Dark Sector was announced roughly four years ago. Judging from the trailers it was supposed to be a science fiction heavy stealth action game. Judging from the finished product they ended up ripping off Resident Evil 4 and throwing in a Gears of War inspired cover system for good measure. This doesn’t make it a bad game per se, because during production RE4 spawned the Devil May Cry franchise and also had at least one other iteration (that I know of) before it became the game that we know of now.
Story:
Dark Sector puts you in the shoes of government-contracted psychopath Hayden Tenno as he sets out to do some wet work (not of the SCUBA diving variety). Dark Sector takes place in a Russian inspired backdrop known as Lasria. Tenno’s main objective is to ice someone from his past named Viktor. It’s evident that they know each other because Hayden doesn’t administer bullet brain surgery until after a lengthy conversation. After whacking Viktor Hayden has to cheese it from the compound, but a rather nasty helicopter interrupts him. After shooting it down he gets further interrupted by crazy scientist Mezner.
Mezner is accompanied by a rather large and nigh invulnerable guard dog with a huge blade growing out of his arm. To make the game interesting this bodyguard of his decides to infect Hayden with the Technocite Virus. Upon receiving the virus Hayden’s right arm pretty much turns to mush until the virus takes shape as a rather nasty looking glaive. It’s pretty much like that three bladed disk from Krull or the Smart Disc weapon from Predator 2.
What Hayden is mostly there to do is to stop the spread of the Technocite Virus. The virus is like the biomechanical cousin to Resident Evil’s T-Virus. Once a person gets infected they start going nuts, but Hayden because he has some disease that keeps him from feeling pain keeps that from happening. While the story sounds interesting it falls flat in a lot of areas because they don’t explain anybody\'s backstory. If I ever so desired I would be able to find out what they didn’t explain courtesy of a comic book explaining it which came with my press materials; but people that actually buy the game aren’t privy to knowing what the hell is going on.
There are some points where the dialogue is a tad laughable and the drama never really crescendos either. Pretty much it’s a little bit more interesting but less epic than Gears of War and it’s not as well thought out or as suspenseful as RE4.
Gameplay:
For some odd reason anything with a cover system has to be labeled as a Gears of War clone and I actually fully disagree with that label. Dark Sector for the most part plays more like RE4 than anything else and to be honest when they first started showing gameplay for the game it struck me more as a RE4 clone than anything else. The only thing that sets it apart from RE4 is the glaive weapon and the aforementioned cover system.
I’m going to talk about the three bladed glaive first. It acts as a Jack-of-all-trades weapon. Once it gains enough abilities you can fall back on it unless you really need whatever that lays in front of you dead or if you get ambushed by multiple enemies. For the most part the Glaive is a limb-severing machine; aim it at an arm or a leg, charge it up and let it fly. Afterwards your intended target is flailing around missing said appendage. My favorite thing to do is slicing enemies in half. I guess for the most part it’s because I’m sick in the head and I just love seeing torsos 15 feet away from their legs. The glaive also has the ability to absorb elemental properties. This ties in heavily to puzzle solving, but like everything else it can be used as a weapon. I shouldn’t have to talk about how you can set people on fire, but with puzzles it’s a tad different. At first (this feeling lasts briefly) you’ll wonder why there’s fire around a particular door and why certain doors are covered in this green slimy mesh. But you just need to burn through it to advance through the stage. The same goes for locked doors and electricity as well.
Later on you have to aftertouch your glaive in between doors to capture the electricity for certain doors and that’s pretty much about as tricky as the puzzles get. There’s this one section in a graveyard that’s a doozy, but that’s the only one. Other than tearing people asunder the glaive is good for grabbing items; it’s actually the preferred method for this. One reason is because you have to travel to a box, smash it and hold the action button to pick it up. As easy as this sounds, smashing a box doesn’t always happen so it’s just faster for you to target it and use the glaive to do the smash and grab for you.
Since I just mentioned it I’m going to discuss it briefly. If you played Heavenly Sword and thought that game wasn’t precise enough for you it’s worse in Dark Sector…a lot worse. The controls aren’t as tight and it feels like you would get the glaive to go where you want it to go by throwing the controller at the television, because you have to make really abrasive turning gestures with the Sixaxis controller to get it to turn.
When you actually are shooting things it’s pretty responsive, but at times it feels a little clunky and the same can be said for the cover system as well. Pretty much if you’re used to the fluidness of Uncharted then don’t expect that here. At times I found myself diving to cover when I just wanted to roll the hell out of the way. Honestly games should mimic Uncharted more than Gears because one button isn’t used for rolling and attaching to cover in Uncharted. The bigger kick in the teeth is that they separated vaulting over objects and cover, but couldn’t do the same thing with rolling.
