Loosely tied to an earlier title whose claim to fame was the voice work of David Duchovny, this game enlists players in the role of Delta Force commands charged first with raiding a Republic Guard barracks—and secret weapons facility—in Iraq, and then helping to put down the "militia uprising" it spawns several years later in the United States.

The game defaults to the standard first-person-shooter perspective using the Unreal Engine. It switches up that perspective in familiar ways, including vehicular combat in a Humvee and helicopters and the inevitable tripod-based heavy machine guns, but seeks to set itself apart from other games by incorporating squad-based commands.

This command system allows the player to direct squad members around the battlefield, order them to fire on specific targets and assign them to tasks such as opening doors.

These tools, as well as a smattering of U.S. Army and alien weaponry, are put to use stateside dealing with an invasion in Nevada. The namesake Area 51 does not appear in the game; instead, a new facility takes on the role of conspiracy haven as players struggle to learn who is behind the heavily armed militia that's seized control of Rachel, Nev., apparently releasing all manner of monstrous aliens in the process.

In addition to a single-player campaign, the game sports deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture-the-flag options, as well as "abduction," in which alien players attempt to abduct human ones. Those who are taken join the alien side of the fight until no humans are left.

B-movie action, C-movie plot

The B movie has a long and infamous history in science fiction. It's been a source of inspiration, repetition and straight-up strangeness for decades.

Area 51 is the video-game equivalent of a B movie. Released at a time when Halo 3 and Valve's Orange Box are consuming most gamers' attention, it provides yet another romp through an alien-infested wasteland. Like many of the B movies of old, though, it's less about new ideas than it is about regurgitating old ones.

The original game was steeped in conspiracy lore inspired by The X-Files and its ilk, from faked moon landings to Gray aliens. For its second outing, the game's developers have taken a more straightforward approach: The government's doing something strange with alien technology; the Army needs to stop it.

Area 51's gameplay is equally streamlined, featuring a run-and-gun style of play that leaves no room for exploration. Many of its villains are rehashes of monsters seen elsewhere, from the small scrambling aliens that explode when they close with opponents to tentacle-like "flatheads" that erupt from the ground and shoot fireballs. These threats seemed warmed over, which is too bad, since the game's at its best when creating new alien designs, as it does with its strange alien chicken walkers, or mixing up its combat styles, like gunship-based attacks on mutated monstrosities.

The tactical command system is simple but useful, allowing players to easily direct their squads around the battlefield. It can also be frustratingly buggy. For example, doors can be opened only by using the command system, but it's possible to accidentally destroy the trigger that tells the command system to make the door "openable." That leads to reloading the level in hopes of avoiding whatever glitch caused the problem in the first place.

BlackSite's multiplayer game is sufficiently fast and furious, but there's little new here; even the "Abduction" mode merely formalizes a custom game popular with the Halo 2 crowd and formalized in Halo 3.

The game's visuals are adequate, but for some reason the developers incorporated an odd halo effect around the edges of the characters. Admittedly, the halos make it easier to find and hit enemies in the desert terrain, but it feels awkward. That awkwardness sums up the game; it's an adequate shooter, but ultimately it has trouble hitting all its targets.