- Reviewed on: Xbox 360 (viewed on an HP PL-4200N 42-inch plasma television in 720p mode)
- Also available for: NA
- The Good: Squad mates carry on amusing discussions during combat; solid first-person shooter mechanics; has moments of surprising fright and spectacle
- The Bad: Unimaginative combat; environments filled with maddening invisible walls; driving missions are bland and go on too long
- The Verdict: It's flawed and uninspired, but this sci-fi shooter is sufficiently diverting to while away a cold and lonely winter weekend
My squad and I jump over a stone wall into the backyard of a handsome suburban home in a small Nevada town. Everything is quiet — a bit too quiet for a municipality recently overrun by vicious alien/human hybrids running fugitive from a nearby military research facility.
A gate creaks open.
My men and I spin around and point our rifles at the opening in the fence. It's just a girl — one of the few survivors we've encountered. But before she can blurt out more than a single sentence of relief at seeing her potential rescuers, a hideous, muscle-bound biped grabs her from behind, throws her over his shoulder, and leaps over another fence, youngster and beast both never to be seen again. "She's gone, man," comes the gentle baritone of the burly black rifleman behind me, who is perhaps thinking of his own daughter, whom he has wistfully mentioned on occasion.
This is just one of several affecting scenes in Midway's new sci-fi shooter BlackSite: Area 51, which has, for the most part, strong production values, a compelling story, and interesting dialogue. Another is a sequence in which the player mans a machinegun in a helicopter, frantically shooting at a ten-story tall worm wrapped around a bridge as the whirlybird engages in daring, acrobatic manoeuvres, one of which involves flying between the overpass' struts.
However, as pulse pounding as BlackSite can at times be, it also suffers from questionable level design and unimaginative first-person shooter combat, causing it to come up well short of must-have status in a season loaded with some of the most exciting and innovative games ever made.
Motivating words, mediocre worlds
BlackSite's presentation is better than average. The story, which centres around secret U.S. government experiments with alien technology on involuntary human subjects, will capture the attention of sci-fi fans, even if, in the end, it fails to ask (or answer) any truly interesting questions. And our chatty squad mates, who keep up a constant dialogue during combat and between missions, are amiable and witty (I especially enjoyed listening to the macho rants of a tattooed tough guy who sounded a lot like Jesse "The Body" Ventura circa his famous role in the movie Predator).
But while the script creates the basis for a strong narrative, the lacklustre environments fail to create a particularly memorable world. Some levels, including one that takes place in a dusty and deserted Iraqi village and another set in a dilapidated trailer park, are bang-on, featuring all sorts of wonderful little visual details, like clotheslines and rusty old satellite dishes. But others are terribly bland and repetitive. One mission, in which I was behind the wheel of a humvee, seemed never to end as I navigated long stretches of empty canyon road punctuated by the occasional cookie-cutter weigh station and random, roaming groups of baddies.
Plus, there are so many invisible walls blocking off apparently accessible areas that I felt like a bird repeatedly flying into glass windows.
An unwritten rule of 3D game design is that if you can see an open street, alleyway, or gap between fences, you ought to be able to proceed through it. Obviously, BlackSite's developers were reading from a different playbook. It seemed as though I was constantly shmooshing my hero's nose up against undetectable barriers, which effectively quashed any illusion I might have been under that the world I was exploring was wide open and free to explore.
Bored shtickless
Making things worse is BlackSite's unimaginative combat. I kept waiting for my bland arsenal of pistols and plasma rifles to be augmented by an innovative weapon like Half-Life 2's gravity gun, or for my normal human soldier to gain some superhuman combat advantage, like increased strength or the ability to slow down time. It never happened, and I felt a bit cheated as a result.
To be fair, BlackSite does have one semi-original gimmick: Squad morale. Plenty of other games incorporate squad tactics, but BlackSite's shtick is that your squad's accuracy and efficacy depends directly on how well you play. Kill plenty of enemies and keep your guys from getting injured and they'll start to perform better, making excellent use of grenades and scoring more hits. Conversely, let one of your troopers get taken down and your squad will freeze up and become all but useless.
The problem is that the game is easy enough on the less challenging settings that your squad, effective or not, is rarely a deciding factor in any battle. Indeed, I almost forgot they were with me much of the time. It's only on the hardest difficulty level that your crew becomes vital, but at that point I found I was struggling so much that their morale was always pretty low, rendering them impotent much of the time.
A one-weekend wonder
I whipped through the single-player campaign in about six hours, and the shallow online modes didn't hold my attention for more than a couple of games. Consequently, I wouldn't recommend shelling out 60 bucks for your own copy — especially in light of its considerable flaws.
However, sci-fi shooter fans might want to consider it for rental. Yes, the combat is unoriginal, but what's there is solid (the interface is intuitive, the weapons perform well, and the enemies are challenging on harder difficulties). Plus, the plot and dialogue are at least as diverting as what you'd find in a mindless sci-fi action flick. It might prove just diverting enough to allow you to kick back and escape a blustery winter weekend.
5
