If aliens ever come and abduct us, this is one horrible game that they will scoff at and leave on earth.
- Some really nasty and unstructured gameplay.
- Voice acting is beyond the worst in recent memory.
- All weapons look cool, but sound utterly annoying and retarded.
- Unbareable laggy multiplayer.
- A boring, long, and painful 10 hour campaign that comes with minimal achievments.
- Hilariously bad cutscenes that are unskipable.
- Most shooting (and vehicle) sequences take FOREVER.
- There are too many humans and not enough aliens.
- Such a disapointment compared to its previous innovations.
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Not a while ago, Midway was crowned to be the second place in running for taking the best ideas of games and twisting them to an utter disapointment. Premises like sports, shooters, simulation, and action-adventure types of games have all suffered similar demises from Midways misdirection. On the other shoe, Midway turned the leaf over with the Mortal Kombat series and Area 51 series that succeded, if not on the PC or console, in the arcades. Now that they've gotten back into Area 51 (after releasing the letdown that is "Dr. Muto"), its got to be promising, coming from the masterminds of MK and the past Arcade 51s.
Well, I was way off.
The story of Blacksite: Area 51 is hard to remember (as if it actually had one). You play as a marine with your sqaud trying to kill Iraq terrorists and suddenly coming across aliens in the process. Nothing really new here. In fact, that is the grevious downfall of the game and what makes it disapointing. The majority of the game is actually shooting Iraq terrorists in a desert. There aren't nearly as many aliens in the game as you would expect. Furthermore, what's funnier is that a mere fraction of the game actually takes place IN the offical Area 51. The rest of the game is a generic city, a generic desert, a generic wasteland, and more generic generic generic.
Okay, I've made my point that it's a generic game. Still, nothing really terrible, right? Wrong. Its the execution of these concepts that flonder the entire experience. In the worst excuse for the word, Blacksite is probably the most generic shooter released this decade. The gameplay is just as drab. Weighing it equally to about as fun as a cardboard box, mission objectives are so primitive: Shoot some, plant explosives, shoot some more, open a door, shoot some more. The game's A.I. has not one reaction to the way you participate; Your squadmates will frequently block you while your trying to move around indoors while enemies will just stand around admiring the bleak, generic enviorments. The game's hud loops a wavy water effect and the camera bounces up and down uncontrollably while you run. The game is also buggy to a painful extent, with alot of ragdolls clipping themselves to the ground and you can't jump over things like small rails or 20 inch walls. Adding to the list, shooting seqaunces and vehicle events will last up to an hour a piece (similar to Half-Life 2's boating sequence, but twice as long). If there was one game that demanded a "boredom button", this'd be it.
And that's not the end of the problems! The game's graphics don't at all stop there. Well, that's not entirely true, because Blacksite's engine has a somewhat attractive glow to it. The city levels look fairly decent, taking some cues from the Unreal engine to render muddy water puddles on the ground with the effort shared into the grim, black smoke that seeps from the rather 'unfourtunete' building structures throughout the city. But when it hits the rest of the generic enviorments of that nature, the character models and exteriors just look boring. The voice acting and sound is a bit of a mess. The guns themselves look really really cool, like the plasma cannon and grenade launcher, but when you fire them, it will draw the final line for this aweful game. The machine gun sounds completly retarded and annoying, and the plasma gun sounds like somebody is throwing a piece of metal at the ground. The voice acting is also a mutation. As the game opens up in a truckload of other marines, its clear that Midway was aiming to have an epic voiceable opening like in COD4 or Red Faction, but Blacksite is no such game. One minute you hear some scripted man talking in an a hazy static that isn't at all understandable, but later on you'll come across some rugged military madman with a horrible gruff and cloggy voice actor that calls despertely for your TV's mute button.
And lastly, there is a multiplayer mode. Lastly and least, perhaps utter crap at best. You get ranked and unranked match selections, in case you were interested in seeing the scores of everybody else unlucky enough to buy this horrible game. Other options are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the flag, and a wierd bomb retrieval-like match. All easy to get used to; you can set the stats such as frag limit, time limit, and weapon selection. The levels are pretty much what you've seen in the singleplayer, but at least the one and only city level is amusing to play. Its just too bad that the multiplayer is loaded for a setence in insane internet lag. Specifically, Blacksite has the absoulute worst amount of ping levels ever for a game when it comes to multiplayer. Try all you want, but every match you can find is often up to the 555 in the ping. The community is almost entirely dead, making finding a match even harder. Even if you do find enough people to play with, the fun doesn't last for long. The ping, the generic gameplay, the goofy gun sounds, the clipping bugs; all of these flaws wip up their little magic super power to provide one huge tedious experience in front of you.
Blacksite: Area 51 is the worst shooter ever released for the Xbox 360. Its so amazingly bad that even the overpriced tag feels like a kick in the crotch. Its unclear if Midway ever took a last glance at this one after it shipped and somehow managed to get its way onto the selves, but whatever else may be said, it makes one hell of a dust magnet. Considering that the game comes complete with a lengthy singleplayer and online multiplayer with numerous modes, its a mild likeliness that Midway did indeed put a little force of effort into this game. But Blacksite just falls short behind the past installments of the series. If aliens ever come and abduct us, this is one horrible game that they will scoff at and leave on earth.