Highly Compressed Area 51 PC Game ~ GamesNHacks

Hammad Ansari on Monday, October 04, 2010

Area 51 | Genre: first-person shooter | {242MB}

This is Midway's Area 51, a first-person shooter from 2005, complete and free to play. You take on the role of a military squad commander sent in to investigate a base contaminated by an alien mutagenic virus."The U.S. Army has received a distress signal from Area 51 where a viral outbreak has just shut down the research facility and the automated quarantine procedures have locked all scientific and military personnel inside. A small Special Forces unit including Specialist Ethan Cole of the HAZMAT (hazardous materials) Division is sent to investigate.

As Cole, players delve into the massive levels within the confines of Area 51, only to discover a deadly mutagenic side effect of the virus that controls the minds of those infected, as well as an ancient alien colony buried beneath the facility. Players will uncover the truth behind chilling conspiracies as they come across the remnants of the extraterrestrial crash at Roswell, alien autopsies, and the faked lunar landing. Cole must solve the enigma of Area 51 before the viral mutagen is released and irrevocably mutates all life on Earth."

The sound effects are also quite impressive. Weapon sounds are brutally loud and echo off the walls of the base in pretty fierce fashion. In fact, during the chaos of battle, it's pretty hard not to get lost in the din of gunfire and enemy growls. Unfortunately, the rest of the sound design doesn't measure up as well. The soundtrack consists of mostly minimalist beats and tracks that are barely even noticeable, let alone memorable, and the voice acting is pretty uneven all around. Name talents like David Duchovny, Powers Boothe, and Marilyn Manson lend their voices to the game, but none does much with his role. Boothe simply emerges over the radio from time to time to bark orders at you, Manson's jar-encased, fleshy, psychic creature is amusing, though not because of his voice work, and Duchovny sounds like he's been hitting the NyQuil as he sleepily narrates Ethan Cole's story, putting you to bed in the process. In fact, the best voice acting in Area 51 comes from the fringe characters that are voiced by people you've likely never heard of.

PC REQUIREMENTS

Windows 2000/XP
Intel Pentium III 1.4GHz or AMD Athlon 2000+ or Sempron 2200+ Processor
256MB RAM
64MB ATi Radeon 9500 or nVidia GeForce 3 Class Video Card
DirectX 9.0b
DirectX compatible Sound Card
3GB Hard Disk Space
16X DVD-ROM Drive or 4X CD-ROM Drive