Black State: A Bullet Time Action Game Inspired by Inception

When Black State was first introduced to the world via a visually impressive, Metal Gear Solid-esque teaser earlier this summer, some doubted its legitimacy as a game. Was it simply a tech demo injected to show off Nvidia’s shiny RTX tech? Was it another entry in the recent trend of “too good to be true” game reveals following in the sorry footsteps of The Day Before? Well, I’ve played Black State and I’m more than happy to report that not only does it appear to be a real game, but a truly promising one, full of bloody, explosive, cinematic sci-fi action, powered by beautiful graphics and a playful physics engine.

My demo began with me taking control of a long-haired man in stealth gear aboard a freighter. It’s impossible not to recall the opening moments of Metal Gear Solid 2 as you wander around its main deck, admiring its reflective metals and the choppy waters surrounding it. Omer Faruk Gungor, studio director at Black State’s Turkish developer Motion Blur, is keen to highlight the game’s graphical prowess, and he’s not wrong to do so – it’s truly a marvel, shining brightly throughout the short 20-minute demo. But what’s perhaps more impressive is the quality of the game – even with ray tracing enabled, the framerate rarely dips below 60, and the demo hits a consistent 140fps in non-combat situations on the RTX 4080-based rig I played on.

But as I mentioned, and as Gungor insists, Black State is not a tech demo. It’s a story-driven action game with enormous ambition. After climbing the ship’s deck and stepping through one of its many doors, that ambition begins to become apparent. Black State’s doors aren’t traditional walkways to neighboring rooms, but rather portals to very different places. After stepping through the ship’s heavy door, for example, I find myself in a museum—its gleaming hardwood floors and pristine display cases a far cry from the industrial ocean setting of moments before. Hopefully, this trick will provide not only a narrative intrigue, but also some ambitious level design that connects multiple types of environments together.

Gungor reveals little about Black State’s story but hints at a sci-fi adventure that can be deliberately confusing at first, before coming together and uniting its disparate, portal-locked worlds through a linear storyline. He cites Inception as a key inspiration, and the more I play, the more that rings true. It reminds me not just of the dream heist masterpiece, but of Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thrillers in general. There are hints of Tenet, not just in the aesthetic but also in the gameplay – a mix of gunplay and close-quarters combat against black-clad commando units.

This isn’t the kind of tactical espionage action that the opening freighter section initially made me think of. In fact, Black State hews much closer to the high-octane action of Remedy than to any of Kojima’s other Metal Gear Solid games. My first encounter is against a squad of enemies rappelling down a museum hallway, Renaissance portraits looking on with disdain at the ensuing carnage. I immediately do what I always do when the option is available: I press the button that triggers bullet time. The slowdown mechanism has a cooldown, but it’s generous enough that I can use it with relative freedom. It looks and feels fantastic – just like the original Max Payne – to burst out of cover at quarter speed before unleashing a hail of bullets on an enemy pitifully stuck in real time.

There were four different weapons available in the demo, allowing me to leave a trail of destruction that was frankly unbecoming of the swanky environment. Alongside a relatively standard pistol and assault rifle combo, there’s an incredibly powerful shotgun that can completely obliterate limbs at close range, and the more sci-fi inspired Fusion Gun. This energy weapon unleashes a bolt of electricity on an enemy that, after a short delay, causes them to explode into a pile of bloody goo. It feels and looks fantastic, especially when paired with bullet time, allowing you to watch chunks of blood and bone fly elegantly across the room. It’s disgusting, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I loved it.

Black State: Gameplay Screenshots