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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed games.
BlackSite: Area 51
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 48 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 41 votes
Read user comments
Rate this game >
Game Info
Publisher: Midway
Developer: Midway Austin
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter
Players: 16
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Release Date: November 12, 2007
Summary
Featuring a powerful single-player campaign, along with multiple online multiplayer modes, BlackSite: Area 51 delivers vicious combat action, next generation graphics and A.I., and a plethora of powerful weapons and vehicles. Set in present day, players take the role of a decorated military veteran charged by the government to lead a squadron of "secret soldiers," each with his/her own specialty skill set, into the Rachel, Nevada area to fight off the invasion of unidentified enemy races. The player’s modern-day emotions and fears are driven into a world charged with grave responsibility affecting lives hanging in the balance and eventually finding himself torn between his professional orders and his own ethical standards. In the end, only the actions of the player and his squad can shape the outcome of BlackSite: Area 51 during this potentially pivotal moment in history. [Midway]
Also On Metacritic
GAMES: Area 51
Cheat Codes & Hints: Cheat Code Central
Also On The Web: Official Website
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Play.tm
In actual fact I found this, while admittedly less spectacular, as enjoyable as anything else I've played on the 360. BlackSite never attempts to be innovative, but knows what it does best. A well-oiled working game is ridiculously hard to find these days and, if nothing else, BlackSite is certainly that.
Read Full Review >GamePro
Blacksite is a decent enough FPS title that's the gaming equivalent of a summer action blockbuster: it sure as hell won't win any Oscars but it delivers just enough thrills to make you feel like you got your money's worth.
Read Full Review >Cheat Code Central
If you're looking for a ground-breaking experience or a robust selection of multiplayer modes- BlackSite's don't offer much more than a weekend distraction--this isn't it. However, if you find the idea of fighting aliens in your own backyard appealing, you won't do better than BlackSite's relatable, the-truth-is-out-there experience.
Read Full Review >AceGamez
It looks great, plays great, sounds great and works well online, yet never pretends to be better than it is. It will slip under the radar of many gamers, but for those who are a fan of the genre it comes highly recommended.
Read Full Review >Console Monster
The graphics for the game are simply stunning. Normally, Midway games have pretty average graphics, but the graphics in BlackSite are very crisp and detailed.
Read Full Review >Gamer 2.0
While the game was well paced, there wasn’t much depth to the individual gameplay facets used to break up regular running and gunning, and the lack of variety in weapons was disturbing for a shooter.
Read Full Review >Team Xbox
Overall, the game does just enough to be good, but stops short of being great. Still, if you're an FPS fan looking for a break from Halo 3 or CoD 4, Blacksite: Area 51 is definitely worth taking a look at.
Read Full Review >Game Informer
I can see FPS fans having fun with BlackSite since it provides all the standard FPS rollercoaster thrills, but most of us have been up and down those hills a few too many times.
Read Full Review >Kombo
BlackSite is a decent game unfortunately held back by poor AI and a lack of variety amongst the poorly designed enemies.
Read Full Review >ZTGameDomain
The controls are silky smooth and responsive, the visuals are fantastic, and the multi-player is certainly proficient, but nothing really makes it stand out from the herd.
Read Full Review >Da Gameboyz
Although Blacksite: Area 51 is a pretty good game it just doesn’t have the legs to make it one of those great experience.
Read Full Review >Games Master UK
A solid enough shooter but it struggles to distinguish itself from the very best titles. [Jan 2007, p.71]
Pelit (Finland)
The beginning of the game is very promising. Graphics are great and athmosphere is high. Unfortunately game mechanics are very straight forward and everything has been seen before. If that's not bad enough, the AI is just stupid. [Jan 2008]
IC-Games
Over all BlackSite tries to slip itself into a niche squarely between the two benchmarks of FPS gaming, Call of Duty 4 and HALO 3. It unfortunately doesn't succeed in making that niche, in fact trying to make itself a little of one and the other it fails doing anything profound.
Read Full Review >360 Gamer Magazine UK
It’s a perfectly sound release but with so many top-notch shooters to choose from already, this is barely going to factor on the radars of many people. The shame.
GameDaily
A decent shooter, jam-packed with targetable Black Ops soldiers and aliens aplenty and showing moderately good production values, despite a few hitches. However, it's lightweight fluff compared to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and The Orange Box, especially when it comes to the slapped-together multiplayer and lack of story depth.
Read Full Review >MS Xbox World
Blacksite: Area 51 is a decent game overall, however it feels like a game that is a shooter by numbers; offering very little that we've not seen before in other games.
Read Full Review >Planet Xbox 360
Blacksite Area 51 is a textbook example of how half-assed ideas rushed to production become half-assed games. Instead of emulating Unreal, this game makes Hour of Victory look like Game of the Year.
Read Full Review >Worth Playing
With a disappointingly forgettable story, solid but unremarkable action, and with little else to look forward to in the multiplayer mode, there's not much of a reason to dig for the truth behind this particular conspiracy.
Read Full Review >GameZone
The shooting mechanic is passable, but aiming is excruciatingly slow. The morale mechanic is pretty forgettable.
Read Full Review >GameSpot
BlackSite: Area 51 is an ordinary first-person shooter that's held back by a collection of bugs and other issues.
Read Full Review >IGN
The fact of the matter is that "BlackSite: Area 51" is just like every other run-of-the-mill FPS out there. You can find better multiplayer in Halo 3, you can find a better storyline in Bioshock, and you can find a livelier environment in just about anything.
Read Full Review >Game Positive
The promise of fantastic squad features falls flat due to the poorly applied AI throughout the game.
Read Full Review >Game Chronicles
BlackSite: Area 51 isn’t a terrible game. It’s not even a bad game. It’s just not that memorable in what has become an overabundance of FPS titles available on the Xbox 360.
