inimitable nuances and foibles. Unload a few clips and what immediately strikes you is just how right they feel. We put this down to the balance and weight of the guns. Where in less-perfect shooters you can spend ages compensating for movement or a laboured turning motion, in Black there's nothing in the control system to hinder the job at hand.

But it's the feedback you get from each rifle and pistol that's Black's trump card. In one smooth click of the trigger, you get a triple sensual hit. A monstrous rumble from the Dual Shock, a cacophonous clatter through the speakers and, for the eyes, a cornea-juddering explosion of sparks, shrapnel, dust, smoke and muzzle flash. The first time you do it with, say, the MAC-10 Elite, a frenetic handheld machine pistol, it'll send a little wave of pleasure through your body You'll laugh to yourself and nod your head enthusiastically. Why? Because it looks, sounds and feels exactly like you imagined it would when you saw it in a movie.

The same level of attention has gone into Black's weapon design as Polyphony Digital put into Gran Turismo 4's cars. The gun's shiny exterior reflects the light like a windshield and individual details like screw on suppressors, fire-mode switches, bolts and clips are as carefully represented as alloys, soilers and headlights. Plus - although we've never had to load a clip into a gun before - we're pretty sure the reload animations are spot on; accompanied by a clever screen blur that throws the weapon into voyeuristic close-up. And - thank Christ! - there's no tedious pause while a bolt is cranked, a sight flicked, a clip loaded, a switch turned and some extravagant motorized carousel whirs into action. It's just bullets in, gun cocked, ready to fire. In about three seconds. And with another bit of Hollywood licence dictating the average clip contains an unfeasible 60 slugs, you don't have to reload quite as much as in other games. So, just to recap: we are loving the guns.

The next question should really be, "Are there enough cool things to hose down with my action movie arsenal?" To which the answer is, "the whole darn world". If there's one thing Black will be renowned for (along with the suppressed MP5), it will be for having the most breakable scenery ever constructed in a game. In a shooter, your weapon is effectively the player's only way of interacting with the world - which means that the realistic destruction of scenery is paramount. How many times have you played shooters where you pop a couple of caps at a window for kicks? And how pissed off are you when it reacts like a piece of Kevlar, the bullet not even leaving a mark? How much does that remind you that it isn't really a window, but a picture of a window painted onto the wall of the now very stupid game world? We'll remind you. Lots.

In Black, windows are windows and they smash. They shatter and send showers of glass crashing to the floor. We know, because we spent an awful lot of time testing them. Doors are doors too. They fall down if you shoot them. Likewise, wood is wood. It splinters and cracks apart when hit with a high-calibre rifle. Stone, too - surprisingly - breaks when hit with a round from a Walther 2000 sniper rifle. In fact, the environments might as well have been constructed with a combination of balsa wood, tracing paper and polystyrene bricks. Nearly every discernible object can be obliterated with your funnel of firepower. It's not just a gimmick either: you need to shoot through doors and walls to progress or access rooms with health packs, ammunition and new weapons. There's even one hilarious occasion where, if you're lucky, hapless enemies will find themselves thrown through flimsy plaster walls from the force of a shotgun to the sternum.

It's about here that we should let you in on the story. Set over a four day period, Black charts the controversial movements of Sergeant Kellar, a black operative (title make sense now?) in the US Special Forces. In true action hero tradition, the dude's a bit of a loose cannon. He's on the trail of Lennox, the leader of a mysterious cartel of arms dealers known as the 'Seventh Wave', wanted by secret services the world over for supplying heavy weaponry to terrorists. This is explained via a series of filmed 'intermissions' shown between levels, acted out by Kellar and a suited government agent in the mould of The X-Files' Cigarette-Smoking Man. Kellar is being taken to task for his cavalier attitude to his assignments and at the culmination of each short segment (the maximum is about two minutes) the screen fades to... you guessed it, and it's your turn to make Kellar's mistakes all over again.

As well as designing the levels around this story (and to fulfil our fantasies of playing in environments that are almost identical to "that bit in that action film") the obliteration of objects is built into the fabric of the locations. The opening level in the streets of an Eastern European city (on this month's disc) has a museum complete with Roman pillars to demolish. There's a glass-fronted office block, too, that needs a good going over with an Uzi and a few grenades. In later levels you get to topple a couple of grain silos, bring down a docks-worth of cranes and put an entire steelworks out of business with your friend Mr. AK-47. Whenever your targeting sight turns black, it means the object you're aiming at can be destroyed, As an added bonus, it might even explode in the process. In fact, using this technique is key to dealing with multiple enemies - catching them in the fallout of collapsing masonry or in the inferno of exploding fuel barrels, for example.