Another borrowed game mechanic (don’t worry I love upgrading guns) comes in the form of weapon upgrades. They use what they call the Black Market; a place so vile and sinister that it’s housed in the sewer system. It’s like the merchant from RE4 but without…well…the variety. Throughout the game you find some cash and a bunch of weapons upgrades. The only problem is that #1 you’re limited by not finding a lot of money and #2 you can’t carry over your upgrades when you beat the game. So essentially you will buy about 2-3 weapons; hopefully you\'ll pick and choose your upgrades wisely because you won’t be able to remove them. While on the topic of weapons you’re able to pick them up from dead soldiers, but the problem is that they become useless fast. They took a page from MGS 4’s book by making each weapon coded. If an infected person operates the weapon it’s going to essentially dismantle itself and become useless.
What I found disappointing about the weapons is that there is very little depth and you really don’t notice that much of an impact from weapon to weapon. By that I mean the AKS-74 and its upgraded cousin the Korbov TK6 pretty much feel like the same gun. The latter might have more range and somewhat more firepower, but they just seem like the same gun. To put it in perspective if you played RE4 and you either upgraded or bought a whole new pistol you noticed the difference. If you went from the handgun to the Punisher or Red 9 you immediately knew the difference and actually found a preference for one depending on what your style of play was. For the most part it doesn’t matter what you’re armed with, but you should just keep it simple with the handgun/glaive stance and just have a good assault rifle to balance it out. You’re allowed the option of a shotgun and sniper rifle, but the times where they might actually be useful aren’t that frequent.
The only thing that I really had a problem with were the countless wave scenarios. There are numerous instances where they will throw about 15 enemies at you. You have to kill them to move on and as the game goes on these enemies start to soak up too much damage and take too long to plow through. Combine this with “Endless” wave areas where you have to force your way past them to get to a door so they will stop coming. These don’t happen all the time, but it’s hard to know which is which until you either die or you find yourself saying, “isn’t six waves of these things enough.”
A lot of the review may sound like empty complaints and give people the perception that I didn’t like the game, but that’s the problem; I like Dark Sector - a lot actually. Throwing the glaive at an enemy, stunning him and rushing up to him for a finishing move is great fun. Seeing Hayden break a guys arm and then use his glaive to cleave off the fractured limb leaving nothing but a broken bloody stump is satisfying and probably one of the meanest things I’ve done to an enemy in a game. I love getting headshots as well because of the sound it makes. Just the fact that I can put this game in the same sentence with RE4 and not follow it up with the words, “hackneyed,” “clichéd” and many other negative words is a compliment. It’s actually a really good game it just doesn’t do anything new with the genre, but for the most part you’re almost guaranteed to have some form of fun with the game.
Graphics:
When Dark Sector was first announced it was a fairly impressive looking game. Granted if they kept the same engine it definitely would not have stood the test of time. But luckily it’s been overhauled and it’s quite nice looking. Weapons are modeled nicely and the whole game, including every cutscene, uses the in game graphics engine. It helps to create a rather seamless transition in the game and just makes everything seem a little more believable. My favorite effect comes from the invisible enemies that lurk around. When you hit one it gives off this static effect that reminds me of what happens when the Predator gets wet while invisible. The creature and enemy design is also pretty nice with the exception of the zombie type monsters that swing pipes. My one true complaint comes from the lack of a color palette. You have black, white; gray…a little bit of red, blue and that’s almost it, oh yeah there’s a smattering of brown. To be honest I wouldn’t mind seeing more games using the Evolution Engine that powers Dark Sector; I personally would just like to see more color usage. There is the occasional floating glitch, but is not the worst offender of this (Blacksite: Area 51 I’m looking at you).
Sound:
Hayden Tenno is voiced by Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum and he doe’s a good job of slinging the cheese. The music is pretty moody and provides a good bit of atmosphere at times it makes you pretty tense, but it’s been done better by other games. The soundtrack doesn’t pump you up but at times it makes you wonder what’s on the other side of that corroded corner. I will admit that the screaming of the guards gets a tad irritating, but it’s not as bad as the Helghast from the first Killzone.
Replay:
There is multiplayer, but it’s gotten to a point where you have to ask what game (that isn’t a JRPG) doesn’t have this. You get two modes, which are two different forms of your usual Infection play type. My usual philosophy is that every game doesn’t require an online component. I would rather see a very well put together single player mode than have a decent story campaign and a lackluster online component.
Overall:
For the most part I had a lot of fun with Dark Sector. I couldn’t get sucked into the story, but I really liked hacking up bad guys. You seem to gain a new power with every stage, so toying around with their uses can be entertaining at times. I wish you where able to actually keep your weapons after beating the final stage and that alone hurts replay value, but when you’re playing you have a lot of fun, but you also find certain things to gripe about as well. It’s not perfect (nothing is) but its strengths outweigh its negatives (for the most part).
"Dark Sector (X360)" is on sale March 28, 2008 and is rated M. Action.
