Area-51

This game is every conspiracy theorist’s wet dream turned into a first person shooter. It’s Doom meets the X-files, complete with David Duchovny as the main character. In this game you play as some kind of colorfully armored biohazard responder at area 51 where, surprise surprise, alien monsters are running amok. Apparently some super-scientist has let one of the genetic monsters loose in the base, and it’s spreading a virus that infects humans, turning them into more monsters, so in that respect it’s similar to Resident Evil. You start out with a team of buddies that are unkillable, when their not in a cut scene, who like to joke around. These guys make the first part of the game easy which is good because it gives you a chance to get used to the controls. You can just hang back, saving your ammo, while your invincible friends do the fighting. Predictably your teammates are killed off by a very big monster that you know is going to be a boss later on which officially ends the tutorial section. You get your butt kicked and end up infected with the virus. This is where the game gets both fun and trippy as you enter “monster vision” and run around killing fellow monsters and strange soldiers with your claws and weird tendril things you shoot out of your hands which restore your health. You start hearing voices and begin transforming back and forth between a human and a monster as you seek out a cure to the virus, and a means of escape from the base.

The weapons in this game are few, but varied. You start out with a pistol and soon get a rifle. You get grenades, a shot gun, and later on a few alien weapons including a rocket launcher which has very little ammo and a strange energy gun which can bounce off of walls to get enemies behind cover. You also get a few chances to mount some kind of weapon platforms and mow down enemies as they pour out at you.

The levels are all pretty interesting and add to the atmosphere of mystery and paranoia. You check out weapon testing areas, dissected alien space crafts, and even the studio where they filmed the moon landing. To add to the sense of just what goes on at area 51, you can collect little bits of information by scanning it with your wrist gauntlet. This gives you information on oddities that you find, as well as scan in notes and files that will wet your conspiratorial appetites. If you get all of the items in a level, you unlock a short video segment in which one of the two scientists you meet in the game talk about their mad experiments.