Hey every one! Thanks for joining me while I streamed this game. I've got some super obscure, interesting games I plan on streaming next so if you want to come hang out then give a follow! www.twitch.tv/jarek4gamingdragon
Yeah, I always wanted to play this one, but when I finally did, it felt kinnda meh. No Malder, no Illuminaty, and colours of early UE 3 are vert dull. Strangely, this game somehow inspired me in some weard way. P.S. This M4 is the best looking M4 in any game I've played.
They removed he "Area 51" moniker to the game in Europe for some reason, they wanted to make it unrelated to the franchise, no idea why. Also, by total coincidence I found a load of merch to this game I got going to a press event about it clearing out my back room, really nice satchel bag.
@@Jarekthegamingdragon In hindsight it was quite sad, they had some devs there to give interviews and they were so excited about the game, you'd think they were working on Half-Life 3 or something. But got free stuff and all the sliders and cupcakes you could eat :D BTW if you're looking at obscure shooters, can you check out The Club? Sega's attempt to turn a third person shooter into a racing game!
As ridiculous as this is, I feel like this game is one of the first which I watched a playthrough on youtube because I was broke when it came out but was enticed by premise. Thanks for the memories!
This brings so many memories back from when I played it on Xbox when I was younger. 5:37 brings back the most memories I remember being scared of them aliens. I also don't remember it being called "Blacksite Area 51", I just remember it being Blacksite. great video
I'm surprised you didn't talk about some of the development stuff on this game. Apparently the developers wanted to make a proper sequel to the 2005 Area 51 but the director (or producer, can't quite remember) placed in charge of the project didn't give a single shit about what they were making, told the dev team to just hop on trends set by Modern Warfare and actively slammed the game and the developers despite their hard work before release with a strict deadline - we can probably guess the game was made on a single continuous crunch. I could be wrong but I remember reading articles on this around the game's release and it's sad how one person can handle a project so miserably it falls apart and puts the blame on everyone else. What's sad is this could have been a great game too, I like how your movement speed was higher than shooters of the era, hip fire was accurate, enemies were aggressive and visually interesting. The alien weapons were really fun and you can tell the developers did everything they could to make it fun despite everything going down. Plus it's a fuck ton better than Resistance 2's campaign, what a massive piece of fucking shit that was.
Resistance 2's multiplayer, especially the co-op was fantastic. But sadly the servers are gone and can't be played anymore. I was referring to R2's campaign which is just beyond abysmal man, recently replayed it just to see if the game really was that bad and shit did it turn out to be significantly worse than I remembered. I literally had to set the difficulty to casual it was pissing me off that much when the hybrids constantly rush you, sprinting faster than you can and shooting accurately af with a bullseye all at the same time. Even with the difficulty change I was still getting one shotted at pure random. Doesn't help when literally every level is littered with cars that explode if you so much as sneeze at them with a fucking insane blast radius (which only affects you, allies and enemies are completely unaffected unless they're really close) and the game loves to spam titans that also loves spam rockets to exacerbate the bullshit even further - those are just a tiny amount of the issues I have with that fucking dreadful piece of shit campaign. The chameleons were cool though despite everyone hating them. I know this has nothing to do with Blacksite: Area 51 but Resistance 2's campaign truly is THE worst singleplayer campaign I've ever played and I've played and even collect a lot of bad games and I seriously cannot understand people liking it or even thinking it's just mediocre when it embodies every shitty aspect of game design from shooters during the modern military shooter fad. Which sucks when Resistance 1 and 3 are still pretty great games which I can say in confidence because I replayed those recently as well, despite how brutal 1 can be but it's still way fairer than 2 ever was. And that's after replaying 007 Nightfire on the original Xbox, as much as that game spams shitty section after shitty section that should have been cut, the core gameplay when you're actually running around and stealthing or shooting stuff is really fun. Yeah I get really triggered over just how incredibly bad Resistance 2's campaign is, not gonna lie. They should have just focused on the co-op and cut that fuck awful campaign entirely because the co-op mode was fucking great. Like seriously why hasn't anyone tried to replicate it? Blacksite: Area 51's campaign on the other hand is just inoffensively mediocre and thankfully doesn't outstay its welcome, it has some fun high points and it had the potential to be a great game, it might be less memorable than Resistance 2 but I had way, way, WAY more fun with Blacksite: Area 51. I should make a career ranting about how bad some games are I swear. Might start a blog on that LOL
Harvey Smith (director of Dishonored and it's sequels as well as a designer on the original Deus Ex) was the designer for this game and he had high ambitions for it but was held back creatively by suits which is why it turned out as mediocre as it did.
It was a decent game. Played is when I was like 10 all the way through and thought it was the most badass thing E V E R. but played it again last week and couldn't stand no longer than 15 mins of it
@@calzone9033 I feel you. I played this game when I was a kid and a few months ago I popped it back into the 360 and cut it off after about 6 or 7 minutes lmao.
You really got some quality content on this channel let me tell ya. It's just been one whole nostalgia fest for me while watching your videos. Almost every game you've reviewed had tapped into some weird old locked closet in my memory, so I just wanna thank you for that. Also like I went out and got 70% of the reviewed games in your playlist so far. Good shit man.
