Customer Reviews

Area 51

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Area 51," the FPS redux of the arcade blast fest of the same name, is fun and addictive - two qualities that are certainly necessary in any good FPS. However, it is also, in a word, anticlimactic.

In "Area 51," you take on the guise of Ethan Cole (straight from the Generic Hero Name Generator), a soldier voiced by the "X-Files"' David Duchovny, as he and his team are sent into the legendary military facility known as Area 51 to investigate some strange occurrences there. Suffice it to say that Ethan and company get more than they bargained for, and have to shoot hordes of aliens and genetically enhanced baddies to ultimately win the day.

"Area 51" owes the usual debt to "Half-Life." The setup is similar, it goes without saying, but the infamous underground base and namesake of the game do provide some unique thrills - even if they're not fully capitalized upon. The level designs too often involve lots and lots of flip switching and button pressing, but otherwise do their job admirably. Still, although the top-secret setting provides ample opportunity to theorize in a fantastical way about what kinds of things that are truly taking place there, the game makes it feel quite familiar, like pretty much any other generic sci-fi corridor crawl, complete with bloodthirsty mutants and evil extraterrestrials. There are too few moments of sheer inspiration here - which makes one sequence, a sardonic discovery that the first American moon landing was faked, all the more memorable when it occurs.

Enemies suffer from this same sense of "been there, done that, shot that a million times before in a million other shooters." That said, there's more than a little something to be said regarding the gameplay, which is fast, furious, and ultimately compelling. Weapons, while mostly boilerplate (not surprisingly), pack a real wallop that is too often missing in the genre of late, and taken in effect with some very good rag doll physics make for action that is truly tasty. Given that this is an action game through and through, that's certainly high praise, and makes the game recommendable on that point alone.

Halfway through the game, the player character develops mutant super powers that further inject some sense of variety, allowing him to slow time, hurl vampyric parasites that can restore his health, and ultimately turn his enemies against each other. Whether or not this mutant element of the game is essential from a design perspective, it nonetheless adds flavor, and at times these abilities (particularly the parasites) are extremely helpful in dire combat situations.

Production values are another high point in "Area 51." As previously stated, the graphics are easy on the eye, and don't come with a high price attached. Despite the onscreen action there's never any discernable slowdown, and load times between missions are exceptionally brief. Also worthy of mention is the professional voice work, done by the aforementioned Duchovny (whose recognizable brogue makes it easy to settle into the conspiratorial setting despite the character's blandness), Powers Boothe (underused here as Major Bridges), and Marilyn Manson (whose alien, "Edgar," is the stand-out). Unfortunately the sound effects wrapped around these things can be a bit tinny at times, and, on a few occasions, quite annoying. Weapons discharges have a good sound to them, though, which helps make up for this.

It's unfortunate that the storyline running behind the scenes here is so unremarkable -- except perhaps for its remarkable ability to confound and confuse. It's a convoluted mess chock full of loose ends never properly tied. Perhaps the biggest flaw in "Area 51," however, is the anticlimactic finale, which comes and goes without much ado - so much so, in fact, that I had no idea I had reached the conclusion until I got dumped back onto the menu screen. Given that the single player campaign is fairly brief, this is a real disappointment.

All in all, though, "Area 51" provides an enjoyable FPS experience while it lasts, which unfortunately isn't long enough. Even so, the quality of the action at hand nullifies many of the game's faults. Well worth checking out, when it's all been said and done.

Granted most XBOX owners have been completely and utterly spoiled having played HALO 1 & 2, so to expect anything less from a 1st Person Shooter would be uncivilized. Right? Well, yes and no. The problem is, with any great game such as HALO, the bar is always raised exceptionally high for posterity. As such, any game that came on the market after November 4th, 2004 (HALO 2's original release date) must live up to the high standard set by an almost instant classic.

Here gamers are confronted with AREA 51. A noble attempt at mixing HALO with Half Life that fails miserably in the end. It's not that this isn't a great game....ok well it isn't a great game. But, that's not the point. It's a decent game that does what it does well. The problem is you will get tired of it doing what it does and eventually wish you had rented it and not purchased it.

