Dark Sector (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Ty Huston on 04.09.2008
Cool throwy things and 80s movie references inside! Act now while supplies last!
The box art is swank, showing you the tool of the trade.
Game: Dark Sector
System: Xbox 360
Developer: Digital Extremes
Publisher: D3 Publisher
About 4 years ago, rumors swirled about some game called “Dark Sector” being developed for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 2 – long before they were around. A trailer was tossed about, and some mild hype occurred. Basically, the original trailer had some sort of space theme to it and alien-type motif going down.
That is not the Dark Sector of today.
Today’s Dark Sector doesn’t take place in space and doesn’t really give any answers to some type of alien intrusion. It does however, provide tons of blood and gore and keeps you coming back for more.
Dark Sector’s One Word is … Glaive.
In the box art above, the Glaive is the thing he’s holding. It’s a gigantic ninja weapon controlled telepathically by our hero – Hayden Tenno. See, Hayden is the guy the government sends in when they have a nasty job to do but are too chickenshit to bring in the real good guys like the team from Rainbow Six or even Agent 47. No, no, Hayden is damaged goods and he’s sent to Lasria. Where is Lasria, you say? Why, it’s some craphole country in what used to be the USSR – or at least it is in this game.
The game begins with Hayden getting dumped in his best Syphon Filter/Splinter Cell rip-off uniform and packing firearms to go clear out some unknown guy named Mezner who Hayden apparently has some history with. Anyway, Mezner has pretty much taken over the place and somehow or another he has in his ugly little hands a virus that turns people into monsters – their skin gets covered in metal, they get weird abilities, etc.
So you fight through the first level, shooting up the place and planting bombs until Mezner catches you and his right hand monsters jabs his infected two-headed sword thingy into your shoulder, contracting you with the virus.
Well, being well-prepared, you take out your fancy self-injection of antibodies and zap yourself to kill the virus and maybe even yourself.
Problem is, it doesn’t stop the virus completely. It doesn’t kill you either. What it does, is gives you one arm sheathed in metal and a handful of cool new abilities along with the Glaive.
Now, historically, a glaive is a French word used between the 14th and 16th Century to mean “spear.” It was also used as a poetic term for a sword. However, it received the name of an object resembling Dark Sector’s version first in 1983.
This is Prince Colwyn and The Glaive in the 1983 movie – Krull.
Bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Anyway, it’s funny because the Glaive in Dark Sector reacts very much like the one from the movie Krull. I mean, the term glaive was used in other movies like Blade and Batman Begins, but they didn’t work the same. I’d venture to guess that the designers of Dark Sector are closet Krull fans.
This weapon kicks major, major ass.
Needless to say, you then spend the rest of the game finding vengeance for being turned into a freak and eventually coming to terms with the fact that being a badass freak is better than being some mentally damaged special ops guy who they throw into total ass situations where they don’t give two shits if you die or not.
Gameplay
The gameplay is where this game shines. You still get to use a handgun and a rifle/shotgun throughout the game and trust me, you’ll need them at times, but this game is all about the Glaive. You throw it at guys and if you go for the head? Decapitation, baby. One guy behind the other? He gets it too. Someone hiding behind a crate and you don’t want to wait for him to pop his head out? Toss the Glaive and guide it with a close-up slow motion control that is a little tough to get at first but becomes second nature very quickly.
This screen shows you something else that the Glaive can do – elemental damage. See it? It’s covered in frost.
The elemental damaging effects are sweet as well. You throw the Glaive at a burning truck and it comes back on fire. You then throw it at some bad guy, he bursts into flames on contact. It also works for short-circuiting electric panels as well as tanks of liquid nitrogen. At times, you’ll be locked inside of rooms and need to give the locking mechanism a bit of a jolt by charging up your Glaive at the nearest shorting out panel, then smack the locking mechanism with a toss of the Glaive to get it to open. Other times, you’ll be trapped behind a wall of fire and need to use a frost-powered Glaive to put out the flames by using the burst technique.
Yes, once charged, you toss the Glaive at some baddies and then click the right stick and BOOM! They are engulfed in a swanky area-of-effect attack. The electrical bursts are swell and all, but the fire and frost ones are the most fun.