I’m so happy you reviewed this. Shortly after finding your channel I found my old copy of Blacksite Area 51. I always thought you would do a good job summarizing what was good and awful about this game. Now I have a video to point to when nobody asks what I thought about Blacksite Area 51 lol
I definitly grew up more in love with the era of the first game, where things were in that weird phase before modern-military and instead wanted to be both half-life and halo, with some Doom influence still lingering. Loved those darker cooridors full of more clear enemy types, health packs, monsters, etc. Where things were more alien and sci-fi. Still, the sequel looks fun enough as a lazier popcorn shooter where you play as army vs aliens, which is a fun enough concept in itself. I think this game deserved a little more justice, or at least a digital release. I hope someday, somebody brings back both Area 51s even as just a basic port.
This game is surprisingly fun. It's no great classic, but it's not bad either. I was really surprised. You can tell the devs had the talent to make this a AAA game; all the pieces were there, but it just didn't quite coalesce into brilliance. I have to agree with Jarek that the lack of success for this game was more a product of the year then the game. I wonder if Midway had been allowed to spend another year on the product if they would have had both a better game and a better market for it. We'll never know.
Talk about a comment aging badly, less then a dozen of the so called "invaders" actually bothered to show up. And those that worked up the nerve to show up didn't have the guts to catch a bullet trying to storm a military installation
Oh wow, I worked on this fresh out of college. Got curious if anyone ever did this sort of game analysis of it. Nice points, and you hit a lot of issues we knew of but just not enough time to fix and polish some of the obvious issues. We even had co-op in right up until about a month before release. I knew the game was in trouble when COD:MW moved it's release date to match ours, so the goliath of military shooters didn't want to make our lives any easier. Oh one fun story, we got fined by the ESRB for having a secret room where you could see pictures of some of the environment artists. The room wasn't anything bad but we kept it too secret within the team and turns out no one ever told the ESRB about the secret room so they thought we were trying to sneak content past them.
WOAAAAAAH I REMEMBER PLAYING THIS GAME,I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT WHRN I WAS YOUNG LOL and i also managed to get the achivement where you play online with someone who was infected (aka they played with a developer of the game)
you can pretty mutch play bingo on this Chanel. (Don't get me wrong. Realy enjoy his videos.) mentioning fov ✅ mentioning crysis ✅ mentioning motion blur ✅ mentioning v sync✅ . . .
@@falconsh92 You kind of have to talk about things like that. That's like saying you can play bingo by predicting a reviewer will talk about gameplay or story...
I would mention one of the best qualities this game has is the locations, there are not many things better than mowing down aliens at a rural gas station, or a trailer park, or your local cul-de-sac. In my opinion, makes up a lot for the rest of the game's quirks.
as weird as this sounds, this might be one of my favorite games from when I was smaller. I always enjoyed the layers that were implied because it made me think about the larger universe since so little was explained, and I really enjoyed the parts where you would run into pockets of guardsmen fighting the aliens - the demo will forever live in my head, where you watch the walker kill the civilian, fight at the gas station, and then your blackhawk orbits around and radios that they are "tally-ho on a flare' at the state building where some guardsmen are fighting the aliens. idk. its probably a really bad game objectively, but when I was little i found it so charming, and different. there was an authenticity to some of the narrative, even if the execution was sorely lacking in effort
I love that you do the same thing I do with animations. There's times I'll just stand and test weapons in a game to see what guns I'll use based solely on animation.
I'm a console gamer but I am hooked on Jarek's videos. I've got a copy of this game on Xbox 360 and I can confirm the issues he mentioned. It's still fun though.
I randomly thought about this game a couple days ago and tried to remember it’s name. Glad I found it. I beat this on my 360 when I was a kid and remember the desert levels
As someone who is into guns, I am pretty pleased that you mentioned realistic reloads and weapons. It really tickles my fancy that a game has realistic reloads. I think for the most part, Battlefield 3 and 4 has pretty good reloads for modern weapons (Hardline had a bit more flashier reloads) and I think the Modern Warfare Cod games did a pretty good job too with having two animations for bolt locked back and tactical reloads. I think probably the game with the nicest and most realistic reloads has to go to Insurgency Sandstorm with both their tactical reloads (including the faster dropping the partial mag without retention) and with the bolt locked back.
I remember this game. I used to love playing the low budget shooters of the era, on 360. Looking at it now, this is the most of-the-era browned out, light-bloomy game ever 😂
The first Area 51 game for ps2 was one of my favorite games ever. I was so excited to get this one and I absolutely hated it. Actually bought it for 60 and turned it in the next week for like half that lol
I wish i remember where i read a Harvey Smith interview about Blacksite 51. Before he went to Arkane he talks about the satire they put into the trophy names and some of the collectible journal things. Surprisingly funny stuff when i had played some it a few years agom
This took me back to 2008, during my middle school days, thanks! I had exactly the same reaction back then (and i played on console) it wasnt terrible but it wasnt great. I wish it would have carried over a bit more from the original Area 51
Damn I have the PC version I got it to run up until the movie theater section as a kid it crashed and I just went back to battlefield Vietnam those bots man they have a mind of their own lol
Another excellent video. This game has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, even the glitchy console version."Half life as a military modern shooter ... only not as good" were my exact thoughts. You review style is refreshing. Keep it up :)
Another great vid! If you’re looking for another game to cover in your forgotten shooters series Section 8 and it’s sequel Prejudice are some great underrated fps’s that I absolutely loved when I was younger.
