Area 51

The first thing most people remember about Area 51 is the cast. Midway hired David Duchovny to voice the hero, Ethan Cole, and Powers Boothe and Marilyn Manson turned up as well, with Manson also contributing to the soundtrack. It was a clear bid to give an arcade-bred shooter some Hollywood weight, and X-Files fans got the joke built into the casting.

The game itself is a linear corridor shooter. Cole is a member of a hazmat team sent into the infamous Nevada base after an outbreak, and the early hours are about squad-based firefights against infected staff and soldiers in sealed-off labs and tunnels. The guns are conventional and the pacing is brisk. The enemy design is where it tries to be more than competent, with mutants that rush you, creatures that lurk in vents, and alien types that demand a change of weapon.

The story's turn is the part worth discussing. Cole is infected partway through, and the mutation gives him abilities that change how the later levels play. It is a smart way to refresh a short campaign, and it keeps the second half from repeating the first. The plot around it is a pile of conspiracy tropes, some of it silly and some of it effectively tense, but it moves quickly enough that you rarely stop to complain.

As a sixth-generation shooter, it shows its age. Enemy behavior is predictable, levels funnel you tightly, and the visuals lean on murky industrial greys and greens that blur together. The campaign is also short, which suits it better than padding would. There was a multiplayer component, though the single-player is what people recall.

What holds up is its commitment to B-movie tone. It never pretends to be profound, and the voice talent plays it straight enough that the cheese lands as intended. It is a competent, slightly better-dressed shooter from a year when the genre was crowded, and it is still a decent evening of paranoid pulp.