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.

Of course every game has its flaws, and area 51 is no exception. For starters the story is confusing to say the least. Even after beating it several times, I’m still not to clear on what’s going on in this game. There’s no real explanation as to why you have control of yourself after being infected by the virus when no one else does. You do get partially disinfected at a point, but up until then the only reason I can think of is the creepy alien who communicates with you every now and again having something to do with it. The entire crisis started when one of the scientists intentionally released one of the mutant monsters in the facility, but didn‘t try to leave himself, all to get revenge on the organization. I guess you could just say that he is crazy to potentially endanger the entire human race like this, but he‘s supposed to be brilliant and it seems like a really stupid thing to do in my book. The game also introduces characters with out any real explanation of what’s going on. You run into another hazmat team, a giant alien in a jar, uninfected people still in the place. And there isn’t really any reason for the government to send in a four man hazard team into a facility the size of a city overrun with mutant monsters that want to kill us.

Another problem is repetition. Although some of the alien weapons are neat, you won’t get them until much later in the game, and will mostly use the guns you get on the second level: riffle and a shotgun. There isn’t much variety to the enemies in this game either. The first levels consist of infected people and head crabs. Latter on you run into more interesting creatures and black ops fellows, but once you go mutant, you can usually tear these guys apart pretty easily. In the last few levels you run into the grey aliens who hide behind a shield while producing black ops guys to attack you until you kill them

Still, area 51 is a good rental for any X files fan. The level designs are clever and immersive, and all the little tidbits give you a feeling of, “this is the stuff they don’t want me to know.” it’s only real replay value is in finding all of the hidden items to scan, or to try and make better sense of the plot.