I feel like 1 of maybe 10 people in the world that played and really enjoyed Advent Rising. The story of the development and subsequent failure of a promising franchise is a really interesting one.
If this game was moddable, with a few tweak here and there this could become an FPS Gears of War. Almost everything in this game screams Gears of War. From the funny voiceover, Lambent like enemies, Reborn soldiers that looking like the locust Drone, Spore Towers that act like Seeders. The XM MG that sounds like a Lancer remixed. And what's up with those exploding Scrabs (Polyps) things? that only a few years later we will see them again in Gears of War 3! pretty interesting huh? Fun game that i actually enjoyed playing.
I got this game on my ps3. I used to play this as a child all the time, as well as Jericho another fps that wasn't reviewed well back in the day, buy I enjoyed it.
8:53 I think what he's pulling is the case deflector (which doesn't move on the XM8), which is weird since I can only think of 1 gun where you do that (H&K L85A2 variant with the teardrop charging handle).
I remember this game pretty well cause I was interested in it for a few reasons. One was that it was a spiritual sucessor to Area 51 and another was you played as Delta Force, a group I feel is underutilized in games cause look at some of the declassified or public stuff they've done, it's fucking crazy that some feels like stuff you'd see in games. It was fun but did have a few issues that you mentioned: lack of guns, pretty much useless squad mechanics, but I didn't have the supposed issues on my PS3 copy you mentioned. But I always felt it was lacking what could've made it a great game. A major issue I found was, as DarkStarAngelo in the comments mentioned, was lots of complications in development. One he didn't mention was after it was released Harvey Smith, the game's designer, came out publicly to announce how ruined the game's development schedule was. He claimed the schedule caused the low reviews due to the fact they were not able to test the game properly. He lost his job at Midway soon after making this comment. So, I blame the peolpe in charge and not the people slaving on a rushed product.
Seriouly one of the first game that introduce me to next gen graphics, i played the demo quite a lot, just for the nuclear explosion with the shockwave at the end.
I used to love this game when I was a kid.... for some reason, I’m not even sure why. Probably because it had “Area 51” in the title and I really liked aliens when I was ten years old.
This was the one game on 360 that i would play through repeatedly on the hardest difficulty for some reason. the few multiplayer matches i played were ok, but i still hold a soft spot for this game
I remember renting this game from Blockbuster when those were still a thing. I don't remember all the nitty gritty details but I do remember enjoying it thoroughly. No means a masterpiece but I felt it was an ok to good game overall.
Funny enough, when this game came out, I always assumed it was a follow up to Area 51 and while I've never actually completed Area 51, I did end up completing Blacksite. I certainly enjoyed my time with Blacksite but man, it sure was forgettable. Glad I got it on sale at the time hehe.
Finally a review with an open mind and not high expectations due to the other games that came out at the same time. I own this game on the 360 i injoyed it still own it and the 1st one for OG xbox you sir are awesome keep up the good work man alway injoy your review's
I played this game back in the day, and i though that graphics looked really good, looking back at the footage and I am reevaluating my thoughts. Ahhhh, memories, memories...
If you were over 21 during the 6th and then 7th gen, you likely realized that we were already quickly reaching a threshold of having too many games and too little time, let alone money or consoles to play them as they came out. Thus the TO PLAY stack gets larger. Given more time and age you begin to remember other titles you'd forgotten, from years ago, that you had wanted to play.... At 42, I am proudly and inevitably, Forver-last-gen. It Saves money. To say the least. Area 51, A good game, surrounded by greats.
Eyyy Jarek, love your work, your vids are hella enjoyable and funny at parts so much that I can't breathe (the FOV rant was genius)! Anyways, was wondering, did you have by any chance have MoHAirborne on your repertoire for future videos? I think it'd be a nice shot vid if you'd do it, plus I was wondering what you were thinking about it. Cheers!
I picked this up on my Xbox 360 but had crashing issues, lol. Also, the graphics gave me funky eye-strain for some reason. Started turning to PC shortly after but I did pick it up a few years later when I got a cheap copy on Amazon. Funnily enough, the most memorable parts of the game nowadays are the models I recognized from Stranglehold and how one of your teammates oozes over a Dodge advertisement...
When I was a kid I got a magazine which had a CD with a PC FPS game named Devastation, it was sort of sci-fi ish, you should get your hands on it and make an analysis about it.
area 51 on ps2 and xbox was amazing when i was a kid then blacksite was really good to beat both games tons and tons of times loved bothed games now in 20 and miss these games
It's really baffling to think a game that came out around the same time as Halo 3 could be so damn monochrome and so damn flat, gameplay wise. I think this one has been forgotten for a good reason, honestly.
