Genre : First Person Shooter
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway Studios Austin
Release Date: Summer 2007

I usually hate to refer to games in terms of what other games they resemble, but in the case of Midway’s Area 51 first-person shooters, they’re really asking for it. 2005’s Area 51 had the stamp of Doom III all over it, with bad things happening to morally questionable people somewhere in the dark, and as a bonus, the facility the game was set in seemed to recall Half-Life’s Black Mesa facility.

Add a morphing combat system that recalls the demon mode from Painkiller, and you had Area 51: a conspiracy-based first-person shooter that was just about exactly the sum of its parts. It wasn’t a bad game by any means, and its PS2 version looked and played a lot better than it had any right to, but it definitely wore its influences on its sleeve.

Now BlackSite is on its way, and it too reminds me of something else. This time, it’s Rainbow Six: a first-person shooter about squad-based, next-generation tactical combat.

The infamous Area 51 military base has been officially classified as a “blacksite” – a facility whose purpose or existence is completely deniable – by the United States government. However, following the events of the first game, the area surrounding Area 51 have come under attack from alien forces both great and small.

That’s where you and your team come in. You’ll be dropped into high-risk areas to find, identify, and neutralize alien threats. In the all-too-brief playable demo at Midway Gamers’ Day, the team was sent to the small desert town of Rachel, where bizarre technoorganic aliens have killed most of the locals. After losing half the team and eliminating several increasingly weird aliens, the player watches as a giant alien worm punches up out of the ground, destroying most of a strip mall in the process. If nothing else, BlackSite has spectacle on its side.

What it doesn’t really have at this point are details. The playable demo, as detailed above, was over and done with in about ten minutes, so it didn’t provide much in the way of a lasting impression. Mostly, it showed off the ability to use your squad to your advantage. You can send them to a given location with the touch of a button, and they’ll perform context-sensitive commands once they reach their destination. This can mean covering you or suppressing an area, or they can set a breaching charge to knock open a locked door. Using the squad to your advantage is presumably going to be a big part of the final game, because the aliens did not go down easily. Facing them alone would be nearly impossible, as they’re fast, durable, and unpredictable; facing them with a team allowed you to catch them in a crossfire and whittle them down.

Currently, Midway is promising that the final version of the game will feature an immersive storyline, which the player can shape by making various moral choices throughout the game. The story apparently involves a “potentially pivotal moment in history,” which could be interesting, but it’s hard to say anything about it right now. Midway’s also saying that it’ll have a large number of multiplayer modes. Hopefully, this’ll include the best and yet most neglected mode of all: online co-op.

BlackSite is headed for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC this summer. As we get closer to its release, I’ll hopefully be able to write a preview that isn’t quite so maddeningly vague.