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Blacksite: Area 51
Midway's new first person shooter aims high.
November 25, 2007 | 6:59 PM PSTby: A. McDaniel
AMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
BlackSite: Area 51 is the latest episode in Midway's Area 51 franchise. Although the games have changed dramatically since the original on-rails arcade shooter, the premise stays the same: aliens jump out, shoot them, rinse, repeat.
BlackSite borrows heavily from other series in the FPS genre, such as Rainbow Six, Gears of War, F.E.A.R., Half-life, Call of Duty, and a bit of Halo thrown in for good measure. What you get is a decent mesh of ideas and a game that has potential, at least on paper.
You are the silent protagonist star of the game as all around natural soldier and leader Aeran Pierce. You and your military team were sent in to investigate an alleged chemical weapons site in Iraq three years ago. What you find instead is decidedly more unearthly and a deadly than a few barrels of contagions.
Fast forward three years. You are once again called in, this time to help squelch what is being portrayed to the media as a militia uprising in the town of Rachel, Nevada. You quickly find that is more than a passing similarity between your current orders and your fateful mission three years ago.
What's Hot
By utilizing the Unreal 3 engine, BlackSite offers up excellent visuals. The graphics of BlackSite are easily on par with the best the Xbox360 has to offer. The texture work is top notch. Add in destructible environments and you have the makings of what could be a contender in the FPS genre.
Despite its plot being a bit far fetched, the story is actually quite solid. The banter between teammates is no where near as forced, or annoyingly random as Gears of War or Halo. The military theme is kept throughout the game and serves to deliver several clever in-jokes and military fan-service such as gas prices, a possible military draft, The Geneva Convention, and The Tuskegee Experiment. Under the surface, the writing is a bit more clever than your average shooter. Each level is named after a play on military words and phrases. If not for the extraterrestrial aspect of the story, BlackSite's writing would definitely have kept the game well-grounded in reality. BlackSite's plot is poor and predictable, but its story is written slightly better than your average first person shooter.
Outside of your stereotypical fearless leader/ always right, main character, most of the cast is pretty good. The rest of your multiethnic squad is scripted almost perfectly. Looking at Gears of War and Call of Duty4, it's refreshing to have a black male character that doesn't come across as an annoying caricature of a rap video. Your stock female character of ambiguous ethnic origin and moderate intellect rounds things out. There is only one character that seems a bit out of place, but more on that later.
What's Not
The world that BlackSite is set in looks amazing, but several issues keep the game from being remembered as one of the best. BlackSite suffers from graphic hitches that are common amongst Unreal Engine games, such as random shimmering textures, pop-in, clipping issues, explosions that defy time and space [yes, you read that right], and overall random weirdness. Despite very good facial textures and models, BlackSite also features a peculiar pixilated shading effect across characters faces at times.
Perhaps the most graphically disappointing aspect of BlackSite is that in stark contrast to the otherwise excellent graphical touches, the models and textures of the aliens are a grand letdown. Outside of the Reborn, the aliens are pretty typical and not very detailed. The exploding scrabs look like a poor 3D model of the aliens from space invaders. Until you fight your first wave of Reborn, you will wish that the designers dropped the alien motif and just let you fight Republican Guard throughout the game.
The game's poor AI make for a monotonous play through. Given the game's pretty decent length, it's a shame that there are so very few variant enemy types and patterns.
Speaking of AI, the squad based tactics are poorly implemented. For a game that tries to rely on squad based tactics, rarely does the high and low morale aspect affect gameplay. As long as you are shooting decently, you will often forget that you even have squadmates fighting alongside you. The level design doesn't often offer you flanking opportunities. At best, you can command your team to concentrate fire on a tougher enemy, or you can command them to provide covering fire as a distraction. Mainly you only need your squad to open doors, or akin to Halo, just during driving sequences.
Given the game's squad-based focus, it's also a bit strange that Midway chose not to give players an option to play together cooperatively. BlackSite's online offering does give the already lengthy game some additional longevity. All of the genre standards are available, including deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. There is a unique and fun option that allows you to fight to stay alive, while your opponents playing as reborn have the ability to convert you to their side. The rest of the options are just par for the course.
The lack of subtitle options and proximity based voice, can lead to missed objectives and portions of the story if you're off exploring during certain story points. Also, in comparison to its otherwise solid writing, one of your main squadmates seems to be a bit too over the top. It seems like Midway decided to cast a leftover from Gears of War as comic relief in what would otherwise be a well-told, somber sci-fi tale.
Final Word
BlackSite is a decent game unfortunately held back by poor AI and a lack of variety amongst the poorly designed enemies. Despite its shortcomings and predictability, the story is surprisingly well-written for a FPS. For a title that gets so much right, it's a shame that a lot of its highest points are still only average in comparison to the rest of the FPS landscape. Still, BlackSite serves as a decent rental.
