Blacksite dev admits to rushed product

Midway's Harvey Smith has admitted that relatively low review scores for Blacksite: Area 51 are "no surprise", admitting to various problems during development.

Speaking at the Montreal International Game Summit 2007, Smith pulled no punches: "This project was so f*cked up," reports Wired.

Smith said that he wasn't all that enamoured with the Area 51 property when he first came onboard, but a rush to completion became a bigger problem as development went on.

"It took eight months to get one thing working," he said. "With a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails." It even "went straight from alpha to final," leaving virtually no time to spend play-testing the game.

Asked why he was being so honest about all this - and his belief that they "deserved" a critical hammering - Smith said: "I believe in personal accountability."

The comments won't please publisher Midway. Area 51: Blacksite is due out on PC and Xbox 360 tomorrow in Europe, with a PS3 release also on the way.