Blacksite: Area 51

I just beat Blacksite: Area 51. Here’s some artwork to make this post look bigger.

It’s a short, by-the-number game that is beatable in, say, five hours. It was fun, but far from brilliant and I’ll probably burn though it on a harder setting at some point. Review forthcoming. However, this post is to talk about ending spoilers:

ENDING SPOILERS

You nuke the big bad base of evilness, lose all your team mates that display a personality of their own and don’t have a nice pair of breasts (and, really, as soon as someone starts talking about how much they love their young daughter they’ve left at home, they may as well pre-order the casket.) The last bit of the game is quite challenging and gave me a decent boss fight and even a cool lead up to it. I kill the boss, I look smug. The ending is thirty seconds long.

You win. A helicopter gets you. The only survivor from you platoon that isn’t you (the one with nice breasts) tells you that the real challenge will be surviving the fallout. You don’t see the fallout. You see the credits. Credits splashed against the same fifteen-second clip over and over.

There is no post-credits snippet. It’s back to the option screen. Games, especially mediocre ones, need a worthwhile ending. I expect someone to say “thanks for putting up with me” with random sexual favours or a bloody big sandwich, not a swift kick to the bollocks, and that’s what cop-out endings always feel like.

NO MORE SPOILERS

I almost played Half Life afterwards, but I taught someone to play drums instead.