This is the first ps3 i have ever played. It was 2011 and me and my brother saw the game at k mart and was hype because we had played the original on ps2 which did scare me as a kid and had good ideas for a horror game even though now i see the game as action based. My brother got the game and we were gonna get a ps3 next week so i was hype for a whole week then when we finally got the game i was amazed, to me the game had amazing graphics especially with the motion blur and bloom I thought it made it look realistic lol.
Watching this gameplay made me realize that I actually have played this game at some point, and completely forgot that I had. Must have been so generic that my mind wiped it from the important memory section.
So me and my buddy used to do a series on our old RUclips channel called the Bad Games Beatdown. And we ended up playing the console version of this game, having stumbled across a preowned copy and having heard *nothing* about it at all. And we kinda came to the same conclusion you did? Like, we played WAY worse games in the BGBD, and shooters we hated way more than this - Kane and Lynch 2, Duke Nukem Forever, MOH Warfighter, etc - and both agreed that it was 'some generic modern military shooter', released at a time where the genre was oversaturated with better titles, and especially post that era where now we've moved away into more fast-paced arcade shooters like DOOM etc. Being the console version, we also noted some funny framerate issues and animation glitches. Overall, not awful, just, meh? Oh, and fun fact; it was only named Blacksite in Europe. The Area 51 part was cut from the title. We literally had NO idea that there was even an alien/sci-fi mutant aspect to the game, and playing through the first 45 minutes or so of the game as we did, we still had no idea. We legit just thought it was a generic MMS set in Iraq/the Middle East. Way to undersell the game, lads!
I rem i actually bought this game. My fav parts were when that big alien meteor would hit the earth youd see that shit coming lol was fun while it lasted
Pleaaaase do a review of Metal Arms. It was a super fun robot carnage shooter game back in the day and no one knows what it is. It was super fun with funny characters, awesome guns, fun combat, surprisingly cool soundtrack and more and it deserves some recognition. I don’t think anyone else would review an older Original Xbox and Game Cube game from like 2004
Ok the beginning made me curious. How many times have you found it hard find and buy certain games? It’s always something I have wondered. Especially with games like necrovision. That’s certainly must not have been easy to find at a price that wasn’t outrageously overpriced.
You should play the Battle L.A game. It's pretty short, from what I've heard, and some say it's pretty bad as well, but I played it for a bit some years ago, and it was just your average modern military shooter with aliens
Hey every one! Thanks for joining me while I streamed this game. I've got some super obscure, interesting games I plan on streaming next so if you want to come hang out then give a follow! www.twitch.tv/jarek4gamingdragon
Yeah, I always wanted to play this one, but when I finally did, it felt kinnda meh. No Malder, no Illuminaty, and colours of early UE 3 are vert dull. Strangely, this game somehow inspired me in some weard way.
P.S. This M4 is the best looking M4 in any game I've played.
Bro I would love it if ya reviewed psi ops mindgate. I remember the game but I was young, so its fuzzy.
You gotta do medal of honor airborne I loved that game as a kid
Jarek u should review the EA 's Syndicate (2012) a forgotten gem that got hated just for wrong reason !
more people watched this video than played the game, hilarious
"Half life as a military modern shooter "
Ah, Hunt Down the Refund
YOU FUCKED UP MY FACE
zealot246 i see a pyro viever
You mean half life 3
Y O U H A V E M Y P E R M I S S I O N T O F U C K M E, B I T C H D I E
Ouch.
I like that You are talking abour Fov, settings, reload animations. Keep going that way
nO oNE CarES AbOuT FoV!
shut up nerd
YES I agree.
Keep in all the details, yes exactly
He IS the FOV dragon after all
They removed he "Area 51" moniker to the game in Europe for some reason, they wanted to make it unrelated to the franchise, no idea why.
Also, by total coincidence I found a load of merch to this game I got going to a press event about it clearing out my back room, really nice satchel bag.
Hah, must be weird going to a press event for a game that ended up horribly flopping.
@@Jarekthegamingdragon In hindsight it was quite sad, they had some devs there to give interviews and they were so excited about the game, you'd think they were working on Half-Life 3 or something.
But got free stuff and all the sliders and cupcakes you could eat :D
BTW if you're looking at obscure shooters, can you check out The Club? Sega's attempt to turn a third person shooter into a racing game!
That m4 is probably the most smoothest m4 adaptation in any game
You should play that strange Battle: Los Angeles movie-game tie in. It always reminded me of this game lol.
Agreed. This was around the time when so many games had the *Unreal 3 Aesthetic* that made them all blend together.
@@thejonathan130 Still better than triple-A games these days.
I remember it was disappointing but better than the film
I liked that game and movie lol. I think I 100% the achievements.
@@thejonathan130 it was $10
Remember playing this as a kid thinking it was resistance 😂
As ridiculous as this is, I feel like this game is one of the first which I watched a playthrough on youtube because I was broke when it came out but was enticed by premise. Thanks for the memories!
i spoiled a tons of games i currently playing, because i did the same
MoH Airborne was really fun. I remember being really excited about having the open map mission style and parachute deployments.
that was a truly unique game, and it usually sells on Steam for just a couple bucks.
This brings so many memories back from when I played it on Xbox when I was younger.
5:37 brings back the most memories I remember being scared of them aliens.
