Blacksite Area 51 has some awesome moments, but its generally an underwhelming first person shooter.
User Rating: 7 | BlackSite: Area 51 PC
Coming into Fall 2007, Blacksite Area 51 had a reasonable amount of hype but sadly, the final product is pretty underwhelming. The game has an interesting premise with the American government using Alien DNA to create monstrosities and human/alien hybrids who then break out and take over the small town of Rachel, Nevada. You play as Aeran Pierce, leader of Echo Squad, who is sent in with 2 squadmates to take care of the problem. You'll battle with the same squadmates throughout the entire game and their backstories are filled out through conversations and chatter during firefights. The game also has a political spin and mocks our current situation in the war with Iraq (the game even starts in Iraq) but it doesn't resonate enough to make us care, unlike Bioshock. The graphics are the highlight of the game, using the Unreal Engine 3.0 and everything is incredibly detailed, especially the enemies, who are quite imaginative and unique. However, the shooting is somewhat underwhelming and parts of the game are simply boring (especially the beginning levels). The sound is all right, with conspiracy-like themes playing but the voice acting is somewhat chessy yet hilarious. However, there are just little bugs that add up which make the game hard to recommend. For one thing, downed enemies don't drop weapons and instead it just floats in the air. Shadows are blocky at the edges and sometimes the AI squad doesn't follow you and they just wink into existence at the next checkpoint. You'll also sometimes clip through objects. The physics is also not realistic, since vehicles have some sort of "bounciness" to them. The game also suffers from massive stuttering and adds to the frustration. Overall, the story may be interesting but there's nothing here to really grab you. If you must check out this game, I recommend just playing the Xbox 360 demo, cause what you see there is all you'll see in the full game.
