No one’s ever going to accuse the Xbox 360 as having a shortage of shooters, but this winter period has been ridiculous. Since the end of August, we’ve seen BioShock receive full marks in this very publication. Halo 3 has completely reshaped Xbox Live and the industry’s definition of a videogame launch. Quite a duo, we’re sure you’ll agree. But the machine is not content with just two of the best shooters of all time, so it’s thrown another couple at us since. The searingly beautiful Call Of Duty 4 has arrived this November, eclipsing all other war games before it, and of course, there’s the small matter of The Orange Box. So how does a game like BlackSite compete? Well, the short answer is, it doesn’t.

Midway’s slice of science fiction has been neck deep in the hype machine for over a year now, and the delays have hurt it. Promises of terrifying aliens, deep squad-based gameplay and the full might of the Unreal Engine 3 have come up short, instead leaving what can only be described as a B-movie in videogame form. It’s big, dumb and fun, made for a modest budget and happy to crib from each and every source it can. Ever played Gears Of War? Yeah, so has Midway.

It all begins in typically low-key style, as your Delta Squad grunt, named Pearce, and his cronies journey through the Iraqi desert on a routine mission. Before you know it, you’re killing Muslims in a mosque, discovering badly designed aliens in a bunker and wondering just how many clichés one game can force into its opening 60 minutes. It’s 17, by the way, just to save you counting. As soon as BlackSite begins, it makes no bones about its intentions. This is as simple as gaming comes, a point-and-fire duck shoot dressed up in next-gen graphics.

After clearing the rather dull Iraq prologue, it’s on to Nevada for some real alien hunting. Although the story is relayed to you at great length by a succession of poorly thought out and odd looking characters, there’s never anything deeper than ‘government: bad, guns: good’ to get your head around. All you need to concern yourself with is the location of the next checkpoint, the whereabouts of some ammo boxes and whether or not your standard assault rifle is going to be enough to eliminate an entire alien and genetically mutated human army. It is.

BlackSite suffers from a serious lack of variety. Its early stages point to a ferociously paced rollercoaster, with set piece following set piece, and new weapons and monsters appearing with welcome regularity. As is so often the case, though, it begins to run out of steam after a couple of hours, choosing to simply throw countless enemies in front of your rifle sights and doling out a couple of boss battles almost by way of an apology. It may have destructible cover, it may have enemies as big as the screen, but BlackSite does absolutely nothing that hasn’t been done before, and done much, much better

As mentioned, the key point of reference is Gears Of War. The third of BlackSite’s ‘episodes’ demonstrates this perfectly. There’s a nighttime setting, lashing rain, scampering enemies that explode in a flash of orange ember… even your squad member Grayson looks like Marcus Fenix. The visual style, too, is eerily reminiscent of Epic’s masterpiece, although significantly inferior, with everything emitting a bizarre, irradiated glow. Fine on an alien’s piercing eyes, slightly strange on your captain’s moustache. It’s a shame that any notion of originality has been quashed by BlackSite’s desperate search for acceptance.

There’s unquestionable fun to be had here, though. Taken as a daft, zerobrained redneck of an action game, BlackSite keeps you laughing, if not always for the right reasons. The woeful dialogue is delivered with earnest, and when someone is trying to explain a very serious and grave situation to you while running directly at a wall, it’s difficult not to chuckle. Every one of BlackSite’s surprises is foreshadowed with the bludgeoning lack of subtlety of an episode of Prison Break, each of its set pieces seen before in much better games.

If BlackSite had appeared during the quiet summer months, before the first-person shooter genre was completely revolutionised by the first paragraph’s holy quartet, it would have probably found more favour. But as it is, a checklist of me-too clichés and just-about-passable shooting mechanics is just not strong enough to even sit on the same shelf as the Chief and the Free man. One day, someone will do an alien invasion game justice, but sadly that someone is not Midway. File under ‘disappointment’, and bury it deep under the Nevada desert.

Jon Denton