I also don't remember it being called "Blacksite Area 51", I just remember it being Blacksite. great video
I'm surprised you didn't talk about some of the development stuff on this game. Apparently the developers wanted to make a proper sequel to the 2005 Area 51 but the director (or producer, can't quite remember) placed in charge of the project didn't give a single shit about what they were making, told the dev team to just hop on trends set by Modern Warfare and actively slammed the game and the developers despite their hard work before release with a strict deadline - we can probably guess the game was made on a single continuous crunch. I could be wrong but I remember reading articles on this around the game's release and it's sad how one person can handle a project so miserably it falls apart and puts the blame on everyone else.
What's sad is this could have been a great game too, I like how your movement speed was higher than shooters of the era, hip fire was accurate, enemies were aggressive and visually interesting. The alien weapons were really fun and you can tell the developers did everything they could to make it fun despite everything going down. Plus it's a fuck ton better than Resistance 2's campaign, what a massive piece of fucking shit that was.
I honestly think your comment should be pinned.
I agree with everything except the resistance 2 bit. That game was way better than Blacksite.
Resistance 2's multiplayer, especially the co-op was fantastic. But sadly the servers are gone and can't be played anymore. I was referring to R2's campaign which is just beyond abysmal man, recently replayed it just to see if the game really was that bad and shit did it turn out to be significantly worse than I remembered. I literally had to set the difficulty to casual it was pissing me off that much when the hybrids constantly rush you, sprinting faster than you can and shooting accurately af with a bullseye all at the same time. Even with the difficulty change I was still getting one shotted at pure random. Doesn't help when literally every level is littered with cars that explode if you so much as sneeze at them with a fucking insane blast radius (which only affects you, allies and enemies are completely unaffected unless they're really close) and the game loves to spam titans that also loves spam rockets to exacerbate the bullshit even further - those are just a tiny amount of the issues I have with that fucking dreadful piece of shit campaign. The chameleons were cool though despite everyone hating them.
I know this has nothing to do with Blacksite: Area 51 but Resistance 2's campaign truly is THE worst singleplayer campaign I've ever played and I've played and even collect a lot of bad games and I seriously cannot understand people liking it or even thinking it's just mediocre when it embodies every shitty aspect of game design from shooters during the modern military shooter fad. Which sucks when Resistance 1 and 3 are still pretty great games which I can say in confidence because I replayed those recently as well, despite how brutal 1 can be but it's still way fairer than 2 ever was. And that's after replaying 007 Nightfire on the original Xbox, as much as that game spams shitty section after shitty section that should have been cut, the core gameplay when you're actually running around and stealthing or shooting stuff is really fun.
Yeah I get really triggered over just how incredibly bad Resistance 2's campaign is, not gonna lie. They should have just focused on the co-op and cut that fuck awful campaign entirely because the co-op mode was fucking great. Like seriously why hasn't anyone tried to replicate it? Blacksite: Area 51's campaign on the other hand is just inoffensively mediocre and thankfully doesn't outstay its welcome, it has some fun high points and it had the potential to be a great game, it might be less memorable than Resistance 2 but I had way, way, WAY more fun with Blacksite: Area 51.
I should make a career ranting about how bad some games are I swear. Might start a blog on that LOL
Wait what? That Resistance bit came out of no where and, I fucking love that game.
Harvey Smith (director of Dishonored and it's sequels as well as a designer on the original Deus Ex) was the designer for this game and he had high ambitions for it but was held back creatively by suits which is why it turned out as mediocre as it did.
I think a big reason why it was disliked was it didn't come close to Area 51 2005 and people really enjoyed that game, I did as well.
My cousin bought this game when I was younger. Never thought much of the games but I think they're neat now. Not God teir but still enjoyable.
It was a decent game. Played is when I was like 10 all the way through and thought it was the most badass thing E V E R. but played it again last week and couldn't stand no longer than 15 mins of it
@@calzone9033 I feel you. I played this game when I was a kid and a few months ago I popped it back into the 360 and cut it off after about 6 or 7 minutes lmao.
You really got some quality content on this channel let me tell ya. It's just been one whole nostalgia fest for me while watching your videos. Almost every game you've reviewed had tapped into some weird old locked closet in my memory, so I just wanna thank you for that. Also like I went out and got 70% of the reviewed games in your playlist so far. Good shit man.
I’m so happy you reviewed this. Shortly after finding your channel I found my old copy of Blacksite Area 51. I always thought you would do a good job summarizing what was good and awful about this game. Now I have a video to point to when nobody asks what I thought about Blacksite Area 51 lol
I remember the trailers for this game and Wheelman in Stranglehold. They were in the cinema on the first level.
I definitly grew up more in love with the era of the first game, where things were in that weird phase before modern-military and instead wanted to be both half-life and halo, with some Doom influence still lingering. Loved those darker cooridors full of more clear enemy types, health packs, monsters, etc. Where things were more alien and sci-fi. Still, the sequel looks fun enough as a lazier popcorn shooter where you play as army vs aliens, which is a fun enough concept in itself. I think this game deserved a little more justice, or at least a digital release. I hope someday, somebody brings back both Area 51s even as just a basic port.
Hey... That's the legendary theme playing in the background.
