Area 51, how far you have come. Once an arcade shooter, now you're accessible to millions of gamers in their dwellings- and in HD, no less! The Area 51- reboot on Xbox was decent, I played it, and I was done.

However, I have to say that back when the sequel was originally announced last year, I wasn't that excited for it. The original Area 51 for Xbox didn't really grab me like I wanted it to- so why would the sequel? Having seen it at various different stages throughout development, we saw the flaws, the fixes and such, even experiencing the near final demo a few months ago. Were we all wrong? Not so much- at least, not entirely.

Blacksite: Area 51 is, as you'd guess, a sci-fi FPS that is a direct sequel to the previous title. This time around, Midway decided to take a more real- world approach to the design, setting the game in actual locations and sliding in an underlying( yet slightly missed) political message about government conspiracy and war. So, I guess the question is: How does it come together?

More after the jump.

To be completely honest....for the first hour or so, I thought "not very well". The first two levels feel shoehorned in just to give background on what happens later on, rather than actually being dedicated missions. However, upon further play sessions, some of that began to fall away, and the game started to show what it's made of. In the game, Aaren Pierce is the protagonist. Leader of a Special Forces squad ( I know, typical cliche there), you are a Vet. of the war in Iraq, who is sent to Nevada under 'special' Governmental order to try and stop a militia group who is trying to seize control of a base there.

You suddenly come unto the realization that not everything is exactly normal here, and the "alien" menace makes itself known fairly quickly. Being labeled as a "failed government experiment", you learn that the government has been trying to create a "supersoldier" - testing on prisoners, etc., and it's your job to contain the threat and stop a brewing and imminent invasion. Not a very inventive story, but it gets fairly better later on towards the end.

Midway has tried to take subtle potshots at the real-life war situations here. A clever little nod includes mission names that are sometimes quotes from speeches the President has given, chatter from the team mates questioning authority and orders, etc. The game features a pseudo- Squad based control scheme. Aim at the ground to send your squad to where you wish. Fairly simple. You the main character never actually get to perform ANY action here, other than few times later on in the game where you you are allowed to open a door or two. Instead, you'll get radio chatter and in game updates telling you where to go, an icon will appear on the objective and you press the "squad" button to have a team mate do said action. Example: You need to open a blast door. Target the glowing green icon hovering over the control panel, press "RB" to send your appropriate soldier to it, and watch as they open your gateway for you. That is how it unfolds EVERY time. For being such an elite, tactical squad leader...I'd think I could open a door.

I have to admit though, one aspect of the game I was excited for was the Morale system. Sadly, it was not implemented to the highest degree that it should have been. The Morale system revolves around how you perform in combat. Perform well ( headshots, killing enough enemies on your own with various weapons, etc.) and your squad acts like , well an elite squad, giving you audio cues to let you know what's going on, charging into battle alongside you and taking things out left and right. However, screw up by taking too much damage or hide too often, even the death of a teammate - who always resurrect at the next checkpoint- morale will sink, sending your squad into hiding, and leaving you hanging in battle for the most part without providing much help.

The problem with the system though, is what happens when it dips. The firefights are usually fairly often( you rarely take a break for more than 30 seconds), and some get overwhelming very fast. When morale reaches "low" status, your teammates instantly become useless altogether. Their accuracy disappears, they run and hide, and you are screwed. Being a bit broken, I wish it worked as well as it did when the switch is flipped. Sure teammates, run and hide, but at least give me some cover fire now and then.

Gameplay is your standard FPS game. Move from point A to point B, taking out enemies as you cross their trigger paths until your reach the sometimes oddly placed end level checkpoint. Too many times I was just getting into a level, and all of a sudden- fade to black, it's over, Achievement Unlocked. After a while, it dawned on me how similar this game is to Resistance on PS3. Level design, weapon usage, character design etc. all give off a "poor man's Resistance" vibe, yet the game still is fun. Every now and then you'll find a smile on your face when you're taking on a boss with a helicopter's chaingun, or sprinting around the level searching for rocket ammo and a hiding spot to be able to target an enemy's weak spot without it spotting you. Controls are fairly decent, there is a 'floaty' feel to it ( especially in zoom mode) where the reticule lags behind the actual iron sight, but it gets the job done.

In terms of graphics, this is where I became frustrated. Overall, the game looks good, it is sharp and detailed as you'd expect. If you played the demo, then you probably have an idea of how it looks, which is where issues come in. The beginning levels all have the same brown, desert visuals that plague Unreal Engine 3 games. Shadows are extremely pixelated, there are lip sync glitches, etc. Those of you that played Battlefield 2 last year may remember the lighting glitches, where you could look at an area, turn in a different direction only to see a new lighting source pop into view right before your eyes. That happens a few times here, and it is distracting.

Remember in the demo(s) how the game world was destructible? That seems to only be in two or three missions in the retail version, quite odd, and out of place. Objects do not register bullet holes or any interaction for nearly half the game. I was almost set on giving graphics the score I was going to, until the last two levels. It's obvious that Midway either produced these first, and spent the time polishing them, or they had a separate team on the job, as these levels look heads and shoulders better than the rest of the game. The Unreal Engine does wonders with the indoor environments here. I think QA was a bit rushed, too.

Throughout the entire game, I kept wondering why when I killed enemies, why their weapons would float in mid air. Too many times I would be in a firefight, nearly out of ammo, only to see that the guns I need were literally hovering above me, up on landings I cannot get to, and stuck in the ground.

Also, there were a few instances where I ran into severe gameplay prohibiting bugs. Jumping while too close to an exploding bit of cover would leave you stuck out in the open. In one mission in particular had you going through the streets of Rachel, Nevada at night. Upon loading the continuing checkpoint, I found my character was running into a wall ( which I could help, that was how I had ended the previous area), and as soon as the checkpoint loaded, my character would run through the wall and into a bottomless pit where I could do nothing but restart the game. Finally getting away from that part, I found that nearly every building in that mission lacked any sortof barrier to stop you from slipping through the geometry of the level. Poor testing right there that keeps the score down a bit.

Multiplayer is present in Blacksite, but not very playable ( hardly any games were available as of this review). There is Deathmatch variants, CTF, and Abduction gametypes, which support 2-10 players over Live. Standard fare here as well, except for Abduction. In this mode, you start the round as an alien Reborn, and attempt to kill off the rest of the players to turn them to your side. Humans earn points for each team mate that is killed. Eventually it turns into a 1 v. All match, and can get boring after a few tries. Overall, Blacksite is a decent attempt at a sequel to an underrated game. It's representative of what was great about game design a few years ago at best, with nothing really new added that you haven't seen in other games. Is that bad? Not if you like 'popcorn' style action that will last a day or so, as the game takes roughly 6-8 hours to finish on Hard mode. It's just the right difficulty if you're a decent gamer, so it's definitely worth a rental, you need to see the story line pan out- it's definitely interesting. I wish some areas had been improved, or even if the game had been delayed a while to fix certain things, but it's solid. Hopefully, whatever is next will take this formula to the next level.~

Final Score:  6/10

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