Area 51 Review

Area 51 was an addictive light gun game allowing for intense cooperative play, killing aliens and government agents along your way. It was in-your-face action, and the enemies came at you fast and relentlessly, causing me to waste tens of dollars just to make it farther into the game.

When Midway announced that they would be remaking the game in the form of a multi-platform FPS, I became intrigued. Midway had certainly revamped the classic Spy Hunter series, but could they strike gold twice? Certainly light gun games like Area 51 and Time Crisis seemed to be natural candidates for 3D makeovers. Still, could they truly re-envision a game like Area 51, capturing the spirit of the original but also adding enough innovation to make the game relevant today? There was only one way to find out, and, fortunately for us, it didn't require rolls of quarters in poorly lit, unclean rooms filled with hordes of screaming kids.

After an alien virus has been set loose at the fabled Area 51, you, a member of the HAZMAT team, are sent in to help. Your opening assignment is to locate the first HAZMAT team dispatched on site, but you quickly find yourself beset on all sides by hordes of hideous, mutated humans from the facility. What starts as a rescue mission will become a fight - not only for your survival, but perhaps for the survival of the entire human race as well.

Nice Looking effect

Cooked critters

Nice retro Area 51 shout out

Gameplay
It has become more and more difficult to find FPS games that aren't fairly formulaic. The movement keys continue to make use of WSAD and the mouse continues to aim and shoot. Still, it's in the way the game plays that we see its true mettle.

Outside of the standard movements and commands, Area 51 does feature a scanner. This scanner acts in a manner similar to your visor in Metroid prime, allowing you to scan certain interactive objects in the game. The difference here is that you actually have to leave the game to access your datalink. I bring this up for a good reason, though: to point out that you need to remember to access the datalink and secrets information. Much of the story and overall mythos of the game is developed through these items, and if you simply play through the game without exploring and accessing these, you will find yourself scratching your head quite often trying to figure out what's happening. My complaint remains that you cannot access the information in-game like you could in Metroid prime, which would have encouraged more emphasis on finding these scan-able objects and items.

Your in-game weapons are fairly standard, featuring the pistol, automatic rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle, among others. This game likes dual weapons wielding and certainly two shotguns at once make for some nice power killing. When you run out of ammo, though, you immediately drop the second weapon and reload only one of them. Outside of these, you find the usual bevy of grenades, both the standard fragmentation grenades and the much more powerful JB grenades, which have a plasma look and feel to them. Without a doubt, however, the true gem here is the alien BBG gun. This gun allows you to shoot around corners and is just plain fun to use. When you activate the secondary function of this weapon, it sends out a green beam, showing you the anticipated trajectory of the weapon's path. When the beam turns red, it means you have an enemy in your sites. This makes clearing hallways a lot of fun and reduces the number of unpleasant surprises you will encounter.

At an early point in the game, you will be infected by an alien virus. This virus causes you to mutate into a killing machine. Using your mutagen powers, you can launch projectiles or just use your melee attack to cut a swath through enemies. This can be a useful skill, especially when fighting melee enemies, but stick to your guns when it comes to enemy soldiers, as they will sometimes blow you away before you can reach them in mutant form.

Area 51 features what has become your standard on-the-fly objectives game. The story and the NPS often dictate what tasks or conditions you need to fulfill to proceed. These include environmental puzzles, key hunting, and the always fun switch-finding. For the most part, these puzzles are intuitive and the levels are never so big that you truly get lost and cannot find your way out. In fact, the game has a way of locking behind you, preventing you from backtracking.

The combat in this game is much more arcade-like than many other shooters on the market and bears more resemblance to the Timesplitter games than to Half-Life. Although Area 51 is not a super hard game, you will find yourself dying on a number of occasions. And with only an autosave feature tied in to checkpoints, you will have to backtrack sometimes after particularly ugly fights. With the way combat unfolds and how intense it becomes, this type of combat is really the only way to do things.

What do you mean the switch is on the other side?

Nice large open area

Say goodbye to crispy

Graphics
For a port of a console game, I must admit that, outside of the occasional jaggie, this is one good-looking little game. Although for the most part the environments that you play in are similar to those seen in games like Doom3, it's the overall picture that helps here.

Area 51 features probably the best use of different lighting effects since Tron 2.0 was released a while back. From the glowing neon on enemy suits to the body heat seen while in mutant form, it's obvious that a lot of time was spent on the visuals of this game. I managed to play it at 1280 resolution and max textures without any noticeable slowing in-game. This means that not only did I get the good graphics, but I never dealt with annoying lag during the more heated battles.

