Product Description

Modern day fears explode onto the streets of a small American town swarming with alien life. The government is desparate, struggling to contain secrets so terrible they can no longer be kept. You are Aeran Pierce, a Special Forces assassin thrown into one of the most explosive moments in American history. Everything hinges on your actions in BlackSite: Area 51

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3282 in Video Games
• Brand: Midway
• Model: 30083
• Published on: 2007-11
• Released on: 2007-11-12
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.50" w x 7.50" l, .33 pounds

Features

• Online Multiplayer Modes: A wide variety fo traditional online modes, such as Death Match, Team Death Match and Capture the Flag, as well as, all-new unique modes created specifically for BlackSite: Area 51.
• One Button Squad Commands: Command your troops to perform a variety fo actions, including planting C-4 to blow doors, sniping enemies in guard towers, or taking control of vehicles - all with one click of a button.
• Incredibly Realistic, Fully Interactive World: From the war-torn streets of Iraq to small town USA, you'll need to use strategic cover points as you blow away your enemies in huge levels where nearly everything you see is destructible.
• As squad commander Aeran Pierce, you lead soldiers who respond to your every order. Lead well and they¿ll rally behind you when the enemy brings the fight, but waver and morale will sink fast, affecting their will to fight.
• Drive the latest military HMMWVs and commandeer civilian vehicles. Take a seat in the gunner¿s position during a daring, low-level helicopter raid against enemy positions. Fight with a range of modern-day Special Forces weapons.

Customer Reviews

Really, really, really short.
I beat the game in just under 6 hours. Yikes! That figures to about $10 an hour for game play!

You're a soldier for the US Army, initially sent to Iran to gather some highly needed, top secret information. From there the story gets fleshed out rather hurridly along with some well over used cliches. The gameplay is fun, the sound an graphics are great. Grenade explosions are really cool and the machine gun is very satisfying to shoot.

However...

This one is a perfect weekend rental. There's a good mix of run and gunning, driving and shooting from a helicopter. I have to repeat that this game was allot of fun to play. There were 5-6 levels (I forget exactly) each broken up into smaller "episodes" similar to the Halo games. Each level was pretty unique and at first glance the game could easily be mistaken for a Call of Duty title. Only a handful of weapons to choose from that sadly, didn't follow you between episodes and I found that I stuck with the machine gun almost entirely through the game except for some of the mandatory sniper episodes. There was also a very limited amount of aliens as well, which was surprising because I was expecting more. However, the ones that were there were very fulfilling, especially the larger "boss" type characters.

I would have scored Blacksite allot higher had it been longer game. You can't imagine my dissappointment after spending $60 and then beating it the same day.

Save your money for the likes of Assassin's Creed and rent this one.

- Dan.

Do not pay full retail for this title.
The graphics are sub par, and no far beyond what you might see on the original XBOX. The game is very, very short. It's unpolished and buggy.

I did play online one match and that was a little better. But this pales in comparison compared to some of the better shooters like Gears, Halo 3, and Bioshock. I picked this and Timeshift up at the same time, and Timeshift is a much better game.

It's probably worth a rental but not much more.

Black Eye: Area 51
This game is bad. Bad, bad, baddity, bad. I hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. Here's why:

* It crashes. Constantly. It would crash at random moments, whenever the game tried to load the extremely detailed environments.

* There are a million load sequences that interrupt the flow of the game. And the load screens are repetitive. And the "hints" the game shares with you are useless. Reload frequently? Thanks, Blacksite, I never thought of that!

* It's linear. At one point, the resident tough guy character quotes Star Wars, cause, ya know, the area looks like one of the chasms on the Death Star. When a character points out how linear the game is, you know there's a problem.

* The enemies are boring. There's one actually freaky alien, and it's telling that the thing is showcased in all the art advertising the game. All the other creatures look like they were ripped out of Starship Troopers. There's also the stupid "exploding monsters" which are a tired staple of FPS. Did I mention that one of them is a giant tower that slowly rotates and farts out alien bugs?

* Squad-based tactics? Sure, that amounts to telling people where to go (they never listen) and telling them whom to shoot at (because it's not obvious?).

* Non-destructible environments. Sure, the fuel trucks can be shot. There are crates you can break, but there's nothing in them. The environment is largely static.

* There's also a rail game component. With monsters that shoot projectiles at you. I've never seen this before. All that's missing is the "shoot me in the head" game.

* You can't affect anything the game doesn't want you to shoot at. You can empty an entire clip into your allies heads, shoot their vehicles, and basically act like a moron without affecting the game. And when I get bored, I can really be a big moron.

* You can jump about two inches in the air. There is no purpose to jumping. You can't scale any environment, except to slowly fall down a zip-line like you're on an elevator. In the one area where you can fall to your death, the final boss battle, your dead body stutter-steps down to the ground. This is a fabulous piece of code, let me tell you.

* It's short. I mean, really short. Even for me. I tried to play the game on a much harder difficulty, but the crashing actually drove me so insane that I wanted to at least get my money worth. So I played it on easy to get it over with.

There are some redeeming traits, but none good enough to make the game worth buying. It's got some interesting environments, including a battle in a suburban neighborhood. At one point you receive air support from a chopper flying overhead while you're duking it out on the ground. And the rail gun battles, while rote, are at least scripted to be exciting. There's also the amusing, ripped from the headlines dialogue. None of that saves this stinking fetid pile of excrement.

In the era of Bioshock, Halo 3, and Gears of War, Blacksite is proof that graphics alone are not enough to make a great game. The developers should be ashamed of themselves, but I can't tell you who they are because while I was forced to watch the end credits...the game crashed.