BlackSite: Area 51 (PS3)

BlackSite, a game that I would always spot popping up on places like Play.com and Amazon. Noticing that I could get a fresh copy from third party sellers for around £10, I decided why not give it a go and have another PS3 game to add to my collection.

After about an hour of playing this game, I soon realised why there were copies selling for £10!

== Plotline ==

Starting off in the Iraq war, your squad is assigned ...
...of mass destruction. However, it turns out something a lot more scientific is going on and could be a potential hazard to the entire world rather than making the current war more dramatic...

Due to this story, I became quite confused right away. After defeating so many Iraqi soldiers and getting the feel of a typical shooter, suddenly loads of monsters appeared out of nowhere with little explanation and instantly gave me that feel of: ... more

BlackSite, a game that I would always spot popping up on places like Play.com and Amazon. Noticing that I could get a fresh copy from third party sellers for around £10, I decided why not give it a go and have another PS3 game to add to my collection.

After about an hour of playing this game, I soon realised why there were copies selling for £10!

Plotline

Starting off in the Iraq war, your squad is assigned to a designated area which is rumoured to contain weapons of mass destruction. However, it turns out something a lot more scientific is going on and could be a potential hazard to the entire world rather than making the current war more dramatic...

Due to this story, I became quite confused right away. After defeating so many Iraqi soldiers and getting the feel of a typical shooter, suddenly loads of monsters appeared out of nowhere with little explanation and instantly gave me that feel of: "What the heck?!" but I guess that’s what the developers had in mind after all.

A few plot twists occur that I never expected and resulted in me becoming more interested to see what else would happen. Wasn't really the gameplay that kept me intrigued, the story kept this entertaining for me and stopped me nearly putting this back in the box forever. It got to the point where I nearly lost track of time and was almost late for work at one point. If a player struggles to put the controller down and switch off their console, then the game must be doing something right after all.

Your character himself seems to say very little and is almost quiet, infact I don't remember him speaking at all. However, he seems to have constant respect from his comrades and will always follow his commands to the end.

Gameplay

BlackSite uses a morale feature for your squad. Higher morale will increase their fighting abilities and decisions. Lower morale will cause them to panic and generally just hide, leaving you to take care of all the dirty work. Due to me playing this on easy, I never actually noticed a difference in my squad even when they were on the lowest form of spirit. Possibly on a higher difficulty this feature would be more active.

The player can carry two weapons at a time depending on their taste. For instance, a rocket launcher and a machine gun. This can be switched at any time depending on what weapons are scattered throughout the battlefield. Ammo packs can be acquired too from certain locations and from deceased enemy soldiers. Other weapon platforms can be used to take down a row of incoming soldiers, while your squad scatters and provides covering fire too.

It's almost impossible not to get hit in this game, not matter how hard you to dodge a rate of fire, you will end up taking at least one hit. Every enemy has top accuracy and will never miss. So taking cover and shooting round corners is slightly pointless and will not give much advantage. As soon as enemy is spotted, just try to take it down as soon as possible. I always do like a challenge...but not to the point where it would probably be easier to dodge rain!

Vehicles can be used to cover long distance and to get past a barrage of many enemies. The player drives while your squad takes control of the gun platform on top. Driving is extremely difficult and so sluggish to get the hang of. Both analogue sticks need to be used, the first to accelerate and brake, with the other to steer.

Sadly, it's time to discuss the bugs will lets this game down dramatically, very much like Far Cry 2 but if not much worse. The entire game runs off the CD, yes, it doesn't install to the PS3's hard-drive! As you can imagine, the frame rate is constantly loading and lagging by trying to process every little detail from the CD. This game had crashed five times on me in total, and my console isn't even a year old. Was this game originally supposed to be for the PS2 or something? I guess the developers thought it was far too late to do that and decided the next generation consoles would be the best idea. If you're going to do that, at least have the game install to the hard-drive! So anyway, there was a part during the game where the screen would freeze and would require me to switch off my entire console. My objective was to defeat this huge alien monster thing and then proceed to this gate to rendezvous with my team. Due to its massive size, it was tricky to defeat on the ground and would mean going to higher ground and using a rocket launcher. On reaching the gate after killing it, the game would freeze and crash. So I tried many ways to get around this, but failed every time resulting in a game crash. Trying my last resort finally worked, by luring the monster to the gate and defeating it there, the game FINALLY managed to progress. Now no gamer should have to put up with glitches like this! If any game makes you angry like this and annoys you, then to me that isn't a game at all. As a developer, you are supposed to check for errors/bugs, did they even do this??