In the ohh so familiar words of my Business Law professor from Sophomore year: "Here's the deal". You're Ethan Cole, a bio-chemist @ the Groomlake testing facility we all know as AREA 51. Your list of credentials is as long as my....well you get the idea. You've been summoned to Dreamland in an effort to control and increasingly less controlable situation that has overrun the base. You soon find out that YOU have been infected with the virus and learn that you can mutate into a...well "mutant" and kill your enemies. You use some of your super mutant powers (you'll see what I mean), your mutagen level will dissapate quickly and your must find an infected corpse to suck the mutagen out of or find a vial to inject yourself with. Consequently the best way to use your mutant powers is to melee attack your enemies which, for some strange reason, builds your mutagen level back up. Talk about roid rage. I think throughout the game I used the mutate ability once or twice. It's just not as fun as blowing some poor cloned SOB over a railing to watch him fall to his death. Sounds exciting right? Not so much.

Gameplay doesn't falter, because it runs on the ever effective "I shoot you before you shoot me" engine. My faults with the game lie with the repetitive nature of the game. First there are only 5 or 6 different types of enemies. The mutant dudes, the mutated dudes, black-ops dudes and grays. While i may have missed one or two, 90% of the game is spent blasting away @ these creatures like there is no tommorow. It just get's boring.

I hate to keep referring to HALO, but this is the base for which all games get judged. Remember how the Master Chief was always doing something to help someone, going to different worlds, indoors and out, riding on vehicles, in outer space etc? Don't come to the AREA 51 dinner table and expect to get any of these meals. They're fresh out. As you climb deeper and deeper into the bowels of the base you will start to think...Damn, didn't I do that before? Yes, Watson, yes you did.

Another problem is while some parts of the game are almost too easy, some parts are just way too damn hard. You'll find yourself playing some pieces over and over and over. While this is to be expected, it just seems like sometimes you get bogged down in places for hours on end. Why? The weapons. They just suck. With the exception of the sniper rifle, none of these weapons has an outside purpose, and even it doesn't have the kick that a sniper rifle is supposed to have. What's worse is the horrible dual-weilding mode that you have no control over. Back to HALO, you could walk over most weapons and CHOOSE to dual weild AND you could dual weild different combos of different weapons. Here the computer does it for you. If you happen to walk over an assualt rifle it will automatically dual weild it and you can't drop it OR reload (which SUCKS, especially when you're running low on ammo). This coupled w/ the fact that you can't save the game until you reach a pre-determined checkpoint is enough to drive a man to drinking (more). It's analogous to climbing all the stairs in the Empire state building only to be told that you have to start @ the ground floor again because you missed a step. AREA 51 is soon approaching the $5.00 bin @ Wal-Mart.

The final straw for me was the game's sound and graphics. You'll be ready to toss this one back after you hear the horrible sounds that these creatures make when they attack, get shot and die. I still can't put my finger on what the Black-Ops dudes sound like when they take some lead to the chest. And while the environments are rich with vivid colors and meticulous detail, everything else looks like it was drawn @ a pre-school. Overall the game's graphics are comparable to a early PLAYSTATION 2 game, if not worse.

You would think there would be some high points for this game? Well they're arent' many. I haven't had a chance to evaluate the online play (which I hear is quite good) so perhaps I would have given it a better review had I experienced AREA 51.

Again, if you're looking for a decent run of the mill shooter for the weekend. Rent it and return it. Otherwise, buy it once it goes on sale.

Area 51 is a shooter game where you - a HazMat team member - go in shooting away first at mutated humans, and then at a series of aliens. Shall we call this Half-Life-A?

You start, pretty typically, with training style stages. You learn how to shoot, how to move. But in no time at all you and your team are off taking out virus-infected humans. This game definitely earns its Mature rating. Even some of the first scenes of the "transformation" are pretty gruesome. When you get into full blown combat, there is blood flying everywhere, and some decapitations.

You move from area to area, looking for key cards, trying to open doors, blowing away tiny scorpions and giant six-eyed monsters. About halfway through the game you get infected and are now able to switch easily between a human and an alien. This gives you a nice mix of awesome firepower and bone-crunching hand to hand combat.

The graphics are reasonably nice, with shiny liquids, matte metals, and yes, a lot of blood. The sounds involve some well known voice talent (David Duchovny, Marilyn Manson) and in general helps to draw you into the game.

Really, though, the reason you play a game like this is to blast things. There are secret items to find on each level, plus different levels of difficulty to challenge you.

Yes, it can be relatively quick to just zip through the game from start to finish if you're skilled at this type of game - maybe about 6 hours for most. Still, if you go back and start looking for the secrets, and finding the hidden weapons, you can really hone your skills.

Plus, as with most games of this ilk, the multiplayer is where you really get to test your skills. It's easy enough to fight off AI - but can you handle yourself when real humans are involved? You can easily get hooked for weeks if you find yourself some good multiplayer partners.