In the background of this unashamedly hardcore gun porn sits a series of strikingly-designed forests, cities, bridges, scrapyards, docks, lunatic asylums and prisons. The art style for each uses muted, naturalistic colours with an abundance of detailed textures. It's a far cry from the usual lurid sci-fi neons or flat World War II browns you see in other shooters. When you approach the graveyard section of Naszran Town with its autumnal hues and fallen leaves it adds to the ominous, eerie stillness of the calm before the firefight. Elsewhere, the stark industrialisation of the steel foundry and the docks is cold and clinical, the blinding sunlight casting shafts of light (with dust floating in it!) through the windows of cavernous warehouses. The Trenesa Border outdoes Metal Gear Solid 3's Far Eastern jungle with its claustrophobic twilight blues and greens and a slivery moon shining through the trees. The subdued nature of the palettes serve to emphasise the firestorm of hot gold, yellow, red and white metal that sprays from your firearm whenever you squeeze the trigger. In short, this is the best-looking shooter on PS2. Screw that, it's the best-looking PS2 game of any genre.

With all this shooting going on, there's going to be a lot of wives widowed, dads lost and graves dug. It's inevitable. Thankfully, the enemies are (a) ski-mask wearing terrorists, and (b) Eastern European. So it makes it easier to swallow when someone collapses screaming "Tell little Nvotny I love him!" and you can't understand his dying words anyway. What you will hear a lot is a guttural "LIMONKA!", the Russian corruption of 'pineapple', as enemies dive away from a primed grenade. Death animations are oddly hilarious. The jury's out over whether the game should have gone for blood instead of its censor-pleasing claret-free option, but when a guard blows himself up with an RPG after being hobbled by a bullet to the knees, it doesn't half make for a comical exit. Your own demise is prevented by collecting first-aid kits, but should your health bar enter the red zone, the screen drains of colour and the sound starts to ebb woozily away. It's at this point the panic of the near-death experience is well replicated (we imagine) as you frantically search for that elusive health pack.

Stupid language aside, the enemy isn't daft. In fact, they're almost too efficient, especially if you aren't paying attention and pile into a shootout unprepared. (Hint: use cover, take headshots and always have a full clip). As well as obvious military tactics like 'hide behind tree' and 'run away from Limonka' they'll also outflank you, play the 'shall we dance?' routine in close-quarter fights and generally put you in all sorts of mischief. There's at least two levels where the enemies' intelligence will force you to approach an encounter in a more considered fashion. The Treneseka Border Crossing, set in open countryside, is a night manoeuvre, making guards difficult to spot. With no radar or torch, you have to play a stealthier game, moving slowly and using the silenced pistol for accurate one hit, one kill headshots. Of course, you can just go at it like a drunk windmilling into a bar brawl and forget any notion of stealth, if you fancy things a bit more 'spicy'.

Elsewhere, the combined firepower of a hundred armed assassins squeezed into a narrow corridor of the Tiviliz Asylum requires a more direct approach. Shotguns and grenades to be precise. In other open areas like the Graznei Bridge, you're presented with the choice of risking a ground assault or climbing the lofty gantry and launching an aerial attack. It soon becomes apparent that the AI of the enemies and the way they use their surroundings makes what could have easily been a very linear experience into one that encourages players to make tactical decisions. In fact, the only real beef we have with our cerebral adversaries is that, on occasions, they take just a bit too much lead before they die, but then these Ruskies are made of stronger stuff, right?

Enough dissection, then. Crunch time. How does Black hit the scheme of first-person shooters? Top of the pile. By a mile. Better than TimeSplitters, Killzone, Medal Of Honor, Cold Winter and Snowblind. Even without a multiplayer mode. It's achieved this by looking at what gun fanatics want from a shooter and then delivering it, big time. In short, a glorified shooting gallery with hundreds of things to blow away.

There's no need for a compelling storyline when you have a game that can offer such sensory and physical bliss. (Remember, this is Commando, nor Jarhead.) In fact, the only complaint we can muster is that we wanted more. Black, played start to finish, could take a seasoned FPS professional about six or seven hours. In an entertainment medium where quality is often mistakenly judged for quantity, some will argue that Black is a bit short at just eight levels (one of which can be completed in four minutes). The question is, could it have maintained the ruthless momentum over a longer game? Would it have watered down the experience? Spread it too thin? Sacrificed the quality? We'll never know. What we can assure you is that Black's seven to eight hours are of blinding quality and offer an experience you'll want to revisit over and over again.

If ever there was a time to turn off the lights and crank up the volume, Black is it. And we defy you to not whoop like a bastard, jump out of your chair and punch the air when it all kicks off and you single-handedly decimate an entire time zone with 900 rounds of the heavy machine gun. You're dead inside if you don't.

Graphics 99%
A showcase for the PS2 at its outer limits

Sound 99%
Superb ambient effects and 'Blam!'s

Gameplay 99%
The stuff of macho Hollywood fantasy

Lifespan 80%
Not huge, but perfectly formed

Overall 99%
Black is what all shooters should be. An all-out assault on the senses. You can't afford to miss out!