In the world of fashion, everyone wants to hype "the new black." We say screw the new black. Just give us the original, bold, brazen Black. That's the one we love.

Oh Black, why do we love thee? Your golden locks of spiraling, explosive smoke bring us tears of joy. The crackling thunder of your impressive armament excites us like nothing else can. And yet you challenge us with dozens of mission objectives, as if to tease us with your beauty.

If you find yourself similarly enamored but want some help in winning Black over, you've come to the right place. We've uncovered all of Black's secrets and conquered the game's many challenges. To get a piece of the action for yourself, read our complete Black guide.

In this Black strategy guide, you'll find:

• Basic tactics for conquering all missions.
• Weapons details to help you properly arm yourself.
• Complete Black walkthrough to help you uncover all secondary objectives.
• Black secrets and cheats.

Get the Black Online Strategy Guide

Silver Weapons ... Clear the game on a difficulty and the weapons will be silver with unlimited ammo on that difficulty or less, excluding BlackOps. (Unverified)

Black Ops Difficulty ... Clear all stages on hard difficulty.

M16A2 ... Clear the game on BlackOps for an M16 w/ URGL attachment. (Unverified)

Use 5SQQ-STHA-ZFFV-7XEV a profile name (new profile). Note there must be a dash between each set of alphanumerics. Once you confirm the profile name, the game will ask for a second (real) profile name. This code lets you have an MSAW in place of your side arm.

Alternates:
9NDH-293Y-P6MJ-829Q
8PPV-J8SY-KA8T-BPYK
G68Y-X5LB-N8PE-9D7N
5Q9E-4SEK-FJVV-C5HV
HQ6G-ZP3B-C5LE-WMXA
EG4P-ZGUJ-6SQJ-3X68
6DEG-7W3X-RKJF-TDF4
3K67-9J5G-NSQH-G49M
3ZEQ-JXH9-TR2H-Y87D
FG6S-WFZG-7MDP-PZGT

Submitted by wurd77, arthurportii, spunky725, Tom Farley, pitbulllvr661, Michael Henry Mah, Justin232, tragikthekid, killahsteel
Verified by MarkRyan-IGN (original only)
Check image

Play the coloured game and pay attention to your reticule. When it shifts colour from white to another colour, you are targeting something interesting:

Red is hostile target.

Blue is a destructable secondary objective.

Black is destructable environment.

Green is a friendly (rare).

You can only carry two weapons at a time, but you can relocate a third weapon to a strategic location or next part of a mission.

For example; just prior to negotiating a "fence" point (map feature such as broken stairs, or a ledge) where you will no longer be able to back-track a map to aquire a weapon. Since the game doesn't give you a checkpoint at these mission locations, it's a very final moment in the game, because there's no going back once you drop down.

So here's one way to make that moment much more fun. Note that when you exchange, or pickup a weapon there is a small delay in the weapon exchange. During that brief time you can walk forward quickly and relocate the dropped weapon to where you are now standing. In theory, you "could" drag a third weapon with you through an entire mission .

The fastest way to learn and use this trick is to step back from the third weapon you want to drag with you, hold the "pickup weapon" button down, and then walk over the third weapon while continuing forward in the direction you want to go. The weapon you drop during the exchange will be relocated to a new location (just like the change weapon trick in Halo one).

Where this really comes in handy is when negotiating a fence point in the game. You can actually drag a rocket launcher or other weapon (or multiple weapons for that matter) right up the the edge of the "fence" point, and drop them over into the new area of the mission.

After you melee once, press the reload button, as soon as you do that, press melee again. You will have performed two melees with less than a second delay between them. You can continue this cycle for as many quick melees as you wish.

In the final mission in the last standoff room, there's a door in between the twin bunkers that will not open. On the left of that door is a lamp. If you stand beside the lamp, you should be covered fairly well by the wall the lamp is hanging from. The guards cannot get to you nor may they shoot you; however, you can shoot back at them.

When you need to reload, hit the reload button and quickly press the melee attack button to cancel the reload. Immediately press the reload button again to reload your weapon without the obstructive distance blur.

You can't prime grenades in Black, and enemies will often run away from grenades the moment they see them. To make your grenades explode instantly, shoot 'em with your guns. You don't even have to be totally accurate.