Think twice before dropping $60 on this one...
Fast forward a few months...the game has been released and reviews are out. Most are saying it's very short and not much more than your standard FPS. I wasn't going to let that deter me...I loved the original arcade rail shooter and the PS2 follow-up, so how could this disappoint me? Dammit! I hate when I'm wrong!
It's not that Blacksite is a bad game...it's just not quite done. Undercooked if you will. First of all, there was a huge lack of alien activity. You think Area 51, you think little grey men with big black eyes and ray guns. At least that's what I envision. What I gathered from the story was that there was alien technology at work, but most of the creatures you fight are genetically altered humans...super-soldiers if you will. There are giant worm-like things and huge beetle bug-like creatures (seemingly stolen from Dune and Starship Troopers respectively) but you never see any of the steriotypical 'Greys"...and that's what I wanted to see.
Now for the really bad news: The entire game took about 6-8 hours to complete. And that seemed like an eternity considering how linear and dull the story was. I would have loved to see more branching paths and different options for completing objectives. And could you please make a gun that's somewhat accurate??? I realize they are super-soldiers, but how many head-shots can they take? I'm really not complaining about the difficulty because I did finish the entire game on the medium difficulty setting without too many deaths, but the places I was having the most trouble with were because headshots had almost no effect.
And while I'm on the subject of "bad", did anyone do any quality control on this? I FELL THROUGH THE STREET! And I don't mean that something blew up under me and I died, I was circling an enemy and suddenly my character had fallen through the street into a void. I struggled to kill myself so I could start the level over. And this wasn't the only glitch in the game. I watched the ceiling in an elevator come down on the heads of everyone in the group, vehicles float in mid-air, and several other fantastic anomolies.
It really feels like Midway rushed this one out and could have spent a little more time working out the kinks. Overall, the experience was mediocre at best and the lack of a compelling story and graphical hiccups really brought the score down further. I would have prefered this not bear the "Area 51" name because it really doesn't fit in with the previous installments.