Area 51 is a mixed bag for me.

On some levels, I love the audacity it has. I like the ideas it plays with, the attempt of fleshing out a plot much bigger and overwhelming than your character's own role in the story; but on many other levels, it's a merely ok FPS romp with some different variations that don't amount to much, at least for me.

This game is, bizarrely, freeware (see here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Area_51_(2005)#cite_note-1).

In 2008 (that's the date as far as I can tell), the US Air Force sponsored three different Midway games as free downloads, those being "The Suffering: Ties That Bind", "Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War", and this. An...interesting choice of game to be sure.

Area 51 is intriguing in how far it delves into that alien and conspiracy spookiness, alongside little gameplay touches here and there are quite neat to see in an FPS. One of the biggest highlights for me was the ability to use a radioactive arm scanner to analyze objects, humans, corpses, yourself or even air in order to see what it is comprised of, or find information from secret dossiers or alien objects. It turns into sort of a collect-a-thon, trying to find where that hidden secret is in the levels you explore.

Initially the game has you travelling with your squad, engaging in firefights with extraterrestrials and journeying deep into the infamous government facility in order to rescue another group of soldiers trapped within. Eventually, you're left on your own to settle the matters at hand, uncovering a plot that's out of this world (badum tss). The weapons you use are some standard issue FPS stuff: pistols, smgs (that you can dual wield!), shotguns (that you can dual wield...that must hurt), and snipers. Several weapons have alternate fire modes, and there are alien and unique weapons to find throughout that vary in effectiveness but aren't too shabby. Your character also has the ability to lean and shoot, making it easier to get back behind cover after sending some suppressing fire or checking corners without being immediately seen.

The big gimmick of the game is that your character at a certain point can transform from human to mutated alien at will; the benefits of being in that form allow you to shoot homing attacks that replenish your health, but at the cost of your alien energy depleting. It also provides increased visibility of enemies and enhanced strength.

If I were to be honest, I used this ability as a last resort when ammo was low and health was in dire straits; I never really used it outside of that. It's a cool idea, but it doesn't really feel like it adds to the gameplay outside of plot necessity or a brief respite. I thought maybe it would be one of those things where if you use the alien form more you could get a different ending where you succumb to that form, or if you primarily use your human form you manage to withstand that fate...but there's only one ending that doesn't really elaborate on much. This aspect of your character is a missed opportunity that I feel should have been fleshed out. Despite the plot making it seem extremely urgent and vital that this soldier needs to find a cure, it mainly seems like a net benefit to have this form without much in the way of negative consequences, at least, not in terms of how the story goes along.

Speaking of, despite the grand spectacle of what this game presents through text and secret bonus content, the main story is delivered in a standard narration style featuring an extremely phoned in performance by David Duchovny (who seemed like a perfect fit for this game at first glance but alas), who seems bored out of his mind with this material. Marylin Manson sort of speaks his lines with what I assume is supposed to be a spooky, otherworldly tone, but feels quite wooden as well.

There are moments of pure 50s B movie camp that will definitely get those that are interested in such things into it, but these goofy, intriguing moments and the huge conspiracy stuff are delivered by gameplay that isn't too engaging and at times annoying.

There are a variety of enemy types, some more challenging than others (and some more stressful to deal with than others), and the difficulty of the game increases quite a bit near the second half, and you start to feel the length of the game...it begins to feel kind of padded out, sort of becoming a slog by consequence, and there could have been some areas that could be cut in favor of more memorable set pieces.

To elaborate, the environments, especially for the first half, aren't very memorable; mostly hallways and corridors, not very detailed, with the bigger rooms serving as firefights or areas of minor exploration...the graphics don't look the best either outside some neat initial cutscenes. The best part of the second half is the visuals, funnily enough, with more intriguing areas, but it's still not quite worth the buildup.

All in all, if I could give this game a 2.75/5, it would be more appropriate of a rating; it's not terrible, I liked its ideas, and it kept my attention, but it's held back on some levels, visuals and gameplay being the most dated aspects.

However, of interesting note is that it still sees preservation and modding in the form of Project Dreamland and most recently (12/13/21!) Area 51 Preservation Project which brings multiplayer back online (this latter mod I didn't try out because I beat this a month earlier). Since it's literally freeware in perpetuity, give it a try, mod it out and try out the multiplayer. There's fun to be had with this game, it's just a mixed bag overall.

spoilers ahead

An interesting premise and concept; you're in the boots of a Coast Guard veteran that is tasked to investigate a Russian whaler adrift at sea. The execution, at first, is intriguing, but leaves a ton left to be desired.

Many comments allude to the game being akin to something like Resident Evil 4; I have not personally played that game, but there are visual comparisons to be had from what footage I have seen. While most of the time fixed camera angles are employed in Cold Fear, the over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooting mechanic initiates when you decide to aim your weapon; here, you have to carefully aim your shots at the heads of certain enemies in order to kill them permanently.

What makes Cold Fear interesting at first is that the boat is amidst a storm, causing the vessel to shake; this will affect your mobility and your aim, causing you to insert more caution (and if you keep missing shots, induce panic) into your actions. There is a command in order to hold onto railings to prevent you from falling into the ocean; further, you can aim from this position in order to keep yourself from being thrown off. The way the camera shakes along with the boat also had me feeling a slight edge of sea-sickness, adding to the unstable atmosphere, solidifying in my mind that this is a neat place to host a horror game...it had a potential to create some cool, even scary scenarios.

