2007 has been a great year for the first-person shooter, but there were bound to be a few titles that wound up being a disappointment. BlackSite: Area 51 is based on the last-generation title Area 51, which never captured great success due to the anticipation and high expectations surrounding the game's release. It was an average game through and through, and it wasn't long before it found its way into bargain bins everywhere. In a market flooded with innovation and fresh ideas, BlackSite stumbles into the same dilemma, and the little glitches and flaws don't do much to help matters either.

In BlackSite, you step into the Delta Force boots of Aeran Pierce, with the opening scenes finding Pierce fighting in Iraq with his loyal and talkative squad. While leading an assault, your team stumbles across a force of hybrid soldiers that are known only as the Reborn, who are the result of horrific experiments led by the U.S. government. Pierce and his team manage to make a narrow escape with minimal casualties, but this nemesis is still at large. You're then brought into the modern day to find Pierce once again reunited with his squad members from Iraq. There has been yet another incident involving the Reborn, this time on U.S. soil. Ultimately, it becomes your responsibility to lead your squad on a mission to eradicate the infection at its source.

BlackSite borrows many of the same elements from the original game.

The gameplay here is standard shooter fare, with some squad elements thrown in for good measure. However, it doesn't take long to realize that few new ideas have been applied to this basic formula. The overall look of the game generally consists of a variety of gritty looking browns and grays, with some striking resemblances to the style of Gears of War. Many of the inner workings such as the physics and damage systems also borrow heavily from other popular titles. And while BlackSite has been clearly been inspired by other games, the developers have tried to differentiate it a bit by adding squad commands. The problem here is that this just doesn't work very well. The squad commands are all managed with the right bumper, so that immediately reduces your options to point and click orders. You can tell your AI comrades to "go there", though there is no command for them to return to you. This would be a problem if not for the fact that they rarely stay put when told anyway, so that makes the move order pretty useless.

You can also highlight priority targets by clicking the right bumper on an enemy, which is reasonably effective, but the unimaginative selection of enemies aren't really challenging enough to warrant the use of the feature. In fact, it seems that the general purpose of your squad mates is to save you the effort of having to open doors, as Pierce is unable to actually do this himself. Instead, you'll need to press the command button on the glowing icon near relevant doorways. While not a big deal by itself, this action often requires several button presses to garner any response from your men, which can be a pain. These door opening sequences are also responsible for some of the game's most awkward glitches, with squad mates occasionally vanishing and then reappearing ten feet further from a door. There's also a morale system where poor combat performance is supposed to reduce team morale and introduce squad mates' reluctance to follow orders. This is actually one of the biggest letdowns of the game because it doesn't actually work. The only indication of your team's morale is some on-screen text that pops up from time to time. If there are any behavioral changes to be seen, they're far from noticeable.

Periodically, you'll encounter driving portions in BlackSite, but they're both bland and uninteresting. The vehicle physics are overly sensitive and result in an incredibly twitchy system that veers to the left or right with the slightest touch of the analog stick. The areas you pass through lack any original challenges, with the only enemies you'll encounter being a large fireball-spitting worm creature, and his relative, the slightly smaller fireball-spitting worm creature. These enemies are easily dispatched given that the mounted gun on your vehicle's roof will make quick work of them, and only tend to provide a momentary distraction from the aimless driving that follows.

If the single player campaign gets tiresome or you finish the game in the 6 hours that it takes, BlackSite features Xbox Live support for up to 10 players. The game modes are fairly run of the mill, with only the Infection mode standing out. Even after you've chosen your game type, finding a game with more than four players is no easy task. Once a match is found though, the maps are actually quite varied, and offer decent layouts that suit almost every style of play. There are damage and shield pick-ups available, as well as an invisibility power-up that allows players to completely dominate games. The biggest problem affecting online play is the lack of varied weaponry. When you look at other recent online shooters such as Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, there are numerous weapon choices, and each one is properly balanced. In BlackSite, there just aren't enough options, and those that do exist aren't balanced at all. Taking on an experienced sniper with anything other than sniper rifle is suicide, for example. You'll get picked off long before you can sneak around and get within the range to use a different weapon. When you take all of this into consideration, it's difficult to have much fun online, especially when there are far better multiplayer titles that have been recently released.

Things certainly look nice, but this often comes at the expensive of a solid frame rate.

One of the few saving graces in BlackSite is its graphics. Rendered in a modified Unreal 3 engine, the character designs are well-conceived and beautifully textured. Although the layout of most levels is quite linear, the graphical style of the environments is impressive throughout. However, there are a few issues here as well. The lesser of these is a small gripe about draw distances. Simple little details like the painted road markings will just appear a few feet in front of your vehicle as you speed down the road. The larger problem lies in frame rate. When there's a lot of action on-screen, the game can become almost unplayable at times due to extreme drops in frame rate. It's a shame, because the game looks great otherwise.

The soundtrack is immediately forgettable, with only a few decent orchestral themes featured throughout the campaign. The voice acting isn't terrible, but it still pales in comparison to other games in the genre. There are often vocal clipping issues too, with comments being cut dead as you cross a checkpoint, for instance. The icing on the cake is the poor weapon sound effects, with the recordings sounding unrealistic and inadequate. The effects just don't fit, and the explosions in particular leave much to be desired.

Overall, BlackSite: Area 51's worst enemy has been the high level of expectation built from the numerous previews and snippets of information available prior to release. The promise of fantastic squad features falls flat due to the poorly applied AI throughout the game. The gameplay borrows from several other more successful titles, but fails to form a cohesive package nonetheless. If you couldn't get enough of the original Area 51, you'll probably adore BlackSite, as it has a better story, superior graphics and is as a whole, a better game. However, when compared to anything other than its predecessor, BlackSite just doesn't do enough to compete with this year's great first-person shooter releases.