Dark Sector
Score: 82% ESRB: Mature Publisher: D3 Developer: Digital Extremes Media: Blu-ray/1 Players: 1; 2 - 10 (Online) Genre: Third Person Shooter/ Action
Graphics & Sound: Dark Sector can easily be seen as a generic shooter with a gimmick (the blade weapon), but it has enough added mechanics to make it stand on its own, even if just a little. Besides the generally overly-shadowed environments, the game is visually stunning. The first chapter, the Prolog, is all in gray scale and looks just beautiful. While playing through this level, I thought the entire game would be like this, and quite frankly, I would have been perfectly fine if that was the case. But it wasn't, and while the darkness of the rest of the game was a bit too much, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't handle it. Your character, Hayden Tenno, is the most detailed on the screen, and everything from his close-cropped haircut to his infected arm really stands out. Meanwhile, environments and enemies look pretty good, but often come off as a bit plastic, which seems to be an issue in the ultra-high-def generation we are in. I didn't have any issues with the sound, but the dialogue seemed a bit stiff. I'm not saying Michael Rosenbaum (Lex from TV's Smallville) sounded bad or anything, I just feel like it was more of a script/story issue than an acting problem.
Gameplay: Dark Sector's story seems like it has the same roots as several games I've played over the years. You play an uber-military special ops character who does the government's dirty work, until this mission, where everything goes wrong. In the case of Dark Sector, you get infected with a virus that is slowly transforming you into something else (again, sound familiar?). Throughout the game, the mutation grows more and more advanced and you gain more and more powers as you face everything from normal humans to other infected creatures. While parts of the story seemed interesting, there wasn't really enough to hold my interest in the overall events. It just seemed like an excuse to string together another series of duck and cover shooting areas. At least the game's Krull-like blade and the infection that caused it added a few twists. Not only do you eventually gain the ability to control the blade while it is in the air, but you can pick up items and catch it on fire so you can light other things up. All of these little mechanics make for some good environmental puzzles and make some of the levels interesting at parts, even though they are very linear in their layout. One of the other aspects that I found amusing was the fact that most of the enemy weapons have an infection-detection device on them. If you hold onto them for too long, they blow up. This means that you can carry enemy weapons around for a while, but your blade will almost always be your primary attack.
Difficulty: Dark Sector had quite a few difficult spots in my opinion, but never any place that wasn't so hard that I just gave up. There are a few occasions where you go up against some big baddies, that are way too powerful to just decapitate or cut a leg off of, and those times the game because a bit of a bore since they were mostly grind sessions. The trick to playing through Dark Sector is not to just go into a room charging blindly. There is a lot of cover strewn about the levels, and you should use it to your advantage. Enemies will stay hidden and pop out in order to nail you, and you will have to do the same if you want to survive. When you get the ability to control the blade in-flight, it gets a little easier to take out these pot-shooting bad guys, but you will want to know where your closest cover is at all times.
Game Mechanics: Dark Sector's main mechanic is the Glaive (the blade), and you will use it time and time again to plow through enemies and solve puzzles. Controlling it is pretty easy. At first, you only have the ability to aim and launch it, but watching it slice through swatches of enemies is a bloody beauty. Later, you will be able to maneuver the disc-of-doom with your analog stick and eventually shoot out an energy pulse. But the blade isn't all that Dark Sector has to offer in the way of weapons. There are a wide variety of firearms, and a lot of times, Hayden can hold a gun in one hand (his left) and ready his blade in his other, making him an intense double threat. Dark Sector should definitely be rented, at least, by shooter fans. The chance to control the Glaive in combat has a nice feel to it, but I'm not sure it's quite worth the purchase since I found very little desire to play through the entire game just to see what happens in the story. There is enough here to inspire a (inevitable) sequel, so maybe some of the minor issues will be tweaked out by then.
-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer
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