This game is surprisingly fun. It's no great classic, but it's not bad either. I was really surprised.
You can tell the devs had the talent to make this a AAA game; all the pieces were there, but it just didn't quite coalesce into brilliance.
I have to agree with Jarek that the lack of success for this game was more a product of the year then the game.
I wonder if Midway had been allowed to spend another year on the product if they would have had both a better game and a better market for it.
We'll never know.
Yeah This Game Foreshadowing "The Invasion Of Area 51" recently
Talk about a comment aging badly, less then a dozen of the so called "invaders" actually bothered to show up. And those that worked up the nerve to show up didn't have the guts to catch a bullet trying to storm a military installation
@@jeremyallen492 That whole event ended about as anti climatic as a wet fart.
Oh wow, I worked on this fresh out of college. Got curious if anyone ever did this sort of game analysis of it.
Nice points, and you hit a lot of issues we knew of but just not enough time to fix and polish some of the obvious issues. We even had co-op in right up until about a month before release.
I knew the game was in trouble when COD:MW moved it's release date to match ours, so the goliath of military shooters didn't want to make our lives any easier.
Oh one fun story, we got fined by the ESRB for having a secret room where you could see pictures of some of the environment artists. The room wasn't anything bad but we kept it too secret within the team and turns out no one ever told the ESRB about the secret room so they thought we were trying to sneak content past them.
No you didn't quit lyin for likes
WOAAAAAAH I REMEMBER PLAYING THIS GAME,I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT WHRN I WAS YOUNG LOL and i also managed to get the achivement where you play online with someone who was infected (aka they played with a developer of the game)
Here comes the "Stop talking about FOV" comments
you can pretty mutch play bingo on this Chanel.
(Don't get me wrong. Realy enjoy his videos.)
mentioning fov ✅
mentioning crysis ✅
mentioning motion blur ✅
mentioning v sync✅
.
.
.
@@falconsh92 You kind of have to talk about things like that. That's like saying you can play bingo by predicting a reviewer will talk about gameplay or story...
My god do I remember this game
I would mention one of the best qualities this game has is the locations, there are not many things better than mowing down aliens at a rural gas station, or a trailer park, or your local cul-de-sac. In my opinion, makes up a lot for the rest of the game's quirks.
Man I used to play the hell out of this game...ah childhood memories
as weird as this sounds, this might be one of my favorite games from when I was smaller. I always enjoyed the layers that were implied because it made me think about the larger universe since so little was explained, and I really enjoyed the parts where you would run into pockets of guardsmen fighting the aliens - the demo will forever live in my head, where you watch the walker kill the civilian, fight at the gas station, and then your blackhawk orbits around and radios that they are "tally-ho on a flare' at the state building where some guardsmen are fighting the aliens. idk. its probably a really bad game objectively, but when I was little i found it so charming, and different. there was an authenticity to some of the narrative, even if the execution was sorely lacking in effort
Same I have a lot of memories of playing this game
I love that you do the same thing I do with animations. There's times I'll just stand and test weapons in a game to see what guns I'll use based solely on animation.
Been watching since wayyyy back in the Halo Reach days, glad to see you’re still going strong 💪
I'm a console gamer but I am hooked on Jarek's videos. I've got a copy of this game on Xbox 360 and I can confirm the issues he mentioned. It's still fun though.
I randomly thought about this game a couple days ago and tried to remember it’s name. Glad I found it. I beat this on my 360 when I was a kid and remember the desert levels
Ah a gem from my middle school days. Now my nostalgia googles may be tinted but it was enjoyable for a summer drought game.
Hey jarek you should analyse the 2012 battleship video game based on the movie
Every time i see battleship i remember angry joe review
@@iamarabicandiloveamericanp7137 Oh yeah I forgot he reviewed the game
FOUR HOOOOOOOURRRA!!!!
At least it was kinda unique in that you controled the sea battles. Kinda. Made watching background fights interesting I figure.
@@duncanharrell5009 It was a poor man's Battle Stations Pacific.
As someone who is into guns, I am pretty pleased that you mentioned realistic reloads and weapons. It really tickles my fancy that a game has realistic reloads. I think for the most part, Battlefield 3 and 4 has pretty good reloads for modern weapons (Hardline had a bit more flashier reloads) and I think the Modern Warfare Cod games did a pretty good job too with having two animations for bolt locked back and tactical reloads. I think probably the game with the nicest and most realistic reloads has to go to Insurgency Sandstorm with both their tactical reloads (including the faster dropping the partial mag without retention) and with the bolt locked back.
I remember this game. I used to love playing the low budget shooters of the era, on 360. Looking at it now, this is the most of-the-era browned out, light-bloomy game ever 😂
360 era was the worst, aesthetically. Plastic characters, bloomed to shit, jaggies everywhere, really monotone colors etc...
Had fun watching you stream! Keep up the good work
The first Area 51 game for ps2 was one of my favorite games ever. I was so excited to get this one and I absolutely hated it. Actually bought it for 60 and turned it in the next week for like half that lol
That is still my favorite game on PS2. Might replay it soon.
I remember this being among the first demos available on the 360, i remember marvelling at the rain effects.
