BlackSite: Area 51

"This game is an early beta being passed off as a finished product."

Overview:
Blacksite is a standard first person perspective shooter featuring military weapons and extraterrestrial enemy combatants. Blacksite is the sequel to the far superior 2005 video game called Area 51. This game is also famous because the lead designer of the game was fired from Midway for criticizing the company publicly. Unfortunately for us, he was fired before he finished the game or released any serious patches to resolve a wide range of critical flaws.

Graphics & Sound: 7 out of 10
Blacksite uses a highly sophisticated modification of the Unreal Engine 3. You can really see the potential of what the graphics could have been like, if only Midway had not fired the lead developer while the game was still a beta. The textures, back grounds, and characters are all extremely well rendered and detailed. The problem is that they are incomplete, causing numerous bugs. Anti-aliasing, a feature used by most modern games, is not implemented in this game at all. It cannot even be forced to work through driver software. This causes all of the backgrounds and characters to have unacceptable jagged edges, regardless of how powerful your system is. The enemy characters are highly repetitive and generic looking, leading me to guess that only a portion of the sprites intended for the game were ever completed. The same can be said of the weapons, which are more limited than those of the game's predecessor, Area 51.

Control: 5 out of 10
Blacksite has standard controls for an FPS. However, it is difficult to remap the buttons and you cannot remap them mid-game. You have to quit your game to alter any of the controls. You also do not get to save your game very often. The game features some non playable supporting characters who follow you around and basically just get in your way. They have no real intelligence and are neither good for drawing enemy fire away from you, nor are they competent marksmen. This was an attempt to rip off Gears of War a little bit.

Fun factor: 4 out of 10
Black site looks and plays like an unfinished Beta game. Had it been fully completed and polished it would have been an above average shooter roughly equal to its predecessor. In the state that it is in, it is simply not worth paying for. Although the scope of Blacksite is actually a bit more innovative and ambitious than its predecessor, it is so raw and unfinished that it winds up being inferior in most respects.

Replay Value: 2 out of 10
This game has very little replay value.

Overall: 6 out of 10.
Blacksite is an average shooter that had a lot of potential which was wasted due to being rushed through development. The graphics look jagged and incomplete, although highly detailed. The levels and characters are repetitive and generic. The game-play is compromised by numerous bugs and a primitive play mechanics. It was clear that the developer had a fairly ambitious and innovative product in mind, but that his efforts were undermined and the project was cut off at the knees before it ever got up and running. Unless you can find it for sale for a few dollars, it simply is not worth purchasing. This game is simply not competitive with other FPS shooters on the market such as Crysis. It doesn't even equal the better shooters from several years ago, such as the original Far Cry.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/09

Game Release: BlackSite: Area 51 (US, 11/12/07)