What the Game's About
BlackSite: Area 51 is the latest episode in Midway's Area 51 franchise. Although the games have changed dramatically since the original on-rails arcade shooter, the premise stays the same: aliens jump out, shoot them, rinse, repeat.
BlackSite borrows heavily from other series in the FPS genre, such as Rainbow Six, Gears of War, F.E.A.R., Half-life, Call of Duty, and a bit of Halo thrown in for good measure. What you get is a decent mesh of ideas and a game that has potential, at least on paper.
You are the silent protagonist star of the game as all around natural soldier and leader Aeran Pierce. You and your military team were sent in to investigate an alleged chemical weapons site in Iraq three years ago. What you find instead is decidedly more unearthly and a deadly than a few barrels of contagions.
Fast forward three years. You are once again called in, this time to help squelch what is being portrayed to the media as a militia uprising in the town of Rachel, Nevada. You quickly find that is more than a passing similarity between your current orders and your fateful mission three years ago.
What's Hot
By utilizing the Unreal 3 engine, BlackSite offers up excellent visuals. The graphics of BlackSite are easily on par with the best the Xbox360 has to offer. The texture work is top notch. Add in destructible environments and you have the makings of what could be a contender in the FPS genre.
Despite its plot being a bit far fetched, the story is actually quite solid. The banter between teammates is no where near as forced, or annoyingly random as Gears of War or Halo. The military theme is kept throughout the game and serves to deliver several clever in-jokes and military fan-service such as gas prices, a possible military draft, The Geneva Convention, and The Tuskegee Experiment. Under the surface, the writing is a bit more clever than your average shooter. Each level is named after a play on military words and phrases. If not for the extraterrestrial aspect of the story, BlackSite's writing would definitely have kept the game well-grounded in reality. BlackSite's plot is poor and predictable, but its story is written slightly better than your average first person shooter.
Outside of your stereotypical fearless leader/ always right, main character, most of the cast is pretty good. The rest of your multiethnic squad is scripted almost perfectly. Looking at Gears of War and Call of Duty4, it's refreshing to have a black male character that doesn't come across as an annoying caricature of a rap video. Your stock female character of ambiguous ethnic origin and moderate intellect rounds things out. There is only one character that seems a bit out of place, but more on that later.
What's Not
The world that BlackSite is set in looks amazing, but several issues keep the game from being remembered as one of the best. BlackSite suffers from graphic hitches that are common amongst Unreal Engine games, such as random shimmering textures, pop-in, clipping issues, explosions that defy time and space [yes, you read that right], and overall random weirdness. Despite very good facial textures and models, BlackSite also features a peculiar pixilated shading effect across characters faces at times.
Perhaps the most graphically disappointing aspect of BlackSite is that in stark contrast to the otherwise excellent graphical touches, the models and textures of the aliens are a grand letdown. Outside of the Reborn, the aliens are pretty typical and not very detailed. The exploding scrabs look like a poor 3D model of the aliens from space invaders. Until you fight your first wave of Reborn, you will wish that the designers dropped the alien motif and just let you fight Republican Guard throughout the game.
The game's poor AI make for a monotonous play through. Given the game's pretty decent length, it's a shame that there are so very few variant enemy types and patterns.
Speaking of AI, the squad based tactics are poorly implemented. For a game that tries to rely on squad based tactics, rarely does the high and low morale aspect affect gameplay. As long as you are shooting decently, you will often forget that you even have squadmates fighting alongside you. The level design doesn't often offer you flanking opportunities. At best, you can command your team to concentrate fire on a tougher enemy, or you can command them to provide covering fire as a distraction. Mainly you only need your squad to open doors, or akin to Halo, just during driving sequences.
Given the game's squad-based focus, it's also a bit strange that Midway chose not to give players an option to play together cooperatively. BlackSite's online offering does give the already lengthy game some additional longevity. All of the genre standards are available, including deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. There is a unique and fun option that allows you to fight to stay alive, while your opponents playing as reborn have the ability to convert you to their side. The rest of the options are just par for the course.
The lack of subtitle options and proximity based voice, can lead to missed objectives and portions of the story if you're off exploring during certain story points. Also, in comparison to its otherwise solid writing, one of your main squadmates seems to be a bit too over the top. It seems like Midway decided to cast a leftover from Gears of War as comic relief in what would otherwise be a well-told, somber sci-fi tale.
Final Word
BlackSite is a decent game unfortunately held back by poor AI and a lack of variety amongst the poorly designed enemies. Despite its shortcomings and predictability, the story is surprisingly well-written for a FPS. For a title that gets so much right, it's a shame that a lot of its highest points are still only average in comparison to the rest of the FPS landscape. Still, BlackSite serves as a decent rental.
February 8, 2010
