Area 51
- April 25, 2005 19:58 PM PST
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Almost-AAA shooter Area-51 sends E.T. home with a big-budget bang. PlayStation 2
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All's Well in Roswell
Bogeymen don't beam in only to be blasted before dematerializing back into a shortcutting code, ether. They shimmy through crawl spaces, bound over barricades, and scrabble, claw-over-claw, along sheer vertical and inverted surfaces, and then, when they get theirs, slump and spin, and sail sky-high. All tooth-and-nail, some take the shortest path to your throat possible, and that's that. Other, more evolved E.T.s employ the types of tactics you'd expect from bigger brains, using cover, concealment, and a withering combo of guns and grenades (ouch!)--not Halo lethal&but lethal nonetheless.
Where the Xbox-only goliath Master Chief uses a self-replenishing shield gimmick to pace cavalry charges and tail-between-the-legs lollygagging, Area-51's lifesaving twist works in reverse and just as well. To stay strong, hero Ethan Cole (serviceably voiced by X-Files' deadpan sleuth David Duchovny) must mutate into his own sort of monster and parasitize power from opponents. The closer to death, the more desperate the measures, and blitzing opponents as a snake-eyed beastie gussies up Area-51's solid but otherwise stock online game.
This Way to the Future
If Area-51 is shortish (some 8-10 hours) and occasionally incoherent (who conspired with who, and for what, again?), its spacey settings go where few games have gone before. It's otherworldly sets (as in alien, and not pages nicked from next season's consumer electronics catalogs) are done up in such bewildering detail that you'll want to wipeout P.O.ed spacemen if only to have a more leisurely look-see at all their busy, mind-bending contraptions. Quite the feat for a remake of a ratty lightgun game we played in the gigaplex only because, like the change in our pockets, it was there. No rational explanation for that.
