Bugs - of the buggy variety
In BlackSite you take the role of a leader in the Elite special forces squad and it’s your job to keep the government's secret safe by destroying those alien life forms that have escaped from the infamous facility.It’s standard first person shooter stuff, with shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and the usual array of weapons. There are two members in your elite squad and both can be ordered by executing a simple one-button command, using the right bumper. There's nothing innovative about the squad based system employed in BlackSite, it’s as basic as it gets, but it is simple to use and means that BlackSite is more of a pick and play title then many other squad based shooters, such as Rainbow Six.
The problem is that the squad system doesn’t really work that well and by the mid-way point in the game I’d found that I’d stopped using it completely as it was far simpler to just take out the alien threat on my own, rather than watch my team-mates do their own thing the majority time - even though I’d commanded them to do something else.
There are just two squad orders available: move and attack. You can point anywhere on the surroundings and send your two team-mates scuttling off in that direction. If they encounter aliens or human opposition they'll only shoot if being attacked so it's your job to make sure they get into a cover position. In addition the system allows you to highlight a specific enemy that you wish your squad to attack and they'll focus directly on them until they're either dead or you command them to move or shoot elsewhere.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageAt times, your team-mates are fairly adept at finding cover, doing what they’re told and getting into good positions, but other times they’ll just do their own thing, will just stand right in the line of fire or run around aimlessly. This means that you can never really rely on them to do what you’ve told them to and thus renders them fairly insignificant to the game and somewhat of a burden.
These two teammates also slow you down at points. They’ll shadow you throughout the game, but run significantly slower than you do so you’ll often clear a path, head to your next point and then have to hang about waiting for them to catch up; it ruins the flow of the game.
