The PC version of this game was checked out by colleague Zwan. Since he went deeper into the story and setting, I won't elaborate on that, just read his review if you want to know more.

In the game, Area 51 is only a warehouse and test lab of all kinds of alien stuff. And as always, something goes completely wrong and you, together with a couple of others, can fix things. As Ethan Cole you get a short introduction from a few local soldiers but quickly this cosy chat ends in a firefight where more mutated soldiers, scientists and loads of aggressive beings from another world try to... get you to yet another world...

Who ever played Doom 3 will immediately feel at home as the gameplay doesn't differ much. Of course you've got team mates, there are a couple of nice but rather incoherent storylines about conspiracies and the grey aliens with their big heads, but in the end there's only one thing to do: shoot until you die!

This shooting goes nicely. Although you immediately get the feeling that the makers have looked to other shooters, they do manage to create hectic fights with lots of opponents and quite powerful weaponry (yep, dual wielding is present) and controls. The difficulty level is created by the large number of enemies and less due to the A.I. This is as usual less advanced than you would expect from aliens that managed to get to our planet with flying saucers.

Sadly enough, the tension on this get-togethers with alien and earth enemies flees a bit too much due to the lack of variation in the fights and the way the enemy (not too many different ones either) attacks you. Running around a hallway, enemies that appear, shooting, run on, check human for key, walk to door, open door, blast enemy, ... that's how it constantly goes, until boredom strikes. Now you can say that this is the standard way of a shooter but some more variation (think Half-Life 2) would have been welcome.

Welcome variation is somewhat given by the fact that the lead character quite soon gets infected with the mutating virus. Due to that you suddenly get the possibility to transform in some sort of mutant who is inhumanely strong in close combat and has a couple of special viral attacks. A nice addition to this "stand" is that you get to see everything through a filter and that suddenly heat tracks from enemies are visible. In the end there's little usefull to this, but I did use it a lot because you get less damage and it's quite cool for a while.

Also worth mentioning is that throughout the game you can check out all kinds of objects, bodies and aliens with your scanner which gives you some more background info or secrets on the storyline. A nice extra but again not enough to pursuade you to play the game a second time.

The graphics (on PS2) are certainly worth it and without a doubt one of the stronger points of the game. Although (about) everything is indoors, you get enough variation and the surroundings are nicely detailed. Only some more differences in the design of the models would have been welcome. Also the textures are nice and thanks to the light and particle effects the whole gets a rather pleasing look. The menus and cut-scenes also add a lot to the atmosphere of the game, something that's without a doubt very much ok.

This atmosphere is created amongst others by the voice acting of David Duchovny who manages, in his own and monotone style, to give a secret and hopeless tone to Area 51. Also the rest of the voice-acting is better than average with good work from Marilyn Manson who plays a creature with autobiographic touches. I didn't really notice the soundtrack but the effects of attacking monsters and enemies, and the blasts of explosive material are very good.

Next to the singleplayer adventures which keep you occupied for a small 10 hours you can also play a bit of human and alien in multiplayer mode. Little new under the sun here as next to the usual CTF and Deathmatch variants there's little to see. Up to 16 players can go head to head but often you won't do this as there's nothing special to it. Maybe the devs need to start asking what's the use of multiplayer with about every game.