Written by When you first start up the game, you are shown these beautiful pre-rendered graphics that gives an intro to the game itself in a Hollywood-esque fashion. With David Duchovny as the main character, you are placed into HAZ-MAT team Delta. You’re mission: To find HAZ-MAT team Alpha and extract safely.
When the initial graphics end, you are hit by the in game graphics and are thrown out of your seat, stunned, by how bad they are. You soon get over it as you play on, first being challenged to a friendly shoot out to teach you how to aim your gun. You play through the first level with ease, learning about double weapons, and crouching, with some pretty good fighting sequences, and by the end of it you feel pretty good about yourself. The initial shock of bad graphics having worn off, you move on to play the second level.
This is where you roll up into a ball and start the trail of going downhill with the story.
Not to spoil anything for the user who hasn’t played it yet, I will say this much.
The story is enough to keep you entwined in this believable world, and other…things… that happen to you do come in handy by the time you finish the game. Led by a ghost (voice by Marylin Manson) you take a self guided tour around the Area-51 facility discovering new enemies, and government cover-ups. With the required running and gunning.
The place where this game really falls is in it’s incorporation of problem solving. There are no simple clues that show you around, hell, there aren’t any clues at all. Like in Zelda: You are on your own. Just without a map, nor a compass to guide you.
Also, as you progress from level to level, the enemies you encounter get tougher and tougher. Though a nice touch, it does provide for some fierce screaming of words not fit for young’ns.
The sound effects for the weapons themselves are quite nice, and fulfill the experience quite nicely, there really isn’t that much of a sound track except for in the cut-scenes which does take away from it slightly, but usually the sound of the rifles and shot guns that you hear are enough where you soon find yourself not caring.
The Multi-player I haven’t really had a chance to test out (since at our LAN parties we are usually playing Halo 2 (Go figure eh?) and the fact I’m too cheap to get XBL) Yet from what I have seen from it, it looks rather engaging with decent maps, with a really decent map count of 17.
Overall the game starts out great, looses some of it’s shine, but then picks up in the end. With a seemingly solid multi-player option that you can use in XBL, Area-51 is not a must buy, but it’s definitely worth looking into.
Overall Score: 6.7/10