I wish i remember where i read a Harvey Smith interview about Blacksite 51. Before he went to Arkane he talks about the satire they put into the trophy names and some of the collectible journal things. Surprisingly funny stuff when i had played some it a few years agom
Oh my god the memories I thought I was the only one who played this!!!!!
Right?
I loved this Game as a Kid
Always wish it got a Sequel
But you should review the 2008 Alone in the Dark Game!
This took me back to 2008, during my middle school days, thanks! I had exactly the same reaction back then (and i played on console) it wasnt terrible but it wasnt great. I wish it would have carried over a bit more from the original Area 51
Damn I have the PC version I got it to run up until the movie theater section as a kid it crashed and I just went back to battlefield Vietnam those bots man they have a mind of their own lol
Completed this game a bunch of times. Loved it. Great characters and a good story (from what I remember)
Ohhhh i remember this game😂😂 had fun as a kid
Another excellent video. This game has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, even the glitchy console version."Half life as a military modern shooter ... only not as good" were my exact thoughts. You review style is refreshing. Keep it up :)
Another great vid! If you’re looking for another game to cover in your forgotten shooters series Section 8 and it’s sequel Prejudice are some great underrated fps’s that I absolutely loved when I was younger.
Never knew there was a sequel, thanks!
You know i loved this game as a kid now that i'm older i still love it.
Can you Review Psi Ops the mindgate conspiracy alongside Advent Rising, PsiOps was published by Midway and unfortunately ended in a cliffhanger.
I feel like 1 of maybe 10 people in the world that played and really enjoyed Advent Rising. The story of the development and subsequent failure of a promising franchise is a really interesting one.
@@gnarkillguch I loved that game to death
Ohhh i remember this game in my childhood
If this game was moddable, with a few tweak here and there this could become an FPS Gears of War. Almost everything in this game screams Gears of War. From the funny voiceover, Lambent like enemies, Reborn soldiers that looking like the locust Drone, Spore Towers that act like Seeders. The XM MG that sounds like a Lancer remixed. And what's up with those exploding Scrabs (Polyps) things? that only a few years later we will see them again in Gears of War 3! pretty interesting huh?
Fun game that i actually enjoyed playing.
I got this game on my ps3. I used to play this as a child all the time, as well as Jericho another fps that wasn't reviewed well back in the day, buy I enjoyed it.
a remake of this game would be awesome
"9010%"
Sounds about right.
I used to play this game on my Xbox 360, and I sincerely love it.
All I remember of this was a neat demo mission where you fought aliens in a gas station.
8:53 I think what he's pulling is the case deflector (which doesn't move on the XM8), which is weird since I can only think of 1 gun where you do that (H&K L85A2 variant with the teardrop charging handle).
I remember this game pretty well cause I was interested in it for a few reasons. One was that it was a spiritual sucessor to Area 51 and another was you played as Delta Force, a group I feel is underutilized in games cause look at some of the declassified or public stuff they've done, it's fucking crazy that some feels like stuff you'd see in games. It was fun but did have a few issues that you mentioned: lack of guns, pretty much useless squad mechanics, but I didn't have the supposed issues on my PS3 copy you mentioned. But I always felt it was lacking what could've made it a great game. A major issue I found was, as DarkStarAngelo in the comments mentioned, was lots of complications in development. One he didn't mention was after it was released Harvey Smith, the game's designer, came out publicly to announce how ruined the game's development schedule was. He claimed the schedule caused the low reviews due to the fact they were not able to test the game properly. He lost his job at Midway soon after making this comment. So, I blame the peolpe in charge and not the people slaving on a rushed product.
"FOV DOES NOT MATT-"
This game was a huge part of my childhood.
4:36 is the "Mexico is tinted yellow in all American movies" meme
Except that's iraq
Seriouly one of the first game that introduce me to next gen graphics, i played the demo quite a lot, just for the nuclear explosion with the shockwave at the end.
I used to love this game when I was a kid.... for some reason, I’m not even sure why. Probably because it had “Area 51” in the title and I really liked aliens when I was ten years old.
This was the one game on 360 that i would play through repeatedly on the hardest difficulty for some reason. the few multiplayer matches i played were ok, but i still hold a soft spot for this game
I remember renting this game from Blockbuster when those were still a thing. I don't remember all the nitty gritty details but I do remember enjoying it thoroughly. No means a masterpiece but I felt it was an ok to good game overall.
Exact same memory
I remember seeing a cinematic trailer for this game that scarred me for a while.
Funny enough, when this game came out, I always assumed it was a follow up to Area 51 and while I've never actually completed Area 51, I did end up completing Blacksite. I certainly enjoyed my time with Blacksite but man, it sure was forgettable. Glad I got it on sale at the time hehe.
you should do a video on the first Area 51, i LOVED that game as a kid. very spooky
Finally a review with an open mind and not high expectations due to the other games that came out at the same time. I own this game on the 360 i injoyed it still own it and the 1st one for OG xbox you sir are awesome keep up the good work man alway injoy your review's
Played this as a kid and couldn’t find it for years until today
I played this game back in the day, and i though that graphics looked really good, looking back at the footage and I am reevaluating my thoughts. Ahhhh, memories, memories...
