N
Nightwolf
Lurker
Now here's a fun thought. A friend of mine suggested I'd try this game, and obviously I thought he was kidding. First of all, this is a first person shooter. FPS for short. I find these games very, very boring. Second, it's a FPS on console! This means you not only have a boring FPS, but you don't even have good controls. No matter how much you practise on a console, you'll never, ever be even close to the speed and precition you'll get on a computer with a mouse and keyboard.
Third, see the title? Area 51. How surprising can the story possibly be?
But I got the game, sat down, loaded it... and ten hours later I was a very happy woman indeed and decided to give you a short review of this masterpiece.
GRAPHICS:
I have on several occasions thought the looks on a PS2 game can't get any better, but then I got this game. It looks wonderful. It almost made my break down and cry.
SOUND:
Didn't expect much here, but I was wrong. Again. The music is really good and sets the mood, the voice acting is quite good, the sound effects rock and so on. If you don't have a surround system, get one. It's worth it.
GAMEPLAY:
Now here's where it really kicks in! The game starts with something going wrong at the top-secret facility called Area 51. One thing leads to another, the entire base shuts down trapping everyone inside, and a small band of marines are sent in to save the day. And guess what? You're one of them. I know it sounds obvious (you saving the world and all that crap), but what it really comes down to is that you are not alone. Well, at least not the first few hours. Being part of a team really works here, although the rest of the people are apparently invulnerable to prevent them from dying early. Not that it matters, though. The enemies are amoung the smartest enemies I've ever seen so you need your team to stay alive.
As for the rest of the gameplay, think Doom3 combined with Halo2. It's very dark at times, but luckily you have a flashlight mounted on your guns. But before you go bananas, the flashlight will go away when you reload your gun or switch to a new gun. This means you'll spend several loooooong seconds in complete darkness with enemies all around you a lot. (not always, but often.) If you find a second gun, you can use both the same time. This means dual machineguns (after playing for ten minutes) or two shotguns. Naturally, this means you can't reload until the guns run out, in which case you discard one and reload the other one. It certainly adds a bit of tactic, as you'll wonder if you should go with big firepower now and risk running out later, or go with small firepower now and save the big guns for later.
AI:
An often missed criteria. The AI. How smart are the enemies? Short to say, they are a lot smarter than you.
No, really. I had an incident where I thought about sneaking around the enemies, but found them doing the exact same thing to me? I thought about tossing a grenade around the corner to take out a few enemies, but they tossed a grenade first and killed me! And so on. They are really smart, indeed.
EXTRAS:
Quite a bit, actually. We could mention that David Duchovney aka "X-Files Mulder" (who else?) has the voice of your marine, or that Marilyn Manson (again, who else?) stars as an alien. Both do a very good job, by the way. You also find small conspiracy-things all over the place and can use your scanner to check it out. Some information are just gameplay-wise, but other than that you'll learn about everything from the Roswell incident to the Bermuda triange to Santa Claus. Well, maybe not Santa Claus, but at least crop cirles. The more you find of these, the more secret movies you'll unlock. (eg. you find small, decrypted videos from the bad guy, revealing more and more about his plot.) Even better, it's the number of these you find that unlocks things, not the actual ones. This means if you find 5 of them, you unlock a video. It doesn't matter if you find one in five completely different levels, or all in one level.
OVERAL:
I think most FPS games are boring, and FPS consoles don't even have good controls. I want a great story, but setting it in Area 51? Get real. I thought I would hate this game, but I really, really, really love it. That should say something.
SCORE: 10/10
8) NightWolf
Third, see the title? Area 51. How surprising can the story possibly be?
But I got the game, sat down, loaded it... and ten hours later I was a very happy woman indeed and decided to give you a short review of this masterpiece.
GRAPHICS:
I have on several occasions thought the looks on a PS2 game can't get any better, but then I got this game. It looks wonderful. It almost made my break down and cry.
SOUND:
Didn't expect much here, but I was wrong. Again. The music is really good and sets the mood, the voice acting is quite good, the sound effects rock and so on. If you don't have a surround system, get one. It's worth it.
GAMEPLAY:
Now here's where it really kicks in! The game starts with something going wrong at the top-secret facility called Area 51. One thing leads to another, the entire base shuts down trapping everyone inside, and a small band of marines are sent in to save the day. And guess what? You're one of them. I know it sounds obvious (you saving the world and all that crap), but what it really comes down to is that you are not alone. Well, at least not the first few hours. Being part of a team really works here, although the rest of the people are apparently invulnerable to prevent them from dying early. Not that it matters, though. The enemies are amoung the smartest enemies I've ever seen so you need your team to stay alive.
As for the rest of the gameplay, think Doom3 combined with Halo2. It's very dark at times, but luckily you have a flashlight mounted on your guns. But before you go bananas, the flashlight will go away when you reload your gun or switch to a new gun. This means you'll spend several loooooong seconds in complete darkness with enemies all around you a lot. (not always, but often.) If you find a second gun, you can use both the same time. This means dual machineguns (after playing for ten minutes) or two shotguns. Naturally, this means you can't reload until the guns run out, in which case you discard one and reload the other one. It certainly adds a bit of tactic, as you'll wonder if you should go with big firepower now and risk running out later, or go with small firepower now and save the big guns for later.
AI:
An often missed criteria. The AI. How smart are the enemies? Short to say, they are a lot smarter than you.
No, really. I had an incident where I thought about sneaking around the enemies, but found them doing the exact same thing to me? I thought about tossing a grenade around the corner to take out a few enemies, but they tossed a grenade first and killed me! And so on. They are really smart, indeed.EXTRAS:
Quite a bit, actually. We could mention that David Duchovney aka "X-Files Mulder" (who else?) has the voice of your marine, or that Marilyn Manson (again, who else?) stars as an alien. Both do a very good job, by the way. You also find small conspiracy-things all over the place and can use your scanner to check it out. Some information are just gameplay-wise, but other than that you'll learn about everything from the Roswell incident to the Bermuda triange to Santa Claus. Well, maybe not Santa Claus, but at least crop cirles. The more you find of these, the more secret movies you'll unlock. (eg. you find small, decrypted videos from the bad guy, revealing more and more about his plot.) Even better, it's the number of these you find that unlocks things, not the actual ones. This means if you find 5 of them, you unlock a video. It doesn't matter if you find one in five completely different levels, or all in one level.
OVERAL:
I think most FPS games are boring, and FPS consoles don't even have good controls. I want a great story, but setting it in Area 51? Get real. I thought I would hate this game, but I really, really, really love it. That should say something.
SCORE: 10/10
8) NightWolf