Playstation 2 - Area 51

Format
Playstation 2
Publisher
Midway
Developer
Midway
Country of origin
US
Genre
First Person Shooter

Area 51

By David Rasmussen
6th Oct 05

Area 51, the so called “secret” government facility that is supposed to hold alien lifeforms (dead) and alien spacecraft that have landed on Earth (rather hard). The government has been keeping a wraps on this place for a long long time, making this a place of much wonder as to what’s inside.
Odds are the government has a good reason to keep people out. After all, if you consider everything in a logical sense then there’s no doubt that Area 51 contains… an interstellar scrapyard run by the clone of Fred Sanford (Redd Fox)! (cue Sanford and Son music here)
Yeah. People? They’re collecting scraps of ships with nothing written in any humanoid language, let alone with any living crew (also who wouldn’t be able to speak any human language even if they were alive), with tech whose nearest spare parts supply store is light years away. Yeah. Area 51’s only real use is the actual work done by actual military people doing real non-alien military stuff that actually works and not puttering around with the beat-up old interstellar tech they can’t fix, let alone work properly.

So it is with this thought that I review Area 51, which just so happens to also be an old arcade shooter from (yes) the folks at Midway, only it wasn’t as violent when it first came out… or quite as bloody… or had so much gory back then. Back then they weren‘t fascinated with making people explode, like they are now.
Welcome to progress, don’t forget to take a moist wipe to clean off the green blood from your armor.

So Midway, carrying on their tradition (if you can call it that) of gorifying their games (or making them completely and pointlessly controversial ala what they did with the rethread of the classic arcade game NARC) release this remake of their classic aliens gone wild game with a brand new coat of gameplay, and starring the voice talents of David Duchovny, Powers Boothe and Marilyn Manson (yes, him).

Yeah, when it comes to first person shooters nothing say deep emotional voice acting quite like David Duchovny… only this time it’s not as bad as XIII was, so this time I’m not being entirely sarcastic when I say that about David Duchovny’s voice acting… yeah, it’s better than XIII so I’ll be nicer this time.
Anyway that’s going to be a good thing for you and me since there’s no Adam West to bail out the voice acting this time out. Don’t fret though, Adam West IS in a new game this year, mainly the Scooby Doo : Unmasked game, and (surprise surprise) the game actually looks very playable for a change which is good since it starts Adam West & Casey Kassem (yup, who is once again reviving his role as everyone’s favorite hippy lookin’ dude, Shaggy!) Anyway stay tuned for a first look at this soon, but now back to Area 51.

Looks like an old scientist who seems to have suffered a little “on the job” work related injury is about to go off the deep end, and he’s going to take the entire Area 51 compound with him.
Releasing at least one cyrofrozen alien onto the base, it begins to infect everyone it runs into, turning them into alien foot soldiers who also rampage about infecting people themselves, which is where you come in. As David Duchovny’s character (a member of a government military hazmat team who dress like they’re going to a cos-play convention as characters from a HALO fan-fic) you and your long time working pals are sent to secure the Area 51 site and contain the contagion… yeah, don‘t get too attached to your “old friends“ cause they‘re going to be dying soon enough.
As for you? You‘ll have to journey deep into the dark heart of Area 51 itself, looking for answers -- and later a cure for the alien virus that you got infected with after playing the game for a few hours.

Gameplay is nothing to sneeze at, even if you do get a cold virus after handling this game. It’s your basic first person shooter so you’ll get your hands on quite abit of weapons, some of which are supposed to be alien in origin, and then go out and start shooting things. Hooary, I don’t think I’ve done THAT before.
You’ll also come into contact with the alien containment and begin to worry about doing a Torque ala The Suffering and “Torque”-ing out into a monster, which comes with it’s own pluses and minuses.

Then there’s the people, oh the people you’ll see.
Voice acting is solid with talent that fits, and that includes the usually sleep inducing voice of David Duchovny (who I usually accuse of being the next cure for insomnia next to games like Colosseum : Road to Freedom and Digimon World 4)!
But let’s talk about the other names first! First off there’s Marilyn Manson (and yes, it’s exactly the Marilyn Manson you think I’m talking about)! He plays an alien in the game, and does it with a very creepy “charm”. Talk about getting it down pat, he’s one edgy baddie and really does it well.
Then there’s Powers Boothe who plays your CO in the game. Strong performance, but that’s expected from him of course. Nuff said.
And finally we have the David Duchovny dude. He whose voice I usually equate as a cure for insomnia (as stated above), only this time he actually does a halfway decent job of the voice acting… and I didn’t even fall asleep during his scenes of talking.
Apparently the role of the main character in this game kind of suits him since it does have that whole “conspiracy theory” slash “alien cover up” slant to it. Yup, Fox Mulder rides again.
Anyway he does a far better job here than in XIII, and it shows as the acting is more “energetic” (if such a thing was humanly possible for him) and works better with this character. Good work.

