Culture from the darker side

Aliens + guns + conspiracy….. How can you go wrong?

Well, ask Midway and their game “Blacksite: Area 61″.

The Story is told pretty quickly. In the opening you get to fight your way through Iraq into a bunker, where one of your team mates touches an alien artifact and promptly gets left behind.

Fast forward to the present day, something’s off and you and your “Echo Team” are sent in to investigate. Of course everything isn’t as it is supposed to be.

The Game

Well, it’s a first person shooter, as such it is straight forward, and you’d figure there isn’t much Midway could have fucked up…. Well, you’d be wrong.

The problem with Area 51 are numerous:

- Only a handful of weapons. What’s up with that? I mean seriously? The “high end” weapon is utterly useless.
- Not many enemies. You have the general foot soldier and a handful of exotics, but nothing in between really.
- Odd save points. I mean seriously, in the car elements which are sort of a crap shoot they put the distance between save points far apart, on foot, not so much a problem.
- You’d want the background? Well, you have to find the “Dossiers”. Stupid really, TELL me the story, give me additional background later.
- Is this a graphic problem I am seeing? Seriously, the amount of graphic errors is just amazing. People running through walls, Non Aliasing…. The list is endless.
- Repetitive anyone? There is no dynamic in the level design, it’s basically a rail shooter where you can dodge the bullets.

Overall it is just painful to see this game having been released. I got through it in less than five hours (on easy I admit, but hey), and I am severely underwhelemed with the game. There are some “nice” moments. Going through Suburbia and shooting stuff up is fun, the fact that a lot of the environment is destructible makes for fun moments (to a degree) but overall it feels very unpolished, like different pieces being put together without any consideration. If you watch the credits in the end that’s pretty much what you get confirmed, too many cooks in the kitchen.

Simply put: Don’t touch it.

Rating: 1/10