by: Michael Ogunnubi

June 27, 2008

Blacksite: Area 51 is your standard FPS involving a plot of government conspiracy regarding aliens and experimentation involving humans which results in alien/human hybrids. There is almost nothing to this game beyond that. A few giant alien-monster boss battles which aren’t quite as epic as they should be (not like Lost Planet, but any means) do mix up the otherwise tedious run-forward-while-firing-the-assault-rifle gameplay, but only with further frustration, for the most part. Add a hefty side-dish of graphical glitches, game bugs, and weak story, and you’ve got yourself a sub-par game which is only worth playing is you love FPS games and you’ve finished all your other FPS games… which was essentially my situation for my beating the game.


We’ll jump right in. The story is almost non-existent, what is there you hardly care about, and is entirely predictable. This does not make it bad, per se, and if you love alien conspiracy then you may enjoy the story, but whichever way you look at it the story is far from good. It gives a purpose to a game which needs one (because the game itself doesn’t drive your need to play it), but it also fails in that respect. The characters are decent, but they spout one-liners too often and this gets annoying; they aren’t entirely lovable, but you can grow to somewhat like one or two, if you have low standards of company.

Graphically, the game does look good… but there are problems everywhere, like the occasional seeing through walls, objects disappearing and reappearing, character moving out of synch with the environment (a prime example is when Noa uses a microscope, but her face, hands, and eyes are a good foot to the left of the actual tool, making her look ridiculous). The environment looks good, but then, it’s Nevada. Brown sand, brown rock, brown everything… as well as a few dark underground facilities which don’t shout beauty to you. But there is nothing technically wrong here aside from a few issues which could be patched out… they just haven’t been yet. After at least two patches. Though from what I understand, it’s a fair bit better than it was on release, which was unplayable.

Sound here is a little difficult. If there was music, I’m having trouble remembering it, so it definitely doesn’t stand out. The voices of the characters were well done enough, though the scripting was pretty garbage, so I have to take away a bit somewhere for that, and it directly affected the character’s sounds. Sound effects and enemy noises were good enough, and I always enjoyed eavesdropping on Reborn troops talking, but it didn’t happen much at all. So this won’t be the best section, but it won’t be the worst.

Gameplay was not very exciting, and kind of annoying. Technically, there’s a “squad control” element to this game, but… I don’t really see it. Yes, you use your squad to do things like open doors for you, which is apparently to difficult for you alone, as well as operate computers and so on. You can also select a position ahead and have them run up to it to engage enemies and so forth, which usually results in their swift demises. And sure, they can kill some enemies otherwise, but for the most part, they needn’t be there, and just slow you down (waiting on them opening doors rapidly becomes tremendously painful). The combat is plain, which results in you shooting your main starting gun over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, occasionally picking up very minimal ammo for other guns which are either meant for bosses or for specific scenarios (which means little-to-no sniping outside of the snipe-the-enemy missions, little-to-no firing rockets outside of take-down-the-boss-with-rockets missions, etc). While this is somewhat enjoyable, it does get tedious pretty fast.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t play through this game sobbing over how I didn’t like it; I enjoyed it for the most part, but I was somewhat glad when it was over. It’s not the worst game you’ll ever play, but if you’re looking to invest some dough in a title this year, might want to choose one that you’ll be happy with in the end. But by now, the price of this game should have dropped as well, which makes it even a better time to pick up since you wont be loosing a lot for you buck.

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Blacksite is an ordinary FPS that could’ve turned out really good if it weren’t for the collection of bugs and other issues. The story just passes because it has one, and it’s about aliens. Graphics would score better if not for the bugs, and a re-release or solid patch could fix that in the future. The sound doesn’t stand out but isn’t awful, and voice acting suffers from scripting, not casting. The gameplay is somewhat bland and sometimes tedious, but kinda fun as a result–I never said I dislike an easy game. In fact, often times I enjoy them. Have fun trying to get an online match going.

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