The character models employed in-game are quite good, if used rather frequently. Certainly there was not much difference among similar enemy troops, but what I saw was always pleasing to the eye. The CGI cut scenes were very well done, featuring a kind of grainy haze that actually added to the overall ambiance. They managed to cram a lot of action into many of the sequences; I only wish that they had used more of the cut scenes while they were at it.

Visually this game may not have been on Par with HL2 or Doom 3, but it was a good looking game and easily the best looking on any platform.

Sounds
The sound category for Area 51 will be the most subjective. Played properly, this is one very loud game. At any given moment, especially early in the game, there are a lot of things happening on the screen at once. From explosions and gunfire to the screaming of soldiers and mutants, the game provides plenty of stimuli to keep you focused.

The background sounds were well-used and appropriate for the given situations, and although the music is nothing special, it seems to fit in fine where it's needed.

Music and effects aside, this category runs into trouble in the area of voice acting. Area 51 features celebrity voice talent and I will quickly run them down.

The main character of the game is the mostly silent (at least while in-game) David Duchovny, portraying the main character, Ethan Cole. Much has been made of the voice work Duchovny did for this game. When broken down, most of the dialogue given over to Duchovny involves between-level narration. It seemed to me that the flat tone of this narration was intentional. From the beginning, the story is told as though the events have already happened and are merely being repeated. Duchovny uses his standard, and very famous, Fox Mulder style voice, and for the Alien Conspiracy aspect of the game I, personally, found it to be appropriate. When I think of Duchovny, I think of Fox Mulder, and that is who I expect to hear, so I wasn't bothered by his voice work for this game.

The other two major celebrity voice overs in this game come from Powers Booth (Deadwood on HBO) and musician Marilyn Manson. For some reason, Powers Booth plays the perfect Army major in this game. He is the insistent, demanding voice of reason that serves as a kind of lifeline for your character and his humanity. Marilyn Manson plays the voice of the enigmatic Edgar, a deformed alien who speaks to you through the dead enemies you encounter throughout the game. Manson does a solid job of voicing Edgar and truly steals the show as far as the voice acting goes.

From the loud sounds to the music to the Hollywood voice talent, it is apparent that a lot of attention was paid to the sounds of Area 51. Now, you may or may not like the voice overs, but they do help lend the proper atmosphere to this game, and, in the end, that's what is important.

Please be quiet, conspiracy in progress

That might have hurt

Mandatory creepy old guy

Multiplayer
While Area 51 does have some unique features, from the ability to mutate at the touch of a button to guns that shoot around corners, I found the multiplayer aspect to be pretty standard, with a few exceptions.

As an addition to death match, team deathmatch and capture the flag, the infection mode is a new mode and is fairly fun to play. It involves one infected character attempting to infect every other player in the game in order to win.

The other interesting feature is the way the multiplayer mode scales the game for the number of players. When it's a smaller game, certain areas will be locked off, typically by doors. These doors will be locked until enough players join the server to make for a more competitive game. While it was a fun experience, there were not as many folks playing online as I would have liked. This could be due, in part, to the more arcade aspect of the combat in-game.

Replay Value
Area 51 does hold its share of secrets, as well as things that will have you scouring the levels to scan in. Once you scan all of these in, you may find something new…. Outside of this collecting and the multiplayer aspect, this will likely be a shorter game for you than some. The gameplay ranges from 14-20 hours depending on the type of gamer and collector that you are. The difficulty ranges from easy to impossible at times and will require a few second, third, or fourth chances to get past certain encounters. Still, at a brand-new price of $29.99, this game is a true bargain, especially for what you get.

Conclusion
This game is truly an interesting combination of gaming elements. For those who are fans of the sci-fi genre and shows like the X-Files, you will find some serious humor within the confines of Area 51. Its clever, dry wit may be missed by those who fly through things, though, so play this game at a more leisurely pace to ensure that you don't miss anything. If Half-life and Serious Sam were combined, I have a feeling that Area 51 would be the result. The game is not for everybody, but given the bargain price and the decent sounds, graphics and storyline, it should be worth the pick up for even the casual gamer.

Key High Points

- Loaded with intense firefights, often against overwhelming odds

- Features the unique BBG which allows you to shoot around corners

- Solid voice acting by Hollywood talent

Key Low Points

- More time needed to be spent incorporating more storyline into the game

- Some areas felt too arcade-like, creating the FPS on rails experience

- Some of the voice acting may be too much for the casual and hardcore gamers alike