Read Full Review >Talk Xbox
The game is merely another mediocre bag of wasted potential tossed out that simply begs you to lower your expectations right before diving in.
Read Full Review >Game Over Online
Apart from exciting moments that are few and far between, the game is dull and uninspiring.
Read Full Review >PALGN
Blacksite: Area 51 is reasonable first-person shooter that looks quite nice. However, its short length and lack of ingenuity will keep most away until it hits the bargain bin.
Read Full Review >Deeko
In the end Blacksite is at times a fun shooter, but in a gaming landscape where games like Halo 3, Orange Box and Bioshock are currently available, Blacksite does little to make itself stand out.
Read Full Review >VideoGamer
Other than the odd set-piece, Blacksite has nothing to warrant recommending it above the other big hitters and some severe technical issues drag it down considerably.
1UP
I don't dislike this game. Aside from a few minor graphical bugs and hiccups, BlackSite is unquestionably competent at what it does. It's just that what it does isn't particularly notable, or innovative, or memorable -- in either a good or a bad way. It's not even memorably mediocre. It's just...diverting, for 10 hours or so. You could say worse things about a game.
Read Full Review >GameTap
BlackSite, which evolved from a light-gun coin-op game in the late 1990s, does its best to shadow "Halo 1"'s story in many respects, but regularly comes up short.
Read Full Review >Official Xbox Magazine
The one aspect of BlackSite that stands out from the crowd is its not-so-subtle political commentary — for example, every mission is titled with a Bush-ism, like “Stay the Course,” “Mission Accomplished,” and “Regime Change,” and the game leaves nothing to the imagination regarding its designers’ political viewpoints. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you, but we just wish they’d woven it in a little better — no one likes being preached at when they’re trying to kill alien scum.
Read Full Review >games(TM)
By not setting impossible standards, and despite its derivations from countless other better shooters. BlackSite has achieved that most important of objectives: it is entertaining from beginning to end. [Jan 2008, p.129]
Gaming Age
Blacksite's biggest issues aren't in the controls, but the lack of what you can do with them, not to mention the horrible enemy A.I.
Read Full Review >Extreme Gamer
BlackSite: Area 51 is a noble attempt that really doesn’t shape up into anything.
Read Full Review >Electronic Gaming Monthly
At best, BlackSite is a poor man's "Resistance"; at worst, it's half of an unfinished game with a few cool set pieces. [Holiday 2007, p.74]
PTGamers
As if the clearly unfinished development, many imperfections and unoriginal design weren’t enough, BlackSite also arrives in one of the best years ever for the FPS genre.
Read Full Review >GameTrailers
BlackSite: Area 51 features a handful of fun moments blasting giant aliens, but there’s too much time spent in forgettable shootouts, the story fails to engage, and it’s so riddled with bugs that not even the Orkin Man can feel safe purchasing it.
Read Full Review >Xbox World 360 Magazine UK
Were it not for the technical faults Blacksite would be a just-about-half-decent FPS, albeit one with an identity crisis. The graphics aren't all that bad, but you can never really see them because of the staggeringly arse-flavoured frame rate.
Read Full Review >GameSpy
As a shooter, it's an awfully generic game that we're hard-pressed to recommend among the smorgasbord of significantly better FPS titles out there right now. As a political allegory, it's undermined by poor audio with no subtitles, heavy-handed storytelling, and little to emotionally invest in these characters.
Read Full Review >X360 Magazine UK
You like boring, generic, sub par shooters? No? Well don't buy BlackSite. [Issue 27, p.84]
Games Radar (in-house)
FPS fan-boys might decide to give this one a rental, but the experience will likely be forgotten less than a day after completion.
Read Full Review >Eurogamer
Little more than a seriously undercooked run-of-the-mill shooter that labours along with poor AI, botched squad handling and undemanding combat. With a desperately unfinished feel about it, Midway has ended up rushing a mediocre game onto the shelves at precisely the point when there's an embarrassment of riches for shooter fans.
Read Full Review >Maxi Consolas (Portugal)
Not that we were expecting something big from this game. But something like this, unfinished and with no personality whatsoever, will quickly drown in a highly competitive industry... even more so if it’s an FPS. [Jan 2008]
Edge Magazine
Blacksite is a thoroughly unexceptional title for which unrealistic promises were made, and one that is further let down by a wide assortment of bugs and design issues. [Jan 2008, p.83]
Game Revolution
Five to six hours in and Blacksite curls up and expires, ending mercifully an experience that not even an alien would care to dissect.
Read Full Review >NTSC-uk
Instead of creating the game they promised themselves in the design documents, the end result is a spaceship sized wreck of catastrophic proportions and with very little redeeming qualities to prevent it from being placed at the very bottom of the bargain bin where it belongs.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this game is 6.4 (out of 10) based on 41 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
M W gave it an8:
This is a fun game to play...definitely not the best, but far from the worst...worth the purchase.
CHUD STFU gave it a9:
Really good game and I dislike FPS I'M more a RPG FAN!
TARGET1058 gave it a7:
Could have been a really good game but the developers didn't put enough work into it. Way too many glitches. Falls short of it's real potential. Even with the problems it is a fun game for FPS fans.
Glenn H. gave it a2:
Very poor game play and handling, very buggy, crashed several times. Worst game I have played in a long time, a very long time.
Michael R. gave it a9:
I'm having a lot of fun playing this game.
Pamela H. gave it an8:
The most underrated game on 360! Awesome graphics and non-stop fun.
Jon gave it a5:
The game had a okay story. But the driving controls were weird the weapons were limited to about 5. The AI not the best. could have been a lot better if more time was spent on it.