My personal experience with the controls was using the keyboard/mouse combination, and it works well enough; the camera being fixed in indoor environments can cause that weird control quirk (for example, holding forward down a hallway, then the camera switches to face your character and you're holding forward while heading downward, then if you let go of forward and repress it you go backward because the camera switched...you know what I mean? I never liked that kinda deal...something that will haunt me later on in game) but usually it's easier to just walk with your weapon drawn in over the shoulder mode; however, one can't interact with pick-ups and objects in the world reliably in this mode, as hitting activate (in my case, "E") would do a melee attack most of the time.

The gameplay cycle usually involves finding objects or keys and going to a place; a lot of backtracking and revisiting areas will occur, often leading to new areas which will then circle back again. It begins to wear on a player, as outside of stereotypical horror notes/journals or the limited amount of weapons one picks up, there's nothing really neat to see or explore; there's not much visual storytelling from what I can tell. The ambiance can illicit some eerie atmosphere with some effective lighting, but there's nothing much to see outside completing the objective.

The second half of the game is where disappointment really sets in; while the graphics don't hold up the best, they do look decent (and to that end I mean with a widescreen patch/mod installed for at least 1920x1080, as the standard resolution is 1280x720 and the game won't launch if you change to a higher resolution and reboot like it says...) and there is some aforementioned effective lighting on the vessel.

However, once you transition to the second (and final) area, the oil rig, the game mostly throws out that cool mechanic of the boat rocking to interrupt your aim...now it's just mainly a third person shooter, with a new bland location with even lengthier backtracking.

Speaking of bland...the story, which is very predictable. Nothing too special about it; essentially the crew are now zombies that were infected by Alien facehugger wannabes called exocels that force their victims (or dead bodies) to ingest them causing them to mutate depending on various factors after a period of time, and the exocels were discovered through drilling operations by the Russians and scientific experiments happened in order to discover how they could be used, whether for war or for improving humanity and yada yada yada. It's your basic "science gone wrong" kind of plot.

The story unfolds in the notes one picks up but a lot is reiterated in very rushed cutscenes and boring voice acting. Those cutscenes feel incredibly rushed in fact, even the introductory scene; a spec ops team from the CIA investigates the vessel and they all die near immediately, so they call in the closest available unit, that being the Coast Guard, and all but you die right at the beginning...the story thereafter kind of stumbles into different ideas done before in a better way, and then at the end it just falls on its face.

When it is all said and done, it feels like a bunch of ideas, some good and some very mediocre ones, formed around the interesting aforementioned unstable aiming gameplay (that they end up not using later much at all and by consequence showing off the clumsy controls outside of that effect) and all in service of delivering a boring plot.

It's also painfully not scary (read: boring), the moments that could be haunting are sometimes overlaid with a bombastic action music score that deteriorates any atmosphere that could be garnered from the experience. There's no reason to feel or connect with these characters; relationships and character details are spoken about but they are rarely shown through their actions, other than, you know, main guy is brave and woman is Russian and spunky and independent and she likes her scientist-turned-mutated monster dad. The villains are barely there, their personalities found through the generic dialogue one sees in the notes, showing off basic traits. There could have been an interesting backstory to these people but it's all quite one-note and bland.

The enemies could make up for it right? No. Zombies with blades, maybe sometimes every once in a while they have a gun. Generic Russians trying to survive and also kill you. There's a dog like creature that is a bullet sponge, and the previously mentioned creature in the spoilers above. It's just uninspired to be blunt. Perhaps in 2005 this would be more fresh but I'm not too certain about that.

The ending boss battle and credits are absolutely terrible, a wet fart of an ending that begs to be shared.

You gotta blow up the oil rig to put an end to all this. so you plant C4s and run away from each explosion utilizing a forced perspective camera angle and very clumsy navigation, my previous hallway camera gripe making me die the only few times in game. The aforementioned dad-turned-monster (that the woman just now realizes is her dad) is here; you gotta try to avoid it as it punches you into collapsible walls that yield the risk of you being punched off the platform and if the dad reaches woman it's game over; you can't kill him, but you distract him for a set period of time...now he is vulnerable and now you can shoot at him for real now somehow. He collapses and you and woman fly away in a helicopter, and then your character literally says "Goodbye papa" as his epic one-liner sendoff line, hits a big red button that causes a laughable explosion graphic, and a hard cut to credits where, I shit you not, a random inclusion of Marylin Manson's (terrible) song "Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth" is played three times in a row as the credits roll.

...???

A terrible ending to a disappointing game. A lot of potential, and I really wanted to like it. There's stuff one could enjoy here if you are into horror games a la the more action oriented Resident Evil games (and 4 specifically I assume) and can accept the cliche nature of the plot, but there's just a lot of annoyances and ideas are just underutilized. Couple all that with a short game time (around 5 to 6 hours) makes it all feel ineffectual.

Could have been a lot more than what it was...instead of Cold Fear, I just feel lukewarm dissatisfaction.

Now that's how you end a review, a terrible play on the title. I'm such a hack.