Genre: FPS
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway
Release Date: April 25, 2005

Buy 'AREA 51': Xbox | PlayStation 2

There are essentially two stances a person can take when it comes to the existence of Area 51, a government run research facility thought to be brimming with alien life and technology (among other things): either it doesn't exist or it does, and anyone telling you otherwise has fallen prey to the government's mind control scheme thanks to drinking too much fluoride-enriched tap water.

Midway subscribes to the latter school of thought with Area 51. First off, it bears mentioning that this FPS has little to do with the arcade light-gun game that Midway released a few years back, its setting notwithstanding. From both a storyline and technological standpoint, this is a very, very good thing.

The game's campaign mode starts off with everything going to hell in a hand basket at Area 51. Most of the personnel are exposed to a mutagen that makes them decidedly less human and more bloodthirsty. You are Specialist Ethan Cole, a member of HazMat Team Bravo, tasked with finding HazMat Team Delta and the source of the viral mutagen. The game opens up with the obligatory tutorial that runs you through basics like aiming, shooting, and the like. About half of the tutorial holds you by the hand until you get it right, with the other half being fed to you as you race to eliminate a saboteur. From there, Team Bravo heads deep into the bowels of Area 51.

Most objectives revolve around fetching key cards, supplies, or just withstanding an onslaught of enemies until a member of your squad can think of a way to get out of whatever mess you're in. Objectives are marked by navigation markers, so finding the objective is never much of a problem, although actually getting there may not always be so clear. At first, the absence of some type of motion tracker (a la Halo 2) can be a nuisance because enemies tend to pour in from all directions, but if the sooner you start listening to your squad, the better, because they'll be so kind as to tell you which way you need to unload your weapon.

Weapon selection is pretty much par for the course for anybody who has played even one FPS before: you've got your basic pistol, SMG/Assault rifle, shotgun, and a sniper rifle. The SMG and shotgun can be dual wielded, although the pistol cannot, for some strange reason, making it completely useless since ammo for the other two is fairly abundant. There are also two types of alien weaponry: a flesh-seeking plasma weapon that fires in bursts, and the Meson Cannon, which completely disintegrates most anything it touches, like any good alien death ray should. Standard frag grenades and the more exotic "jumping bean" grenades are always equipped and function just like the frag grenades in Halo and Halo 2.

Without giving away too much plot, there's a point fairly early on in the game where Ethan gains the ability to mutate into a creature (as long as he has mutagen left in his meter) much like the ones he's been gunning down. While mutated, time slows a little and your view takes on a red hue. All enemies … excuse me, all warm bodies have a bright red glow that screams "insert claws here." By swiping at and killing enemies with your claws, you can add to your mutagen meter. If close combat isn't a viable option, you can also shoot heat-seeking parasites out of your wrist for long-distance combat. The mutation mechanic adds quite a bit to the gameplay, as you constantly have to decide whether a particular firefight would be best suited for bullets and grenades, or claws and parasites.

Area 51's graphics suffer on the Xbox, a likely side-effect of being co-developed for the PS2. As long as you don't go in expecting normal mapping and high-quality textures like Doom 3 and The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, you shouldn't be too let down. Character models have a fair amount of detail and a nice range of animation, although you'll be killing the same three or four enemies for most of the game. The levels all have an abandoned laboratory feel to them, although that'll change as you progress. On the whole, the graphics are passable and there aren't any clipping issues, but the hardware is capable of much more.

In the post-Halo world of controls, Midway didn't fix what wasn't broken. One noticeable difference is that melee attacks can be chained up to three hits, which can come in handy for taking out the baddie breathing down your neck when your clip runs dry. You can also use the D-pad to lean from behind cover, but it's not critical to survival. When firing your weapon, the controller rumbles with a specific tactile feedback, which helps give the guns weight and personality, as the feel of an SMG is quite different than that of a shotgun.

One omission that would've streamlined things and kept you in the action longer is a quick-select system for weapons. If you need to switch between your shotgun and your sniper rifle, you'll have to cycle through every other weapon (plus your cumbersome scanner…more on that later) in order to get to it. A nice little system where you can click in one of the thumbsticks to bring up a radial menu would've been nice.

Midway went out of their way to let you know who does the voice-acting for Area 51. David Duchovny voices our protagonist, Ethan Cole. His somber monologues between levels seem more appropriate for "The X-Files" than this kind of shooter. Despite all of the crazy stuff happening around him, Duchovny makes Cole seem not only like he isn't surprised by any of it, but is almost bored by it. Powers Boothe (who plays Cy Tolliver on HBO's television series, "Deadwood") delivers a more believable performance as Major Douglas Bridges, which makes it kind of a shame that he's a secondary character. Of course, Marilyn Manson steals the show in his role of Edgar, an enigmatic alien who crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Manson triumphs over mediocre lines with the creepy aura you'd expect from someone so … eclectic.

The sounds of Area 51 are overall pretty good. The music is forgettable, but does its job of keeping up the tension and upping the tempo when the bodies start hitting the floor again. All of your squadmates have a friendly back-and-forth that helps convey their history together and also helps earn the game's "M" rating, with their colorful choice of words that also come out when they freak out about the mutants bursting through windows. The mutants themselves breathe pretty heavily, but unfortunately, this isn't always a sign that they're near. There was a stretch of five minutes when all I could hear was heavy breathing, even though the nearest enemies were quite dead. It's scary the first 10 seconds you hear it, and irritating for the rest of the time.

Multiplayer comes in split-screen and Xbox Live flavors, with system link not on the menu at all. Gameplay modes come in standard deathmatch and capture the flag varieties. Luckily, the ability to mutate made the jump to multiplayer and games can be set up so players have the option to mutate, are locked in as either human or mutants, or, if it's team-based, humans versus mutants. Xbox Live play doesn't clear the extremely high bar set by Bungie with Halo 2, but it still works. Lag is a problem, as it is in all online games, but that's not surprising. A vote system is available to make kicking players off the host a democratic process, and having been at the business end of one of these, I can say that it works just fine.

Campaign mode will run you about 12 hours, but you can go back if you're the type that has to unlock everything. You can scan things in campaign mode and then read about them in-depth in the Databank, but finding something to scan and then scanning it removes you from the action and it's hard to justify clearing an entire room of mutants just so you could scan a poster on the wall to read later.

So, the question is rent, buy, or pass, eh? Well, on any other console, "buy" might have been a viable option, but not here. With Halo 2 and Unreal Championship 2 being available on an already FPS-abundant console, Area 51 just doesn't deliver the same way those two can, even if you are a "believer." It's still worth a rental for FPS fans, but if you weren't a fan of the genre before, Area 51 probably won't change your mind.

Score: 7.0/10