Now about the so called “Halo” aspect of the game… no, not character death I mean Halo as in THE Halo, you know, fox the Xbox? Now from what some reviewers have said about this game, Area51 is supposed to be the “next Halo”. The “next Halo“, right? So is this what Halo is all about? If so -- eh?
I know this game DOES have Online capability (like Halo -- only not as fun as either Halo I‘m guessing), and it also has a split screen two player mode (does Halo or Halo 2 have that?), but I don’t seem to equate Area 51 with Halo. I don’t know, but a game with more depth and action like Halo doesn’t seem to synch with a game like Area 51, which is nice but doesn’t seem to live up to the Halo caliber.
Yeah, I know, I never played Halo so how would I know. Maybe it’s me but this game just doesn’t seem to have the same punch as a Halo from what I know of Halo, nor does it measure up with the recent so called “Halo Killer” known as Killzone (also for the PS2).
Yeah, Area 51 is a solid enough shooter in and of it‘s own right, but it’s not something to commune to your alien drone soldiers about, and not (in my opinion) the “next Halo”.

And if you doubt me check out G4/TechTV’s recent gaming awards that the fans picked.
The big game for the PS2? God of War. Yeah, the major hack and slash from ancient Greek times was the PS2 fave, along with the Xbox’s Halo 2... So much for Area 51 being the “next Halo”.

Now that you aren’t going to be thinking of this game as the “next Halo” how does it fare on it’s own?
Like I said it’s decent enough, and the action is fast paced and hard hitting. Only problem I seem to have is that your character, for all it’s armor, seems abit fragile. It doesn’t take much to take you down, in fact sometimes I wonder how I can be so armored and yet not have enough protection against my alien enemies.
Good thing there’s health lying around to be had if you have a good eye for it, look for the green tubes just lying about, those’ll heal you.
Oh, and the fact that the game kind of plays a little too predictably. You walk abit, get “ambushed”, and fight until everything’s dead then more forward. Fight, move, fight, move. Sometimes you’ll be told to go off on your own to achieve some mission objective to move onwards. Find a keycard so you can get into the next area, get some security cannons working again or get a commlink working back to command, something. The shooting is nice and all but it can become a little dull since there’s nothing to keep me on my toes and make me think very hard while I play this.

Ok, is there something good to say? Yeah. Another plus is the ability to occasionally be able to go into a situation two fisted style, with a rifle in each hand. As your enemies drop their rifles you can pick a second one up and go into situations with both barrels blazing, however once the second gun runs out of ammo you discard it for some reason! Jeez! Just reload the gun and let me keep it! That would have been a nice addition, just so you know.

Then there’s some parts of the game where the objective is not too clear, like when you begin to mutate for the first time… it took me awhile, and I cheated by visiting GameFaq to find out what to do… but I eventually got over this point. Which brings me to another point, the story. The story moves along at a nice pace (when I‘m not hitting little roadblocks like that mentioned above), in fact the game moves at too fine a pace. It’s not terribly hard, and (again) with the exception of the occasional hiccup and moments where you keep on dying over and over again you can probably blaze through this game in about… hmm… 20 or so hours. Yeah, the action is sufficient to keep you playing, but I don’t know about replay value. I don’t plan on playing this again that’s for sure. It’s nice, but somehow I don’t think it’s the “next Halo” since I kind of think Halo (and Halo 2) must be more fun than this.
It’s a challenge, but it’s just not for me. Breakdown time.

Area 51 Breakdown
What’s Hot?
It is a good game, and for once I don’t have something completely negative to say about the talents of David Duchovny, lucky him. There isn’t many first person shooters that are fun for the PS2, and this is one of those that is pretty good and I like the way it plays. Very nice.

What’s Not?
HOWEVER “next Halo” this is probably not. It’s nice and all, BUT it could have been better.
Being stuck underground for the entire game (at least as far as I’ve seen) reminded me of the endless darkness of playing Silent Hill 3, and does NOT remind me of the varied environs I’ve heard about for Halo slash Halo 2, and most definitely doesn’t remind me of Killzone (PS2).

That and the game didn’t seem to have much replay value for someone like me who didn’t go online to play games, which would have extended the life of this game (since it does sport an online feature).

Moments to Remember?
Well, since he is the star this time out you’ll remember the David Duchovny factor of the game, nice since last time I totally (bleep)ed him out and gave kudos to Adam West over him. Speaking of which don’t forget to check out Adam West in the new Scooby Doo : Unmasked game! Yah! Go Adam West!

What to Ignore?
Me and my occasional bouts of Adam West shilling? Hmm… how about this then.

Overall?
It’s a good game, but it could have been better.
It’s not a horrible shooter, and It’s not a boring one, but it doesn’t leap out at me as something I’d like to own all the same. Renting it was entertaining enough for me, thank you very much.
It’s good, yeah, but by no means should it be the “next Halo”.
Rent it, try it, if it wins you over buy it. If not? Well then there’s always Killzone or some other first person shooter coming soon to play. There’s always a shooter coming sooner or later, just you wait.

-- David Rasmussen 6th Oct 05

Playstation 2 Area 51 Images