E3 07: Blacksite: Area 51 hands on

by: John - posted: 7/22/2007 9:14:00 AM

When I was at the Midway press conference, I was surprised by how well the trailer looked for BlackSite: Area 51. My appointment with Midway ended with a hands on demo of the game and I came away with good feelings about the game.

Blacksite: Area 51 has sure come a long way from the days of being an arcade shooter. This first person shooter uses the Unreal Engine to power your fight against those from another world. An alien outbreak is happening and you must go in to contain the threat. The game takes place in many familiar settings so you can actually relate to your surroundings when you are running through them.

Your squad depends on you and they all have a morale system. When things are going well your teammates do better and they are more aggressive. If things start getting dicey, your guys won't be as effective and they might hide more. The moral system adds a little variety to the game so as you do better with practice you will find your guys fighting accordingly. If you don't want to play with the AI, there's going to be a cooperative mode so you can go through the entire single player story with a buddy. I'm glad to see this feature showing up more and more in games and Blacksite: Area 51 should benefit from this feature.

The level I played took mostly in the gunner seat of a helicopter. One of the nice things about the game is the scale of some of the aliens you will face. The tentacle monster that I had to shoot down was pretty big and the helicopter flew around the monster on multiple passes showing just how big the monster truly is. There were plenty of obstacles to blow up as well and I was told even more cars and objects were going to be added to shoot apart.

Landing on the ground, I was treated with the standard first person shooting fare but had some additional help. In this level, I could mark a few of my enemies with the right bumper and my buddy in the helicopter would gun them down. It's nice to be able to count on others as I am getting a little tired of the one versus everyone mentality that a lot of first person shooters have.

The alien models are pretty cool and have some nice variety in them. I didn't see any small big head, big eyed aliens running around but the ones I ran into looked fierce, muscular, and downright nasty. A few I encountered that's sure to be the general monster you face were reborn soldiers. They are basically engineered humans with alien DNA. The pure alien creatures are moreuniquely designed though.

The one problem I did see though is that this game is coming out when there's a plethora of great games being released. That fact might make Blacksite: Area 51 lost in the shuffle and that would be a shame as the game from what I saw looked fun. It's nothing that's going to be amazing but it's a good time and running through with a friend should be a blast. I hope that when it's released that it lives up to my expectations after seeing the good trailer and playing the game a little. It would be a shame if Blacksite: Area 51 turns out to be a good first person shooter and doesn't get the recognition it deserves.