Review: Blacksite: Area 51

Gameplay: 7
Sound: 7
Graphics: 8
Value:6
Overall: 6.9

Good
· Great controls
· Wonderfully average...
Bad
· Boring campaign
· Boring multiplayer
· Boring

To say that Blacksite: Area 51 is average is an understatement. It has no real identity, purpose or special feature to keep players hooked. If you enjoy playing average games, however, this might be the title for you.

Published by Midway, Blacksite is a new shooter that takes players from - controversially - Iraq to alien infested facilities in the USA. There are a tonne of shooters on the Xbox 360; all of them geared towards the Western market, but if there were ever a game that was targeted at America, Blacksite would be top of the list. Everything from the graphical style to the voices and the opinions of the characters suggests that this game was made for a very specific, very American, very gay audience (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing...). For example, in the opening sequence you’re sat in the back of a van with your two squad mates who are dicks, BTW, and you’re moving through Iraq and the driver of the vehicle turns on some music which is obviously not western and one of your squad mates says “turn that crap down” and it’s these kind of semi-raciest and intolerant comments that you’ll have to put up with if you want to spend any length of time playing Blacksite and it pisses me off!

The story in Blacksite is anything but interesting. When the game was in development there was a reasonable amount of intrigue shrouding this game because developers Midway Austin suggested that the title would be “political” and would discuss topics of relevancy in today’s news. However, when you look at the story in Blacksite, the ethics and politics that were supposed to be at the for front of the game sit all the way at the back and is replaced by a boring and rather straight forward revenge plot. I guess that Blacksite’s main premise is that it would debate the need for war, and specifically, the war on terror in Iraq, but unfortunately it just doesn’t deliver on all of the intrigue that was hyped up around it.

I think that any gamer who knows their stuff knows that quite a high percentage of shooters are built using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3, and guess what? Blacksite joins that ol’ band wagon, meaning that when you’re playing the game, all you’re going to be thinking about are the better games that are utilizing that engine. Now, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but because Area 51 is so average, after a few hours you’re probably going to want to go back and play some other, better game.

When you play Blacksite though, you realise that yes, it looks like every other FPS with aliens, but, to Midway’s credit, everything that it does, it does well. Actually, ‘well’ might be an over statement; a word that’s more suitable is ‘ok’. Probably the best thing about the title is the game’s controls. In terms of the buttons that they’re mapped to, they’re really the same as every other shooter, but, playing Blacksite, shooting something in the face feels really good and that’s probably the most important thing in a shooter, the part where you shoot.

Graphically speaking, the game’s really good looking, with some really great textures and some nice little animations which enhance the realism of the universe in which you play. An example of this is that whenever you push up to a wall, your gun wil move back. This is probably because the Unreal Engine 3 is prone to quite a bit of clipping and so Midway have cleverly avoided that little problem with an effective and realistic solution. However, there are so many other technical problems that the positive comment above becomes void. The amount of glitches in Blacksite are unprecedented in a 360 game. For example, there are only a few animations for when enemies die and so if you kill one of them, there’s a possibility that instead of falling to the floor and letting their gun fall out of their hands, they’ll just hover in mid air with their guns in the same place as they were before they died. This isn’t really a noticeable thing until you get about half way through the game where you’ll be encountering a fair few enemies at once (over and over again...) and you’ll look out and see a tonne of floating bodies and guns all over the crazy place!

Everything else about Blacksite is really just standard stuff. In terms of sound there’s...good bullet sounds...I guess?! Really, you know the deal with a game of this calibre. Before I finish I’ll give the multiplayer a mention, but it’s nothing that special. Imagine the modes that would come with a standard shooter and you’ve got Blacksite: Area 51. Included in this amazing and original game (ehm) are deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag and another mode too dull to describe. It’s just your basic stuff. The maps are even more boring. With a game like this you’d think that they’d spend more time on developing a good multiplayer portion because they’d realise that the single player experience wouldn’t be enough to attract hardcore shooter fans. That’s not the case though and when I went to try out the multiplayer there were two people online, so don’t expect there to be a big community.

To say that Blacksite: Area 51 is average is an understatement. It has no real identity, purpose or special feature to keep players hooked. However, if you enjoy playing average games, this might be the title for you. Enjoy!

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--