BlackSite: Area 51 Reemerges on Steam for… Some Reason

In 2005 Midway decided to try and revive their old Area 51 series of light gun games. Only instead of a light gun game, it was a first-person shooter that starred David Duchovny, Power Boothe, and Marilyn Manson. It was rad, and naturally, it got a sequel with 2007’s BlackSite: Area 51. The sequel was not good, with the director rather infamously quitting Midway and calling its development “so f*cked up.” In two weeks it’s getting re-released on Steam.

Yes, it’s something that caught many people by surprise. Now just simply going under the name BlackSite, the game has suddenly appeared on Steam and is set to come out on August 19th. There’s a new publisher, MB Publishing, which makes sense because Midway went under in 2009 and most of its assets were picked up by Warner Brothers. Interestingly, that included the Area 51 series, so how MB Publishing managed to get a hold of it is another question entirely.

However, if you missed the game, now’s a chance to play it. It has a group of soldiers fighting an alien invasion between two different species. One of the big touted features was the morale system, where your AI partners may stop following orders and help less if they get hurt too often and you don’t help them in combat enough.

If nothing else it’s kind of neat that this bit of gaming history is being made available again. I’m not sure why still, but it’s still rad. So you can add the game to your wishlist here if you want to nab BlackSite when it launches.