Well recommended for those into bloody first-person combat - just be sure you don't mind blood before you begin!

Area 51 by Midway was a classic arcade shooter brought home now to the X-box. While it doesn't have quite the same shooter style as that arcade version it adds more of a storyline to make this a fun game experience. Area 51 concerns that legendary secret military base where remains of alien spacecraft and bodies are supposedly stored. In the story a viral outbreak at the facility has put it into total lockdown, trapping all personnel inside. A special forces unit is sent into the base to investigate. David Duchovny of X-files fame provides the voice of Ethan Cole, a role that the player takes on as a member of this HAMAT special forces team. As you and the team begin your investigation you'll encounter the former Area 51 staff who have become mutated from the alien virus.

You'll encounter hordes of enemy mutants along the way and begind blasting just like in the arcade classic. Handguns, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, gun turrets, even alien weapons will be at your disposal to use. One cool feature is the ability to wield two weapons at once although it has to be the same weapon and control with two weapons is a little bit on the dicey side. You'll really be kept on the edge of your seat as enemies pop out from virtually anywhere so you have to be on your guard constantly.

The graphics are really fantastic and the cut-scene cinematics are some of the best I've ever scene. The gameplay action moves smoothly and is very crisp and brilliant. The model are rendered very well. Great sound is also on display. Besides Duchovny you get Powers Boothe and even Marilyn Manson doing voices in the game. Be prepared if you have kids around. There is a lot of swearing in the game that really earns it the Mature rating.

The game can be played online on X-box live through all the usual game types such as death match and capture the flag. There are 17 different maps to play on offering a lot of diversity and I'm sure they'll be more to download later. all in all this is a great game. The cinematics and storyline make this rise above the standard shooter.

This game is realy fun. I didnt think i would like it but when i played the demo on mortal kombat i knew it would be good. its a very unique game witht some parts that feel like halo but its alot darker and more brutal it makes halo look like a kids game.Its prety chalenging and has a good story line with huge twists like turning into a alien zombie is the craziest part in the game but real fun and unique. one down fall is that later on throught the game the levels do get very old and you it makes you feel like your just fightin wave after wave of the same wierd lookin guys with blue blood that come from no where. but other than that it is still a good game with very good graphics and some surprize voices like marlyn manson who plays the perfect role in this game and dave douchey from the x files who is in the perfect game for him. i dont think i would pay 50$ for it right now its not an excelent game but later on when it gets a lil cheaper ill be sure to buy it, even after you beat it theres always extras to find so you can go back and find them all the second time because there hard as hell to find some times. but for alien freaks out there you should buy this game now its very fun and crazy and has a real good story line so pick it up and have fun

This game immediately gives the great feeling of the classic shooter game. The story presentation gives more detail in to the conspirator's world and guides the player in to a situation where blasting everything in sight is not only fun, it's imperative to your survival.
There are 4 movie scenes that unlock as the game progresses, not including the standard cinematics guiding the game. These are among the best, if not the best, graphics of any Xbox game to date.
GUNS! This game has some very sweet guns and artillery. Including some alien technology, one of their guns allows a laser sight to peek around corners, giving access to bank shots! This one should make for some great multiplayer fun.
Overall, this game is easy to review. If you like the classic Area 51 for arcade, get this and get ready to flash back in time!

The game is an intense shooter with a decent story. Language can be as intense as the firefights. Remeniscent of Halo 2 getting the chance to both play as a human Hazmat ( a fully armed one) member and then as one of the mutants. You'll want to sleep with one eye open and your M-11 Scorpion pistol under yuour pillow!

The game was fun when I first owned it wayyyyyy back before the 360 was out, but I bought it again, and then discovered its not backward compatible. Dont buy it if you dont own the original xbox.

I don't know what it is, but if you slap the name Area 51 on something I usually wind up checking it out. I think it's a nostalgia thing because when I was younger I loved to watch the X-Files and in 7th grade I got into the whole idea of top secret government bases, as well as the conspiracies. Thus when I saw a novel series called Area 51 and the video arcade game I had to check them out. I had been hoping for a long time that they'd put out the arcade game in some sort of console format where I didn't have to constantly put quarters in the machine, but alas this Area 51 is not that. It's definitely influenced by the Arcade Game, but it's not exactly the same thing.

Area 51 feels like a pretty standard first person shooter, in my opinion. The world we're thrown into, for whatever reason, doesn't truly capture my imagination. At least not in the same way something like Half Life or Halo did. Maybe it has to do with the graphics, because it feels like this game looks like it was made in the 90's and it plays that way too. Maybe that's my problem with it; it's not giving me anything new, it feels like I've done most of this before. Maybe it's my expectation that I wanted this to pay homage to the classic Arcade Game, I'm not sure, but for whatever reason my experience of this game just feels anti-climactic.

