Blacksite
Or
These are the two available box arts for Midway's Blacksite. In Europe, it's called Blacksite and is the box art on the right. In America, it's called Blacksite: Area 51 ans is the very americanised box art on the left. I know which I'd prefer. It's as if the Americans are too stupid to realise it's a sequel to the Xbox game Area 51, so they have to tag : Area 51 on at the end. This is what annoys me about the Americans and their game box arts. For example, Halo 3 has a picture of the Master Chief looking all Heroic and it says "Halo 3" Everyone gets that. But Even if all it had was a black front box art with a number "3" in the middle, people would have known it was Halo 3, it's iconic. The Americans obviously can't deal with this and only put the "3" and nothing else cover onto the tin collector's edition.
I personally prefer the the box art on the right, and I wouldn't buy the game if it had the other box art, because it looks like just another "all American war hero" game, which is nothing special. However, it is fair to say that Blacksite itself is nothing special as a game.
Blacksite had the potential to be a brilliant game. Perhaps not quite as good as gears of war or similar, but if they'd spent more time on the game, they could have had it on par with Lost planet: Extreme conditions. The thing that ruins Blacksite is that it really does feel like an unfinished game, and the various glitches and bugs will annoy you endlessly. Blacksite also has a storyline that could be potentially mystifying, chilling, suspenseful and horrific, everything that's needed to a game. The problem is that the writers of the storyline don't know how to portray the plot. They've got an excellent idea in their heads but they can't put pen to paper. Plus, a lot of the time you can't hear what's being said anyway, as characters often reveal key details to the plot during gameplay, so music and gunfire often drown out what they're saying. Also, because the A.I is terrible, they are likely to be 3 miles behind you when they start talking, so you won't hear what's being said.
Ok, let's start with the campaign. About six months before the game was released, I played a demo of the game, which starts on the third episode, "Rachel." When I played the demo I was certainly impressed with the quality graphics using the latest unreal engine, which meant that during the sudden downpour in that level, the rain actually bounces off your gun and makes appropriate sounds. Rachel is one of the levels that starts off all dark and shadowy, which added to the effect of me playing the game. I regret to say that the impressive lighting effects do not continue all the way through the game. When I played this demo, the other thing that I was impressed with was the one touch command system for your squad. With one shoulder button, you can control your squad's movements, who they attack, where they defend from and so on. This got me excited about the game, because previous games I'd played always had overly complicated and useless squad commands, which took up many buttons. So naturally i was suitably excited about a one touch squad command. once again I regret to say that the squad commands during gameplay are never enforced properly. You can use them, but it's a lot quicker to just run in there guns blazing and kill everyone yourself. When you are playing on the hardest difficulty setting, threat level red, sending your squad in first will just get them killed, and as a result the remaining squad will be "more cautious in combat" Essentially, they become useless.
During the playing of the actual game, much is the same, but it never really lives up to expectations. A lot of the missions are set in open lighted areas of desert, especially during driving parts, which means that lighting is not much needed and therefore the surroundings seem bland and linear. There aren't even many different shades of sand, it all looks the same. The only parts of the game where the visuals impressed me is when you start the Rachel mission, as described in the demo, and the very last episode is wonderfully lighted. It seems that all efforts into graphics and lighting, and even sound, have gone into the final episode. The fires are realistic, the crumbling buildings are realistic, except when rubble falls from the ceiling and
through your head, but it would be extremely annoying if the falling debris hurt you. The shadows are fantastic in the final episode, which shows what the unreal engine can do.
However, this game does have a problem with broken seams. 2 or 3 times I'd been happily playing through on Threat level Red and then fell through the map before I'd got a checkpoint. I've encountered these broken seams on the level Rachel, and the level Topside. Luckily, on Topside, I was already dead when I fell through the map so it didn't unexpectedly impede my progress through the game.
If you're the sort of person that likes to play through on the hardest difficulty first and get all the completion achievements, don't bother. First of all, the achievements don't stack. Complete it on threat level red, you still have to complete it on Orange and Yellow to get those achievements. Secondly, just play through on casual (yellow) because you'll enjoy the game more, and to get the achievement for Red, just do the final part of each mission, you don't need to do the whole mission. BEWARE the final boss battle is extremely difficult even for me and the other Xbox nuts I know. Tip is: If you think they're all dead, don't move on, there's at least two more waiting! Second tip: Learn where they all are so you can kill them as soon as they spawn!
Now to the A.I in this game. They are idiots. They really are. Not only that, they're biased idiots: Send you squad in to kill them all while you hide behind cover. Poke your head out to see how your squad are getting on; despite the fact there are 3 other people shooting at them from close range, they will automatically know where you are and concentrate all their fire on the tiny bit of your head poking out.
The drudges are stupid too. The run at you to use their close range bashing attack, but stop before they reach you and drench you in acid. It takes down about half your health on TLR (threat level red) so just melee them to death. By the way, when you melee and object, like a vehicle with your assault rifle, it sounds awesome. They've attached a really powerful metal on metal bashing sound to the melee, which feigns you into thinking that the melee is really powerful. A hint though: Only melee drudges, if you try to melee the Reborn, you will miss and they will melee you harder.
The graphics in this game are average, but it does use Havok and Unreal game engines, so with a decent output television, it does look very nice. The facial expressions of the ally A.I are quite impressive too, but the enemy A.I don't really have faces, so...The weapons are built very nicely, but there isn't a great diversity of weapon classes, let alone weapons themselves. The only problem i can find with the weapons is that if you use the plasma rifle thing, it will fire an explosive round of plasma, which will never hurt the enemy unless it's a direct hit. Not something you expect from what is essentially a futuristic rocket propelled grenade. If you actually read the manual on video games, don't bother with this one, it doesn't tell you anything useful, not even the secondary function of the weapons. (If they have one)
With the multiplayer, it is quite good, and there are some easy achievements to go with it, but the lack of mini map can make it frustrating, and there are one or two achievements that are pull your hairs out and stamp on them difficult. For example, get 20 kills online without dying. That's like asking someone to complete Halo 3 on Mythic without dying. Even if you're exceptionally good, eventually someone will sneak up on you and catch you out, as I've said; No mini map. There's also two very odd achievements: One for 49 Gs and one for 51 Gs. An odd amount. It doesn't really bother me but who want to have a gamerscore of 6001?
Overall, Blacksite had the potential to be a brilliant game. It has good sound effects, passable graphics, good atmospheric music, a potentially brilliant storyline, If only it were explained more! And large diversity of settings for the levels is a nice change from things like Assassin's Creed, where it only ever similar looking cities. You range from deserts to children's playgrounds and caravan parks, which is quite nice. Only in games like Call of Duty 4 do you have proper fights in urban areas, but even then the place is a wreck. At least in the town of Rachel, the houses are still intact.
If midway had spent a lot more time on this game, it would've received more than the measly 6.something on reviews. They need to fix the bugs, make more use of the one touch squad command and explain the storyline more. I would suggest buying this game, if you're the sort of person that isn't fussy about these sort of things. Despite looking at it with a reviewer's eye, I still enjoyed playing it. That might have been from the expectations i had from the demo, but nonetheless it is worth playing if you're not a totally hardcore gamer. If you are in the recreation zone of Xbox Live, this would be perhaps an exciting game for you to try out.
I'm going to give this game a
6.95/10 because it has too many faults to be a 7. However, I have high hopes for the Pc release, as they could possibly release patches and updates regularly, making the game more of the finished product that it ought to have been.
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