There is something wonderfully strange about the idea of spending your afternoon selling DVDs in a little New York shop before heading out into the night to murder someone for money. It is the sort of premise that immediately makes you want to know more, because the contrast is so extreme. One minute you are worrying about stock levels, customers and whether that copy of a particular film will sell, and the next you are stalking through the city with a loaded gun and somebody’s name on a contract. That strange collision of ordinary life and violent criminality is exactly what gives BLACKWOOD its identity.
Set in New York in 2012, BLACKWOOD puts you in the shoes of Anton, a man living two very different lives. By day, he is a seemingly respectable shop owner trying to keep his DVD business running, while after dark he becomes a ruthless assassin caught up in a world of violence, secrets and old grudges. It is a familiar crime-thriller setup in some respects, but the decision to make the player actively live both sides of Anton’s existence gives the story a much more personal feel.
Welcome To The Double Life
The most interesting thing about BLACKWOOD is not necessarily the guns, the executions or even the criminal underworld. It is the quiet time in between. Your DVD shop is more than a menu screen disguised as a business. It is your home, your workplace and the closest thing Anton has to a normal life.
That contrast can make the violent sections hit harder. When you return from a mission, weighed down by the emotional baggage of what you have just done, there is something oddly compelling about stepping back behind the counter and worrying about stock. You can restock shelves, organise your inventory, set prices and deal with customers, creating a strange rhythm between mundane retail management and professional killing. It is an unusual combination, but one that makes BLACKWOOD stand out from the crowd.
Running A Shop While Running A Criminal Empire
The DVD store mechanics could easily have been treated as a novelty, but there is enough here to make the business feel like an important part of Anton’s life. You can decide how involved you want to be, whether that means carefully managing stock and prices yourself or letting the business run with less attention while you focus on other things.
There is something appealing about that flexibility. Not every player wants to spend hours managing inventory, but those who enjoy a bit of economic management can get more deeply involved. The store also offers a welcome change of pace from the action, giving BLACKWOOD breathing room rather than throwing one firefight after another at you. In a game built around a character leading two lives, having two very different styles of gameplay makes perfect sense.
When The Sun Goes Down
Of course, this is still an action thriller, and this is where BLACKWOOD really gets serious. Combat is built around movement, aggression and impact, with gunplay that aims to feel responsive rather than floaty. Dives, rolls and slides let Anton move through encounters with a degree of cinematic flair, while the third-person perspective gives you a clear view of the action as everything starts to go wrong.
There is an appealing brutality to the combat. BLACKWOOD does not appear interested in making Anton feel like a superhero who can effortlessly mow down an army. Instead, the emphasis is on making individual encounters feel dangerous and physical. When everything comes together, the result can feel like stepping into your own crime thriller, complete with desperate movement, sudden bursts of violence and situations where everything can go spectacularly wrong.
Takedowns With A Bit Of Personality
The contextual takedown system is arguably one of BLACKWOOD’s most distinctive features. Rather than simply giving you a standard melee attack and calling it a day, the game offers a wide variety of ways to dispatch enemies, tailored to the situation.
That opens up satisfying opportunities for improvisation. Hand-to-hand encounters can become brutal little scraps, while the environment itself can become part of the violence. There is a physicality to the system that suits the game’s grounded approach particularly well. These are not fantastical finishing moves designed purely for spectacle. They are meant to make Anton feel like someone who knows exactly how to hurt people, which suits the darker tone considerably.
A City Full Of Secrets
BLACKWOOD also seems determined to make its New York more than a collection of locations between missions. The 2012 setting gives the game a distinctive personality, and the emphasis on environmental storytelling suggests there is plenty to discover beyond the obvious objectives.
Posters, advertisements, tattoos and the surrounding environment are presented as pieces of a much larger picture. That approach can be incredibly effective when handled well, as it encourages you to pay attention rather than simply sprint from one objective marker to another. A city feels far more convincing when it appears to have a history that extends beyond the player.
The story itself revolves around flawed characters, conspiracies, consequences and Anton’s past refusing to stay buried. That last point is particularly important, because a character living such a divided existence needs something beneath the surface. BLACKWOOD appears interested in the person behind the gun, rather than simply using Anton as an excuse to string together action sequences.
The Price Of Being Normal
There is an intriguing tension running through the whole concept. Anton is trying to maintain the appearance of an ordinary life while participating in a world where ordinary morality has very little room to breathe.
The DVD store represents everything he could pretend to be. The missions represent everything he actually is. The more time you spend moving between those two worlds, the more compelling that contradiction becomes. Even the simple act of changing clothes or interacting with Anton’s apartment can contribute to the feeling that you are managing a person rather than simply controlling a character.
That is where the RPG elements could prove particularly valuable. They are not necessarily there to turn BLACKWOOD into a traditional role-playing game, but to make Anton’s existence feel more tangible. When small details of his everyday life sit alongside the violence of his nighttime activities, the game has an opportunity to create a character who feels considerably more complicated than the usual action hero.
Cinematic Without Losing Control
There is always a danger that cinematic action games become too preoccupied with looking cool and forget to be fun to play. BLACKWOOD seems to understand that spectacle only works when the controls beneath it are responsive.
The combination of shooting, movement and melee combat is therefore crucial. A beautifully choreographed sequence means very little if the player feels like they are simply watching it happen. BLACKWOOD’s emphasis on responsive movement gives its cinematic ambitions a better chance of succeeding, because the chaos should feel like something you created rather than something the game created for you.
A Promising Crime Thriller
What makes BLACKWOOD so appealing is ultimately the oddity of its premise. There are plenty of games about assassins, plenty about running businesses, and plenty about exploring a dangerous city. Putting all three together, then adding a character desperately trying to maintain some semblance of normality, creates something considerably more distinctive.
It is also a game that appears willing to take its time. The story is delivered across three acts, with Act One arriving first and later acts planned as free updates for existing owners. That means the complete narrative is not available from the outset, but the important point is that purchasing the game provides access to future acts without requiring separate purchases. For players who enjoy following an unfolding story, there is potentially plenty of room for Anton’s character and the world around him to develop.
Final Verdict
BLACKWOOD has a wonderfully ridiculous pitch on paper that somehow becomes surprisingly compelling when you look beneath the surface. Running a DVD shop by day and working as a contract killer by night should not really fit together, yet that contradiction is precisely what gives the game its personality. The shop management offers a welcome change of pace, the combat looks brutal and responsive, and the contextual takedowns give the action a physical edge that sets it apart from more conventional third-person shooters.
The biggest attraction, however, is the sense that a human story lies beneath all the bullets and blood. Anton is not simply an assassin moving from one target to the next. He is someone trying to maintain a normal existence while carrying a past that refuses to disappear. If BLACKWOOD can successfully balance its cinematic ambitions with its quieter character moments, it has the ingredients for a genuinely memorable crime thriller.
There is still a lot riding on how the story develops across its three acts, and the success of that longer journey will ultimately determine how strongly BLACKWOOD is remembered. For now, though, this is a stylish and unusually conceived action game with enough personality to keep an eye on. Sometimes the strangest ideas are the ones that work, and there is something irresistibly appealing about finishing a day of selling DVDs before heading into the night to put a bullet in somebody.
