Just got a chance to play this baby and it felt almost like a trip back to the good old days, when Ghost Recon had not ruined FPS for us yet with needless complexity.
I played the PS2 version and I intend to do so henceforth, since the controls on XB really sucked. Everything felt off, from changing weapons to traversing the claustrophobic areas. So, in case of XB, the controls are too big a tradeoff from the enhanced graphics (which aren't really that enhanced actually). I chose to stick with my good old PS2.
The game borders on a story-based FPS action adventure and on survival sci-fi horror. The first one means you get very strong characters from the ground up (with celebrity voices) and a setting that works out well (staying underground for the majority of the game, if not to the end). Some stuff has obviously gone horribly wrong at the frightful area of 51 and now mutant alien hybrids are roaming the tunnels. The stupid ones simply try to maul you, but the latter ones start using rifles and other helpful arsenal.
Your teammates are invulnerable and when the first one dies as a set-piece cutscene, you will know the others won't lag far behind. The team acts even without you, so for the most part, you are the support and not the team. It does feel good to imagine saving someone's butt every once in a while, but that really does not make a difference. The action can be frantic, very fast-paced and excellently coreographed, with the enemy forces flanking you or charging towards you ablaze. So the FPS part is mostly OK.
The survival horror is even better. You get a flashlight that is attached to your guns (plus matching dark areas where to use it) and a wrist scanner, that enables you to collect clues and scan enemies as well, Metroid Prime-wise. At times your objectives are combined with the scanner, so it quickly becomes a friendly item. Since most enemies will try to be killing you before you can get the scan started, you may have to scout out better opportunities for it to work. There's a load of lifeless objects though, that need to be scanned in order to unlock some extras or backstory elements, and these are thankfully highlighted by certain yellow brackets, which stand out fairly well. There is a lot of graphic violence straight in your face and the mandatory mutating sequence here and there later really looks nice. Health and ammo kits are scattered throughout the place and the former look like syringes filled with green glowing liquid, so spotting one becomes a new kind of sport. Guns and melee attacks make real short work of you, whereas the enemies need to take an entire clip to really get downed. Enemies also like to lurk up on you, and the screen-blurring effect of when you get hit looks real frightening.
Graphics look OK, weapon models and reloading animations are smooth, character animations are above average and the ragdoll animations are rather good, if a little odd here and there. The claustrophobic style paves way for an intricate level design and the mundane rooms gone astray with the mutants rarely cease to impress. Loading screens and cutscenes are sharp.
The sound is a bit weak, with mister X-files doing some voiceover work here and there, but that whining Duchovny doesn't really impress any more. Plus a more seasoned, lower voice could have sounded better.
Overall the game is looking to shape up real nice. The mutagen powers later on feel a bit unbalanced, but work for the most part.
7/10
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Area 51 (Spiffy)
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