BlackSite: Area 51 (Xbox 360)

Politics and mediocre shooters make strange bedfellows.
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2

The level design is built around one-way ramps that might as well be loading screens for how they signal that you're moving into a new area. Far too much time is spent driving through canyons, either literal or figurative. A big chunk of the endgame has you dangling helplessly on a string, being lowered into masses of bad guys. There are some mildly lively small-town and suburban settings, most notably a trailer park and drive-in theatre. A boss battle against a giant octopus on a bridge, fought from inside a helicopter, is actually pretty impressive.

BlackSite features a squad morale gimmick that doesn't go anywhere. The idea is that the better you play, the more efficient your two teammates will be. While this might be a good idea in theory, in practice it simply means you'll be rewarded for doing well (which is precisely when you don't need help) and you'll be punished for doing poorly (which is precisely when you do need help). Who thought this was a good idea?

The most memorable thing about BlackSite is its clumsy attempt to make a political point. Most of the levels are named after familiar Bush-isms, such as Mission Accomplished, Coalition of the Willing, Fighting Them Over There, Misunderestimated, The Surge, Stay the Course, and Last Throes. In the dialogue, you might catch references to the ozone layer, mortgage rates and Abu Ghraib. The bad guy's final monologue includes chestnuts like "no one told us it was torture" and "men on the ground always get sent home in a box." By the time the storyline is fully revealed, you've got a laughable hybrid of Resident Evil and Walter Reed.

BlackSite obviously takes issue with the current administration, which is hardly a controversial position. But by cramming this position into the game, it comes across as passive-aggressive and slightly insulting, particularly to those who might share that perspective. Does political commentary really work in a shooter this facile? Because if our government is using pieces of a recovered UFO from Area 51 to mutate kidnapped soldiers, homeless people and convicts into mindless zombie warriors, then a little waterboarding doesn't sound so bad.

As a multiplayer game, there's not much here. In addition to the standard Deathmatch and Capture-the-Flag, there's a clever "abduction" mode that involves one team converting the other. However, the weapons are bog standard, with only two "alien" weapons to mix up the usual shotgun/machine gun/rocket launcher schtick. Furthermore, the Xbox Live servers are a veritable ghost town, and there's no option for split-screen multiplayer. It's a shame Midway didn't add split-screen cooperative play, especially considering you play so much of the game with Artificial-Intelligence-controlled squadmates. This could have been a selling point for this otherwise unremarkable shooter.

In the end, this is exactly the wrong time for Midway to release a dull, unimaginative, sloppy shooter like BlackSite: Area 51. With so many excellent titles available, this game and its octopus dog things are going to quickly find their way to the bottom of the bargain bin.

This review was based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.