There are certain things that differentiate ordinary first person shooters that you forget as soon as you finish, to those that you actually want to play again and leave you wanting a second part. Unfortunately, Area 51 doesn't even have what is required to make you finish the game, not to mention playing it again or a future sequel.

As the game begins, you lead a Delta Force team on an investigation mission in a factory in Iraq. Things aren't as easy as they might sound, as you are attacked my mutated humans as soon as you enter the facility. Upon further investigation, you discover a fragment of a crystal that should certainly not be there. Before you have time to investigate the crystal, Somers (the "bright" member of your team) decides to touch it, something happens and you all black out. On waking up, you are attacked by aliens, and you end up running and leaving Somers there, surrounded by aliens.

After three years you are called again to help in Nevada, where aliens like those from Iraq have been sited, and you are the only one that has seen those things before. You end up fighting "Reborn" soldiers and you meet up with Somers again (who is not dead, of course). Your characters seem to be mentally retarded and don't question the fact that he is still alive after being left in an irradiated base full of aliens, and decide to take him to your base.

Of course Somers certainly has problems, and he shoots one of your team mates before running away, leaving you to defend the base from an alien invasion. After dealing with that, you follow him, get captured, escape, kill him and run away before the air force bombs everything. The end. The story is very predictable and certainly not the highlight of the game, so I'm not going to get into any more details about it.

There are dossiers scattered all over the maps that unlock descriptions of monsters, weapons, and other such stuff that you can view from the main menu. I assume this was made to make you better enter the atmosphere of the game. Unfortunately, I didn't quite work out. You find out more as you play, anyway, even without the dossiers.

You find out everything about the Reborn as you play and the final dialogue with Somers ties up all the loose ends. That is, of course, if you couldn't realize on your own what everything is about (in which case you might have some problems...), from the point where you discover US Army dog tags on one of the dead Reborn soldiers.

That's enough about the story. I'm sure it might sound good in writing, but it certainly falls short of being even remotely good. Let's move on to the other highlights of the game: the squad control, morale system and the fact that you can drive vehicles and participate in helicopter raids. Everything you need for a successful FPS, right?

The squad control is just... there. It's actually a joke that they call it "control". The only thing that you are able to do is look at a certain position and press a key and your squad will move to that position (in theory). If you want them to open a door, then you have to look for the yellow markers that let you know you have to press a key to call your squad to open it. In fact, you are required to call your squad to open the door, since you cannot progress further without opening the door. Unfortunately you seem to lack arms when it comes to this. Yes, that's right, you are unable to open a door by yourself.