I thought this game was awesome as a kid, and I played the Xbox version. Despite how generic it is I instantly recognised the opening desert level.
If you were over 21 during the 6th and then 7th gen, you likely realized that we were already quickly reaching a threshold of having too many games and too little time, let alone money or consoles to play them as they came out.
Thus the TO PLAY stack gets larger.
Given more time and age you begin to remember other titles you'd forgotten, from years ago, that you had wanted to play....
At 42, I am proudly and inevitably, Forver-last-gen.
It Saves money. To say the least.
Area 51, A good game, surrounded by greats.
i remember playing this when i was really young and i didnt mind it. I remember being mad because there was only one other person playing online lol
I enjoyed the gameplay.
Eyyy Jarek, love your work, your vids are hella enjoyable and funny at parts so much that I can't breathe (the FOV rant was genius)!
Anyways, was wondering, did you have by any chance have MoHAirborne on your repertoire for future videos? I think it'd be a nice shot vid if you'd do it, plus I was wondering what you were thinking about it.
Cheers!
P. S. Edit; ahahahhaha, was watching as I wrote my original comment and then I heard it at the end that you might cover MoHA 😅
I picked this up on my Xbox 360 but had crashing issues, lol. Also, the graphics gave me funky eye-strain for some reason. Started turning to PC shortly after but I did pick it up a few years later when I got a cheap copy on Amazon.
Funnily enough, the most memorable parts of the game nowadays are the models I recognized from Stranglehold and how one of your teammates oozes over a Dodge advertisement...
When I was a kid I got a magazine which had a CD with a PC FPS game named Devastation, it was sort of sci-fi ish, you should get your hands on it and make an analysis about it.
Since you mentioned it, I'll be waiting for that Medal of Honor Airborne review.
area 51 on ps2 and xbox was amazing when i was a kid then blacksite was really good to beat both games tons and tons of times loved bothed games now in 20 and miss these games
This was one of the games my father got me when I got my original xbox 360
I really like the enemies in this game, you know the mutated soldiers with machine guns. I think they're super creepy.
It's really baffling to think a game that came out around the same time as Halo 3 could be so damn monochrome and so damn flat, gameplay wise. I think this one has been forgotten for a good reason, honestly.
HOW DUCKING DARE YOU...making me nostalgic for 2007 of all things.
This is the first ps3 i have ever played. It was 2011 and me and my brother saw the game at k mart and was hype because we had played the original on ps2 which did scare me as a kid and had good ideas for a horror game even though now i see the game as action based. My brother got the game and we were gonna get a ps3 next week so i was hype for a whole week then when we finally got the game i was amazed, to me the game had amazing graphics especially with the motion blur and bloom I thought it made it look realistic lol.
I have awaited this moment.
I remember playing this game for the first time
Shocked by the graphics
I bought this game when it first came out and I absolutely loved it.
I don't really remember much of this game either, only a helicopter set piece and a night level
Watching this gameplay made me realize that I actually have played this game at some point, and completely forgot that I had. Must have been so generic that my mind wiped it from the important memory section.
I really liked this game when I got it, I enjoyed every minute.
I remember playing the shit of this when I was like 8 and would do anything to play it again
So me and my buddy used to do a series on our old RUclips channel called the Bad Games Beatdown. And we ended up playing the console version of this game, having stumbled across a preowned copy and having heard *nothing* about it at all.
And we kinda came to the same conclusion you did?
Like, we played WAY worse games in the BGBD, and shooters we hated way more than this - Kane and Lynch 2, Duke Nukem Forever, MOH Warfighter, etc - and both agreed that it was 'some generic modern military shooter', released at a time where the genre was oversaturated with better titles, and especially post that era where now we've moved away into more fast-paced arcade shooters like DOOM etc. Being the console version, we also noted some funny framerate issues and animation glitches. Overall, not awful, just, meh?
Oh, and fun fact; it was only named Blacksite in Europe. The Area 51 part was cut from the title. We literally had NO idea that there was even an alien/sci-fi mutant aspect to the game, and playing through the first 45 minutes or so of the game as we did, we still had no idea. We legit just thought it was a generic MMS set in Iraq/the Middle East. Way to undersell the game, lads!
Loved this game and the story as a kid
I recall this game's trailer being an extra in another Midway game: Stranglehold.
I rem i actually bought this game. My fav parts were when that big alien meteor would hit the earth youd see that shit coming lol was fun while it lasted
I remember playing the demo for this game.
Pleaaaase do a review of Metal Arms. It was a super fun robot carnage shooter game back in the day and no one knows what it is. It was super fun with funny characters, awesome guns, fun combat, surprisingly cool soundtrack and more and it deserves some recognition. I don’t think anyone else would review an older Original Xbox and Game Cube game from like 2004
Ok the beginning made me curious. How many times have you found it hard find and buy certain games? It’s always something I have wondered. Especially with games like necrovision. That’s certainly must not have been easy to find at a price that wasn’t outrageously overpriced.
You should play the Battle L.A game. It's pretty short, from what I've heard, and some say it's pretty bad as well, but I played it for a bit some years ago, and it was just your average modern military shooter with aliens