Dark Sector

Dark Sector sure has a sexy box art. You cannot judge a game by its cover though so when I asked a friend about the game he said it was terrible and a horror title. Well, it's been a long time since I've played a horror title so I was all over this one.

I was instantly met with let down as I booted the game up. It felt like Gears of War. Then I entered the second location, the rain was falling and the dark textures just brought an awesome gloomy atmosphere.

It's something this game does correctly. It oozes with atmosphere, and everything is dark and gritty and it looks gorgeous the entire time. It also runs into some problems. It fails to create anything unique or outstanding and instead we get typical locations like sewers and warehouses.

Enemy models also lack anything all that interesting and besides the bosses I really can't say I was impressed with the humans or the creatures. I will admit the creatures had a creepy look to them but Uncharted hit the PS3 last year and had the same creep factor to some of it's enemies and pulled off the scares better.

What makes this entire game almost worth while is the Glaive. It's your main weapon for killing enemies. Think of it as a boomerang but as you advance through the game you gain new skills like being able to control it in midair and other stuff. The game introduces them slowly so it constantly feels like you're gaining something awesome and new a couple times a chapter.

What else is cool is that you can interact with fires and electric malfunction with the glaive. Doing so will charge them with these powers and later you can cause it to explode and do double damage when elements are used.

Now you don't need to use the glaive the whole time. You actually have a handgun and later you can buy other guns at the black market. You can also pick up dropped enemy weapons but you only have 30 seconds to use it before it becomes useless and they have worked that into the plot.

Speaking of the plot I should just get that out of the way now. You're a special ops person and you end up getting bit by a creature and pretty much your arm starts to mutate, which is how you get the Glaive. The plot is actually kind of cool but by the end you realize they never thought it all out and so much is left unexplained or numerous plot holes are left open to drive a truck through.

Thankfully the game is really fun and it's because it borrows everything from Gears of War. You walk into an area and take cover. Now you sit there and kill everything until they are all dead and move into the next area. The puzzles are few and far between and besides some sweet boss fights it doesn't offer much that requires some thought.

I also found the game to be boring after the first few chapters. The stages became overwhelmingly long and they reached the point of tediousness which is never a good thing. The game does offer a lot of check points so that was nice at least. But don't expect a long game. 8 hours would be pushing it for this one.

The enemy AI really doesn't help matters either. They tend to stand there, shoot, take cover and wash and repeat. No real thoughts behind it and they never rush you. The creatures bum rush you but go down quickly. In the next breath you have humans with shields who are down right crazy, hard to hit and kill you in two hits. What makes it worse is that each scenario feels the same, like no real variety and even when you gain control of a vehicle it felt like the same ole thing all over again but now in a big clunky machine.

The game also offers on-line multiplayer but I didn't bother with it. Maybe at another time, at which point I'll update this review but as it stands it just didn't interest me. It does offer a few unique modes like virus mode but again, I didn't play it so I can't full a real comment on it.

All in all Dark Sector is a typical yet fun shooter. It isn't worth the price tag but if you find it cheap then it might just be worth checking out. Just don't expect a horror title as it's very reminiscent of Gears of War with some mild horror tones here and there.

Story - 7/10
Graphics - 10/10
Sound - 7/10
Control - 8/10
Game Play - 7/10
Replay Value - 5/10

Final Score - 7/10