Reviewed: December 21, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Midway

Developer
Midway Studios Austin

Released: November 12, 2007
Genre: FPS
Players: 1

6
6
6
6
6.2

Supported Features:

Area 51 was already a household name, locked firmly in urban legendary and conspiracy lore, long before Atari debuted their coin-op light gun shooter in 1995. There was no denying the appeal of shooting aliens with plastic pistols, and in 1996 the franchise spread to PC, PlayStation, and SEGA Saturn quickly followed by a coin-op sequel in 1998 that you still might find in bowling alleys and airport arcades.

In 2005 Midway games brought the lore of Area 51 to console and PC in a standard FPS simply titled, Area 51, and here we are nearly three years later with a next-gen sequel. Just how much material can you milk from a top-secret installation where everything is pure speculation? BlackSite: Area 51 is about to find out, and so is anybody who dares enter.

BlackSite puts you in charge of a Special Forces squad, sent in as part of a major military operation to repel an alien infestation in a small town and surround area somewhere in the Nevada desert and mountains. You’ll find you have limited ability to command your troops, but more important is the overall morale, which rises and falls with your current success in each mission. The better you do the better your team does, and vice versa, or at least in theory. The team AI is a bit suspect throughout most of the game, and you ultimately do all the work yourself, which is only fair since the enemy always seems to focus all its attention on you and ignores the rest of your team.

Commands are issued via a single button and are generally context-sensitive to the highlighted area on which are clicking. You can order them to open doors, plant explosives, target specific enemies, and even drive vehicles. The latter skill is a bit of a gamble on your part. If you drive you leave the AI in charge of manning the gun turret, but if you want to shoot then you are at the mercy of the AI who drives like he has a broken GPS and a shredded AAA map. In all fairness, the AI will eventually get you where you are going, but if you are searching for secrets (hidden dossiers) and extra weapons and ammo it’s best to drive yourself.

There is a pretty interesting story lurking behind the gameplay although you never really know (for sure) what is going on until very near the end of the game. You start with a tutorial mission that takes place two years in the past over in Iraq where you uncover some strange alien artifact that is having undesirable side effects on the population – namely grotesque alien mutations. During this mission you’ll learn all the basics from weapons’ use, squad commands, and even how to drive a vehicle in a fantastic “trench run” sequence complete with humorous Star Wars references. [bonus points awarded]

There are definitely some nice touches to the gameplay including missions that take place in ground vehicles as well as my personal favorite; a long and challenging mission on a chopper that requires numerous touchdowns as well as a monumental boss fight with a giant alien who has commandeered a massive bridge spanning a canyon. You’ll fight indoors and outdoors and there is a very inventive and ultra-cool finale level that I won’t spoil here.

The enemies are an odd assortment of aliens crossed with technology, so some look like giant robots from War of the Worlds, while others looks like giant bugs from Starship Troopers, while others look more like the Borg. And we can’t forget the giant worm-like creatures that burst from the ground to devour all. There are a few select boss fights that are awesome and one totally depressing final boss fight at the end of the game – depressing in that he offers no real challenge and goes down with 5-6 shots of any weapon greater than a pistol.

BlackSite offers 30+ missions spread across six episodes that flow together nicely. The even manage to work in the events of the two-year previous tutorial into story elements in the current timeline. I didn’t see any real progression of difficulty. The game seemed fairly even throughout, although there was a bit of a ramp-up near the final boss right, which probably only emphasized just how lame the final boss really was. BlackSite is a classic example of the adventure being in the journey and not the ultimate destination.

Multiplayer is about as generic as the rest of the game. I would have loved to trade in my clunky AI teammates for some real online co-op play like Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon, but alas, we are left with the standard offerings of DM and CTF with team variations that support up to 10 total players. Maps are large enough, probably too large unless you have a full house of players, and CTF is only available on two of the eight maps.

There is also an Abduction multiplayer mode that is nothing more than a thinly veiled Last Man Standing type game where you try to stay alive as long as possible to remain human. Once dead, you are reborn as an alien hybrid and are compelled to kill the human players. It’s a pretty cool team mode where the teams shift quickly in favor of the aliens.

Framerate aside, there were some unforgivable graphic glitches – mostly weapons that would float in space in the Z coordinates of the enemy when you killed them. I was able to forgive machine guns floating 3-4 feet off the floor, but when I blew up a chopper and the sniper’s (who was inside at the time) machine gun was left floating about 150-feet in the air, I had to shake my head in disgust. How did this game ever get past QA, or more importantly, what QA rookie ever thought this was acceptable in a next-gen title?

If I push those two annoying factors to the back of my mind I am left with a visually stunning FPS title full of original beasties, flashy effects, and some awesome environments that even work in some destructible cover, so you can’t stay put in any one place for too long. There are several nighttime levels that were a bit too dark for my taste, and you never get close enough to the enemies to appreciate their stylish designs.

Sound effects are awesome including realistic effects for all the real-world weapons, vehicles, and choppers. The fictional sounds like aliens, robots, alien-weapons, and such are inventive and fit with their sources. There are powerful explosions that punched my sub-woofer into submission and everything was presented in a rich surround mix using Dolby Digital.

The voice acting starts off pretty good until you realize that you’ve heard just about everything these guys have to say in the first two missions. Pretty soon you’ll be dreading their next repetitive one-liner. I did enjoy the frequent radio chatter that offered updated mission objectives and status reports.

There isn’t much reason to play the multiplayer modes. They are pretty generic and you can find similar offerings on better games than this, not to mention, I had a tough time finding anybody even playing this game online. That’s going to make getting a lot of the multiplayer achievements quite difficult to earn.

For the solo gamer, there are still plenty of objectives that will earn you some extra gamer points. I was annoyed that game completion achievements aren’t retroactive for lesser skills levels, but maybe you can get your little brother to play the game on Easy. Otherwise, you can earn points for finishing each chapter, finding hidden dossiers, using each weapons hundreds of times, boosting morale, and taking down certain bosses.

BlackSite: Area 51 isn’t a terrible game. It’s not even a bad game. It’s just not that memorable in what has become an overabundance of FPS titles available on the Xbox 360. The game is also available on PC and PS3, but I seriously doubt it will stand up against other FPS offerings on those formats either.