Gamertell

Blacksite: Area 51 is one of the first games to question why we are forcing ourselves into such a bad situation. While it does it in a way that doesn’t entirely follow the true political reality, the message is quite clear that America, because of policy in the past and present, might be completely screwed.

The game, a first-person shooter released late 2007 for Xbox 360 and Windows, opens in Iraq, one of the two current American military mistakes. You’re thrust into a squad-based situation that could very well be the next day’s news report. Your squad, while hiding out in the back of your guide/translator’s truck, is ambushed. The guide/translator is killed. Your original mission was finding Iraq’s non-existent WMDs but now you also have to survive. Basically, it opens up with the fact that the Iraq War was started on multiple false pretenses which include having WMDs.

Meanwhile, on the home front, an insurgency has popped up and is spreading out from the mysterious Area 51. The “Grays” are now out on the warpath, tearing apart small nearby towns in New Mexico. Seeing as how, in the game as with reality, most of the armed forces are abroad fighting potential threats, we are defenseless until units are called back home from Iraq to save America from one of its best-kept secrets through counter-insurgency tactics. The game implies that, sometimes, the biggest threat to America may already be on American soil.

Since the returning units are fighting aliens and American-made supersoldiers, it’s an intriguing bit of commentary. Specifically, with the genetically-engineered supersoldiers, it also add an aspect of hypocrisy that may well reflect the current conservative regime. With the unpopularity of the Iraq War and volunteer numbers at a new low, we’re on the verge of another draft. In reality, reinstatement of the draft has been brought up - and shot down - about three times. In the game, rather than continuing the debate on the draft, they compromise their values and national security by making soldiers bred specifically for war.

There’s a lot to take in. From the war on terror to war in America’s own streets this game mocks the politics of fear. Sure, the game is beautiful even without the blatant political insults to presidential administrations past and present. There’s just something about the war in Iraq ending to fight a domestic threat that makes it even more intriguing. Even though the threat originated on another world, until it crashed in 1947, the crisis still starts in the US (in New Mexico). In the end, though, the message seems to be that a good defense is the best defense.

The in-game to real-world political parrallels are undeniable: There’s the government conspiracy covering up alien existence; the dissent regarding wars started under false pretenses; the point regarding scientific advancement as a point of hypocrisy for the current conservative regime that seems to be only pro-“natural life;” the potential reinstatement of the draft; and, while it doesn’t necessarily cover the ugliest of counter-insurgency tactics, the game touches on guerrilla warfare and the insurgency.

Site [Blacksite Area 51] Read Wired]