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August 23, 2007 - The alien/mutated freaks in BlackSite: Area 51 really wouldn't be that big of a problem if they weren't so frickin' big -- at least that's the thought that kept running through our minds as we hugged a brick wall in a war torn section of a Nevada government base and a humongous Fire Brute waited for us outside. Not familiar with the Fire Brute? Well, he's a humongous monster that lumbers around on four crab-like legs and shoots a destructive laser from his head

That's right -- his head.

The showdown with Senior Ugly Spud came in the second half of our BlackSite demo at the German Game Convention this afternoon. The first part, which is a few missions ahead of the current Xbox Live demo, put us in Rachel, Nevada trying to keep the uglies at bay.

If you haven't been following BlackSite, the gist of the story is that a group was doing a whole bunch of experiments at Area 51 with aliens and alien technology, and some jerks let the test subjects loose. Now, aliens and mutated meanies are popping up all over the surrounding area, and you have to rush in with an elite squad to put an end to the madness.

Midway said today that it has taken a lot of the feedback from the Xbox Live demo and is applying it to all three versions of the game -- namely getting each version to run at a steady 30 frames per second.

When our first level in Rachel began, a young girl popped out from behind a gated door and waved us over. As we approached the woman, a mutant appeared, snatched her and ran over a garden wall with her body. We pursued, and we're quickly inundated with a mess of these brand new characters -- basically they're buffed up, gray-skinned, shirtless maniacs who have a gross set of tentacles and other pink stuff hanging out of their mouths.

Even better, the formerly human bad guys have a tendency to play dead. You'll fill them full of assault rifle rounds, watch'em go down and a few minutes later, you'll be getting attacked from behind by a mess of undead mutants.

So, we're engaging a squadron of these shirtless beasts in blue jeans, and while we have to admit the machine gun's rat-a-tat-tat sounds awesome and the action is intense, but it's the little things that are catching our eye. Stray bullets are tearing apart the plant life in one home's backyard, and in another area, the firefight is turning picnic tables into splinters.

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