The Glaive can also be used for “finishers” when you get face to face with a stunned bad guy, and you need a fancy way to end this hand-to-hand contest, but I’ll leave those for you to discover yourself.
At one point, my version of Hayden was packing a burst firing semi-automatic pistol with an upgraded clip size and shooting Enferon (the antibody for the virus) bullets and boosted stopping power along with a shotgun that too had Enferon shells, added stopping power and increased damage. Add to that the Glaive and some frag grenades and it is party central.
I’d also like to mention how good the other weapons are. Sure, you’ll be using the Glaive everywhere you can, but sometimes when five guys are crawling up your ass, you need a little firepower to slow down the villagers. The pistols all work well, even the super-strong revolver. It’s slower, but much more powerful than any other handguns. On a side note with it, however, the bullets are few are far between for that gun. It would have been nice to have seen more. Instead, I mostly used my burst-firing pistol. There are other semi/fully automatic handguns but their accuracy sucks. The rifle/shotgun slot has several options as well, but after trying a few of the rifles, I gave in to the slower, more powerful shotgun. It’s stopping power – even without upgrades – it pretty awesome and one of the best I’ve seen in a game. It makes Halo’s shotgun look like ass in comparison.
Eventually, you’ll get a powered up suit and cool special abilities like a popping a shield around you that reflects projectiles and turning invisible. Once you have the suit, you can use some super-sized weapons ala Halo where you can grab the big cannons and pack them like a battering ram of major firepowered goodness.
If I had a gripe about the game, I’d say the lack of stealth ability. Everywhere you go, once you’re in range the enemy comes at you. A lot of us are used to the Syphon Filter, Splinter Cell and Hitman ways of being able to sneak around unseen and unheard. It would have been handy in some situations to be able to just creep up behind someone and give them a Glaive to the noodle, but its no major loss – the game still kicks ass.
Graphics
As you can see from these screens, the graphics look pretty good. Really, the animations are top notch as well as the collision detection. Only a handful of times did I notice any clipping and it pretty much occurred only during pre-determined animation sequences. The shine of metallic objects looks great, turning water to ice, explosions and randomly burning fires all look fantastic. They really spent some time to create this “world” inside our world. The details are quite good and the engine runs very well with hardly any lag time or faults in the area around you.
Sound
The sound effects are great. Once in a while you’ll notice music, but nine times out of ten you use your ears to tell if someone is sneaking up on you. The blood curdling screams of death and the sound of the Glaive wisping through the air are all very well done. The voice acting is done quite nicely as well. I’m no audiophile, but I felt they did a pretty quality job.
Lasting Appeal
Are you kidding me? Between using the Glaive to get me some bad guys and the ability to upgrade my firearms along with all the cool kills and stuff – I’m probably going to buy this game. I can see myself playing it for quite some time down the road. Overall, it took me about a week and a half of playing 1-2 hours a night to beat it on the normal difficulty. Not bad, but not great. I might save it for a used game pick-up.
The 411
Don’t pass this game up. It’s definitely at least worth a rental and then you can determine if it’s a keeper or not. Me? My mind’s made up. I’ll be getting a copy one way or the other. It’s a simple, fun game. It plays very similarly to Gears of War, but has its own unique touch. To be honest, I didn’t pick or choose this game to review, it came to me. I sat in Blockbuster on a Saturday morning and looked at the new releases and deciding if I should pick something that wasn’t already going to be reviewed by our team. Well, that’s what I did in choosing Dark Sector and I can honestly say I don’t regret my decision. This game definitely a thumbs up from me.
Graphics
8.5
Nothing groundbreaking, but still quality work from these guys. Then again, what do you expect from a game that has been in production for four years?
Gameplay
9.0
The best part of the whole game. The Glaive could have its own game, television series and action figure. Okay, maybe not a television series.
Sound
8.0
It's really hard to say much about the sound since there was no major usage of music or anything beyond the standard fare and sound effects. But it didn't sound like Pong, ok?
Lasting Appeal
8.5
It's worth beating a few times and at least getting you through until the next OMGIGOTTAHAVETHIS game comes out.
Fun Factor
9.0
I really, really enjoyed this game. Let's put it this way, I rented it over my birthday and I got Oblivion GOTY Edition and didn't play Oblivion until last night. That was two weeks ago.