In order to boost sales to the X-Files fan base Area 51 employs David Duchovny as a voice actor, which is definitely a quality idea. However, for some reason, Duchovny doesn't give off the vibe of being a soldier. Maybe it's because I went through 9 seasons of the X-Files, so it's not working for me that well. My friend who wasn't an avid X-Files fan said it sounded fine, so I'm likely just being biased in that regard. Other than that the story line was just okay, it was a little way too out there for me. It's as if the writers took all the crazy alien conspiracy theories, went to their fringe ideas and put them into this game. Some of this can be quite amusing at times if you're familiar with things like the Gray Aliens or the moon landing hoax (which is ridiculous), but overall it plays through like a bunch of nonsense. It seems like it would've been a pretty fun story, but in practice I think it turned out kind of campy.

In this game you are a member of the military sent in to secure the base because of some kind of problem. Naturally things go crazy and you end up finding yourself alone wandering the lower levels of the base. The first part of the game you play with a squad, which is actually kind of fun and the AI was pretty good in my opinion. Usually I feel like most AI's get in the way of playing the game, but these other characters did a good job. The whole problem is a "viral outbreak" type of concept, which grows to be so much more than that. Naturally, as this is how conspiracies tend to work. Anyway, at some point you wind up getting infected and you become an alien human hybrid. This is actually kind of interesting, because at that point you'll be able to switch between being a human and using your alien powers. You can switch between the two after you complete the level of just being the hybrid. I thought this was a really neat feature, as I've never really encountered it before in a game. However, I did not really like playing in the hybrid form, so I mostly just stayed a human. You can't use guns as a hybrid and instead you use a melee attack or shoot some weird stuff at the enemies. I prefer using guns, so I stayed human.

On that note, the array of weapons to choose from is pretty standard. You have your pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, as well as two kinds of alien weapons. One of which is incredibly powerful and really cool to use, it's like the equivalent of getting a rocket launcher, but better. Unfortunately, like rocket launchers, you get few clips of ammo. The other alien weapon is this weird thing that shoots out energy balls, basically their equivalent of an assault rifle. Once I got this weapon I pretty much used that the rest of the game. It has a recharging feature so you never have to go and get more ammunition for it. One aspect that was very frustrating was the automatic dual wielding. Let's say you have a single assault rifle, but you want to use the shotgun. If I'm running around shooting enemies with that shotgun and I walk over another assault rifle, bam, all of a sudden I'm wielding two assault rifles. Also if you are dual wielding a weapon you cannot reload it. Once your clips are gone you lose the second weapon then you have to reload your other empty weapon. This can be a death sentence in a fight where you were using two shotguns, since the shotgun takes extra time to reload. Paradoxically dual wielding pistols is not available. Anyway, this was one thing I found annoying with the game.

One of the cool little elements in the game is you can find these folders and other various items on the ground. These are "secret documents" or video files that you can unlock. You can go read them and watch them in the menu screen. They give you a little more background on the technical details of Area 51. The video files are either a diary kept by one of the scientists or intercepted transmissions from the Illuminati. I actually liked this element of the game; I thought it was fun to explore the areas and try to find these little hidden things.

In the end though, I thought this game was just okay. Some of the areas are really frustrating to try and get through. The location of the save points can kind of be infuriating at times as you watch the same video sequence over and over again. However, I am at least thankful most of the checkpoints happen before a relatively large battle sequence. The only reason I can think about picking this game up is if you're either interested in Area 51 games, like me, or if you're desperate to play any kind of FPS, because you've played all the others. It's not a terrible game, and it is fun while it lasts, but I don't feel like it has much replay value for me.

Recently I've been going back through and playing some of the games I've never finished in my library (such as this title). And realizing I've never given a review on some... So here goes...

This is a great game, EGM said it "could be your second halo" but I believe this is what halo was meant to be. It's a fast paced first person shooter, but with more 'meat' to it than halo. The visuals are what you would expect from all the original Xbox hype. They are sharp and clean. With an HDTV (which I didn't have when I played it before) you can really see how sharp the graphics are. It's a harder game than halo, and even halo 2, so it provides plenty of challenge for the hardcore and casual gamer alike. This one is online enabled, but like many gamers, I've never bothered with paying MS to use their service, so I have no idea how the multi-player is. But the single player game is definitely worth the money.