Area 51

The good: initially interesting story
The bad: lack of variety all-around
I've always been fond of matters concerning the extra-terrestrial. I remember eagerly awaiting episodes of UFO Diaries (remember?) when I was a kid in HBO. So the news of a FPS with alien touches greatly intrigued me but now that I've played it, I'm not intrigued anymore.

Set in the notoriously mysterious Area 51 base, where all kinds of alien research supposedly takes place, the game dishes out a fairly interesting story arc beginning when an infection gets out of hand and turns everyone into alien/monster hybrids. You're sent in to investigate as part of a HazMat (Hazardous Materials) team and you quickly discover that not everything is what it seems in the base.

At first, the game seems to be a squad based affair but alas it is not. Your teammates soon die one by one leaving you alone to wander around the base. And since there is an extremely limited set of enemies and characters to see, you'll soon get lonely (or bored). Adding to the variety problem is an even more limited assortment of weapons to fiddle around with. You'll only have access to a pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and two alien guns with only two kinds of grenades.

One thing I did like is looking for and scanning hidden items which are scattered across the levels which gives you access to files and secrets in a databank. Too bad though because the rewards aren't really very interesting so there's no incentive to look for them all (although its easy to finds all 90).

Graphics are quite nice although sometimes the game appears too bright which lessens the creep-factor. Voice acting (David Duchovny and Marilyn Manson) is really quite pathetic with both actors feeling sleepy and bored. The game isn't horrible by any stretch but with better games out there, why bother? (3/5)