In BlackSite: Area 51, you frequently encounter load screens displaying "Combat Tactics" game tips. Never has an oxymoron been so apt; "combat" and "tactics" could not be more separate than they are in Midway's new alien-killing, conspiracy-revealing first-person shooter. This sort of dichotomy permeates the entire experience; BlackSite is rife with solid ideas which sputter and fail in practice. This is partially due to the buggy gameplay and partially due to some poorly realized game mechanics, but the game generally falls just a bit too much on the mediocre side of derivative to deliver a truly entertaining experience.
Derik Moore of Gaming Rebellion Writes: "Welcome to another Gaming For Official Use Only. I have wanted to cover this topic for a long time, but I really couldn’t decide on which Area 51 game I would cover. There’s the classic light gun arcade game from the 1990’s, and a fairly forgotten FPS reboot from the 2000’s. I spent too much time trying to figure out which I would cover until it hit me: I don’t have to choose. I’ll cover both before going on to probably the most well known conspiracy theory in mainstream media. Let’s start with the awesome light gun game."
EB's Nat Smyth writes, "Blacksite Area 51 piqued my curiosity when I was a new Xbox 360 owner in 2007, and I had seen it on the shelf too many times in visits to my local Gamestop to pass it up, so I finally bought it. What I got when I played it was a dull, lifeless, and somewhat ugly looking first person shooter that didn’t hold up at all next to the recently released Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare."
Justin from TMSGamer is back for the third, and final part of his article about the worst games he has played on this generation. Remember, these are games only he has played.
Ugh. Not looking too good for Blacksite. Bugs up the wazoo and a horrible framerate.
Gameplay: C-
Presentation: C
Fun Factor: C-
Value: D
Overall: C-
"We're not even getting into the shockingly resilient enemies (save for their heads), the bugs which froze our character in place until he crouched, lighting effects which make all humans in the game look unnaturally shiny and the static, situation-specific expressions on every character's face. It's just not worth it. At a budget price, BlackSite: Area 51 would be tough to recommend even with its vaguely entertaining on-rails shooting sequences and wanton destruction. But this thing is being sold as a full price release and that's just wrong. Midway needs to patch this thing up very quickly or there are going to be a lot of disappointed xenocidal gamers out there this holiday season."
Well that just about sums it up! This game is crap.
@MK_Red
I hope they do get the next gen MK game right. Last MK games were pretty bad, Armageddon on the Wii did terrible and the xbox1 version had better graphics.
Sad... I was kind looking forward to this. Midway really needs a strong franchise and neither this or Stranglehold look to be it so I believe Midways should focus all it's money, time and effort on the next-gen Mortal Kombat to make it a true high quality title.
<sarcasm>
wow, another AAA quality title from Midway for the 360!
</sarcasm>
really tho... with all the huge titles coming out for each console this month, Black site won't go anywhere anyway.