Difference in Opinion

Midway’s new shooter Blacksite: Area 51 came out recently. You take control of Aeran Pierce, a Delta Force member who is part of an elite group of soldiers called the Echo Squad. Your journey leads you from Iraq to various parts of Nevada in a search to find out who is behind a renegade militia wreaking havoc on Rachel, Nevada residents. You can guess by the “Area 51″ that aliens are involved.

You start the game out in Iraq battling armed insurgents and stumble upon some alien-like beings running around in a building. After you and your team explore further, you find a giant glowing blue crystal, suspended in the air. All of the sudden, one of your squad members, Somers, touches the crystal and it makes everyone pass out. Aliens begin crashing through the walls and you seal Somers off to contain the infection. Fast forward to present day. You are stationed in Nevada and asked to investigate various terrorist attacks being done by a militia in a town called Rachel. You reunite with your old team and begin work on finding out more about the attacks. It ends up, the militia men don’t look human and there are creatures exploring the streets, some of which you recognize from Iraq. As your bullets turn beasts into swiss cheese, you try to find out more about these creatures, how the government is involved, and who is their leader.

Blacksite: Area 51 was built using the Unreal engine, which always produces solid shooters. The plot and feel of the game are great, and there is definitely replay value to the campaign since there are three different difficulties you can try it on. There are some driving missions and gunning missions (from a hummer and a helicopter) that add some spice so you don’t get bored. The biggest problem I found with the single player was not in the plot, characters or graphics, but in the bugs and glitches. I encountered slow frame rates numerous times throughout the story. There are also some various glitches like getting stuck in places and not being able to pick up weapons. I also had some dialog from a previous section on a level repeat at a later point when it was not relevant at all. You would think that they would have playtested this game more if they really wanted to offer a solid game for people to continue to play.

Blacksite does offer a pretty nice online multiplayer, with various achievements associated with online play. Two of the achievements that stick out is one called Exposed which is worth 49 points and is where you play in a match with someone infected by the Blacksite virus. It’s sister achievement, Blacksite Virus Carrier, which is worth 51 points, is where you spread the virus to others. There are a variety of other achievements which are not terribly hard to get, but will require you to play through all the types of games offered online. It sounds like they took a page from the Gears of War handbook. I wish more online games would do that since I think it would drive traffic to a variety of playlists.

All-in-all, this game is a solid shooter and really fun to play through once, if not two or three times on harder levels. It has some great things like hidden item collecting (dossiers), good online play, and a solid story. It really is a shame there are some many glitches in the campaign though.

Final Score
Gameplay: 8 out of 10
Graphics: 7 out of 10