"This project was so f***ed up."

You know something has gone wrong when your lead designer openly comments upon a game that he has just finished working on with such disdain. Well, this is exactly what Harvey Smith said at the Montreal International Game Summit just days after the Xbox 360 version of Blacksite hit retail. As you can imagine, Mr Smith is no longer employed at Midway, which just goes to show that the truth will set you free - from your job contract, that is.

In retrospect, it may not have been the smartest move on the part of Harvey Smith, but the truth is the truth - and it's probably a view shared by many of the staff who worked on the game. For a title that looked so promising in early development, Blacksite has revealed itself as little more than a mediocre shooter that's plagued by bugs, has terrible AI and, as stated by Mr. Smith, was clearly rushed onto the shelves. You might be forgiven into thinking that the extra development time made available to the PS3 version might have given the team at Midway a chance to iron out some of the more obvious faults found in both the 360 and PC versions. Sadly, the PlayStation 3 iteration has somehow made it onto the shelves in an even worse shape than its forbearers, a problem that is all too common with PS3 conversions so far in the console's lifespan.

At a glance these comments may seem more than a little unfair. When standing still the game looks very pretty indeed - the enemies are interesting, the weapons look solid and the game's mix of modern day FPS sensibilities and old school arcade action seem to blend nicely. Sadly, this is all largely ruined by a long list of pretty serious glitches, some truly appalling AI, a very mediocre story and some extremely repetitive gameplay and enemy design.

Blacksite casts you as Aeran Pierce, leader of Echo Squad and all round silently clichéd bad-ass. In a clear attempt to make the story of absurd alien technology and infection somehow relevant to the events going on in the world today, you start the game not in the Nevada desert or some underground bunker, but in Iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction (I guess no one told them the news that there aren't any). Of course, upon their arrival, the faeces quickly hits the proverbial fan as Echo Squad run into an artefact of alien origin before everything fades to black and you find yourself back in the more familiar locale of the Nevada desert, three years later. Here in Rachael, Nevada, a town not far from Area 51, all hell has broken loose and an assortment of mutant/ alien types are running amok. Of course it's your job to clean up shop so to speak, while uncovering the web of deceit surrounding these disturbing events.

This starting point for the story actually serves as a quite interesting premise for the game as a whole; it's a shame then that Blacksite's plot never fulfils its early promise as it stumbles its way through the later chapters. It also doesn't help that you never really get any satisfactory answers to many of the questions that are raised in the game's earlier, more promising exchanges.

Although Blacksite makes a good effort of mixing classic, jump-out-of-your-seat arcade moments with free-roaming, tactical-based FPS action, the poor AI and shallow gameplay rarely allow the gameplay to rise above mediocrity. Don't get me wrong - Blacksite is far from being the terrible piece of work that many might have led you to believe, it's just that, thanks largely to Midway's own choice to rush the game out when it clearly wasn't ready, combined with a market flooded with triple-A shooters, Blacksite is very hard to recommend to anyone other than the most ardent of FPS fans.

The squad mechanic, along with the much-vaunted morale system, really could have set Blacksite apart from the pack - but instead, thanks to the incredibly dumb AI, it comes across as a mechanic that is not only nearly broken, but also largely pointless. On the surface it sounds great; using just the R1 button you can order your teammates into position, have them lay down covering fire or open doors for you. Thanks to the morale system you can't just let them do all the hard work either, because if you decide to hide while they do all the fighting, they will lose spirit and perform poorly, thus encouraging a good balance of tactical nuance and balls to the wall blasting. Well, this is how it was supposed to work anyway. The reality is that, no matter what orders you give, your squad members spend the majority of the time running around in circles doing their very best to get shot - leaving you to do all the dirty work regardless. Honestly, if it weren't for your own shocking inability to open doors, you would probably never bother with them.

Beyond these technical issues, another big problem that plagues Blacksite is blandness. In small doses the game is actually quite exciting; the enemies are well designed and freakishly grotesque (in a good way, you understand) and some of the locations are genuinely moody and largely well realised. The problem is that once you have seen a few of the levels and a couple of the enemies, you have pretty much seen them all. The enemies are repeated with alarming regularity and the levels simply don't have enough variety. The game really does have a few excellent set pieces and some of the bosses defy belief in their size - but even these moments succumb to the game's technical deficiencies, along with some rather needless hand holding when it comes to boss battles - really, do we need to be told that the giant flashing bulb on the boss's back is its weak point?

Although you will spend the majority of the game on foot, blasting ten tons of crap out of pretty much everything that gets in your way, you are also treated to some pretty decent vehicle sections where you are required to navigate your way through some pretty treacherous terrain while your squad mates take control of the turrets. It's reasonably basic stuff but is certainly as solid a vehicular section as you are likely to find in the majority of first and third person action games, offering up some much needed diversity to the gameplay - the same sadly cannot be said of the weaponry though. Considering the theme of the game and all the talk of alien technology, Midway could have really gone to town by creating some truly unique weaponry. You may come across the occasionally interesting firearm, but there really is nothing new here. Issues of variety aside, you spend the majority of the game stuck with the run of the mill assault rifle. Although all of the guns do feel solid and pleasingly weighty, the aiming assists that Blacksite employs does take some of the skill out of the game. Although a slight assist in aiming would be fitting in a game of this ilk, Blacksite goes that little bit too far, making vague aiming as useful as precision marksmanship, thus largely negating the need to improve your skills as the game progresses.

Beyond the single player campaign, which is reasonably lengthy - made up of six episodes and thirty-four missions - there is little else to really recommend. The online play for up to ten players is fun enough, made up of a modest collection of eight, largely wide open areas including the usual array of weapon and armour-based power-ups, but it once again can't compete with the big boys. It may cover all the pre-requisite game modes - Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag et al, but it just won't be enough to drag the large majority of gamers away from Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box and Unreal Tournament III. It also doesn't help that there's no offline multiplayer, along with a complete absence of on or offline co-op modes.

Blacksite does look very sharp at least, with some nice character models and enemy designs. The locations are generally atmospheric and the weather effects and lighting are very pleasing on the eye. However, as mentioned earlier, this is only ever the truly the case when you are standing still. The 360 version of the game may have suffered from some pretty terrible slowdown, but the PS3 version really takes the biscuit. The action is so stop-start at times that it borders on making Blacksite unplayable. There is also some pretty terrible screen tearing, along with a collection of minor bugs that rear their ugly heads at random points throughout the game. Again, these all add up to make a potentially decent videogame little better than average - a disappointment when you think about what could have potentially been achieved with Blacksite.

Thankfully, the audio fares much better. The voice acting may be a touch clichéd, but it's well delivered throughout. The music also fits the bill of being successfully rousing and creepy in equally measure, while the sound effects are weighty and immersive with explosions and gunfire providing some real oomph.

Upon playing Blacksite you can see just why Harvey Smith got so angry. There really is a decent game in here somewhere - it's just such a shame that it is hidden beneath some awful glitches and some clearly unfinished gameplay mechanics. With a few more months of fine tuning and some extensive testing sessions, Blacksite could have emerged as, if not a contender, an alternative to the big guns of the market - as it stands however, Blacksite will be remembered as little more than an average shooter that will surely be all but forgotten in the not too distant future.

Reviewed by Liam Pritchard for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).