The demo for Blacksite: Area 51 was recently released on Xbox Live Marketplace. I finally got a chance to try it today and take a few pictures. For those of you who haven’t tried it but are interested, here are some impressions:
The main menu. Fancy.
Upon firing it up, the title looked pretty sharp and snazzy. The options menu was pretty sparse, but they offered several different control schemes. The default one (typical aiming and walking; X to reload; A to jump; B to melee; the rest I forget) seemed pretty good, so I went with that. Once you decide to play, you get treated to a lovely loading screen:
Aunt Millie takes a walk.
You start off in a typical American suburb, except it’s pretty rainy and a little creepy. Interestingly enough, you have a couple of teammates with you. You can order them around with a press of a button (which button depends on which control scheme you’re using), and it seems pretty intuitive. The controls were very floaty, though. I didn’t feel like my character had a sense of weight at all—same goes for the gun. It’s a little weird for someone who’s been playing tons of Rainbow Six lately, that’s for sure.
Life begins at a gas station.
Your teammates do all the door-opening for you.
After you get accustomed to the controls and look around for a bit, it’s time to get going. Once you go through a couple of doors, you’re treated to a revealing scene (sounds hot, doesn’t it?) wherein the enemies are introduced.
Don’t worry, sir—he’s just here to clean your car windows.
After some yelling and screaming on the part of an NPC, it’s time to exercise your trigger finger as a group of baddies decides to invade the gas station’s kwik-e-mart. Of course, you can always hide behind the counter like a smart commander and let your AI friends do the fighting. Or you can visit the ATM:
Some things are destructible—note the crumbling pillar and the stray money from the ATM.
Kinda looks like those things from Resistance, doesn’t it?
Anyway, once you’ve cleared out the gas station and blown up a few pumps in spectacular Hollywood fashion, you stumble upon some ammo boxes. And let me tell you, folks—these are some of the coolest ammo boxes I’ve ever seen. Why? Well, see for yourself:
Yes, folks—those ARE, in fact, glowsticks.
Once you hang around the ammo boxes and magically refill your bullet stash, it’s time to move on and get assaulted by more nasties.
Distressed over the death of the tentacle monster, Bob proceeded to kneel down and cry.
After those enemies are taken care of, then the really cool stuff begins. You turn the corner by Insurance and Romeo’s Pizza, and lo and behold, something gigantic takes a poop in front of you:
And then everything fades to black. The end.
Yeah, it was a teaser demo after all. I was kind of hoping for more, especially after the giant centipede/christmas tree flies down from the sky, but no go. It was pretty interesting, though the developers definitely have a bit of tuning to do. The framerate tried to commit suicide every time a major firefight happened, which makes you feel like you’re swimming through potatoes instead of fighting aliens. Also, like I mentioned earlier, the controls were pretty weird and floaty, though not terrible. At least they mapped the button actions intuitively–I never really had to think about which button was jump or reload, because they pretty much used the standard (X and A, respectively).
Will I be getting this game when it comes out? Probably not. It’s fun for a spin, but in terms of serious gaming, no. And I’m definitely not willing to spend $60 on it, though I expect fans of the first game will be pleased.
Anyway, demo’s out on Marketplace. Give it a try if you can.