Multiplayer

A few multiplayer modes are available despite the little to no community online. Yes, sadly there are never any players online for this game which can't be a huge surprise. I've tried for the past two weeks trying to get an online game under way, but no deal. Mainly so I could review the multiplayer section fairly, due to this I can only cover it in a basic way and not through my actual experiences.

Your standard deathmatch, upto ten players in an all out war on the same level. Picking up better weapons, dodging attacks, notching up the most kills to win the game etc. Team deathmatch being the same thing, but in two teams taking on each other. Using different types of tactics to take on each other and take each other down. Capture the flag, another game mode very close to team match but taking the enemy's flag and bringing it back to your base to notch up a score. Lastly, is the abduction game mode. Doesn't completely make sense, a form of deathmatch where if a reborn player kills a human player, the reborn will then turn into a human character and vice-versa.

I've created online games and tried to join any quick games, but no dice, none available at all and nobody would ever join my server. It's safe to say there is no online community and it doesn't come as a surprise with many other first person shooters out there being vastly better in so many ways.

Graphics

BlackSite is a plain game; however the graphics are more than acceptable for a next generation game.

I can't have been the only person to notice this, but BlackSite has many enemies that look almost exact from other games such as Half-Life and the Killzone series. Surprised that these game companies haven't sued for plagiarism. Sure, there are minor differences but still, I immediately noticed the similarities. Surely it couldn't have been that difficult to think of their own drawings and then animate them? Very original.

Some areas of the game were quite breath taking visually. During rides on the chopper or driving around, many of the backgrounds and landscapes looked almost real. The shading and lightning from the sun notched up the realism of the detail of the cliffs, grass, rocks etc.

A few glitches can be noticed however in the graphics engine. Weapons from deceased enemies can sometimes be noticed floating in the air, when they should surely fall to the ground?

Sound and Music

Not much in terms of music through BlackSite. More than acceptable but due to the intensity of battles and the loudness of it, 90% of the time I didn't even realise there was music playing in the background. I could have more than easily lowered the sound effects and raised the music volume, but no gamer should have to do that.

Quality sound effects too and extremely raises the intensity of the battles. Pure gunfire going on with your troops screaming orders and battle cries at the same time, definitely how an action game should be.

Voiceovers I have to say are excellent though and a big plus for this game. Quite on par with great games such as Metal Gear Solid, and that’s saying something! The person who the script must have really motivated the voice actors to put a lot of effort in their acting. During dramatic scenes, it can be really difficult to take them seriously if the voice actor is just reading lines for their pay cheque with no effort. However, if it comes across like they actually saying things from the heart, then you get the perfect cut scene.

Recommendations

Definitely not the greatest game out there and doesn't offer anything too special to compete with the better games. So make sure you don't spend anything more than £10, even for a brand new copy. A typical shooter with a sci-fi theme and gives me the impression that the game company were just trying to cash in a quick investment and not really caring what the audience thought.

A very short game too, on average would take a gamer a day to complete. It took me a week due to me playing it on and off. Although if I was really enjoying it, I would have completed it easily in a whole day. Now I can understand how annoyed gamers out there would have been to have spent £30+ on this, really not worth that!

Due to me collecting games and never selling them, this sadly now just collects dust on my shelf and probably will never be played ever again.

The fact one of the developers of the game recommended consumers not to buy this game due to all the bugs says it all, and then he was fired for using freedom of speech just for speaking the truth. What a wonderful game company! 

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