Dark Sector is notable for being the first “next-generation” game announced all the way back in 2004. Back then, it sort of had a stealth-action look to it, like a futuristic version of Splinter Cell. It would have been interesting to see how that game would have turned out, but I have a feeling that the 2006 release of Gears of War made a pretty deep impact on Dark Sector’s development, because the final product takes several cues from Gears. Unfortunately, it doesn’t clone it well enough to actually be a clone worth playing to completion.
On the surface, Dark Sector seems pretty cool. The character you control, Hayden, is sent into an area that’s been infected with some kind of hideous, post-apocalyptic disease, but he’s quickly pinned down and infected himself. As you play, the disease takes hold and you unlock new abilities. The first thing that happens once you become infected is that the game goes from being guns-only to giving you a boomerang-like glaive that you can use to chop off the heads of enemies, if you’re a good aim. You eventually get a shield, the ability to control the glaive in mid-flight, and the ability to turn invisible for short periods of time.
The game also tosses some light puzzle-solving at you here and there. The glaive can be infused with fire, ice, or electricity by throwing it into fire, something frozen, or a power box, respectively. You’ll occasionally need to burn things to clear a path or charge up a jammed door with power to proceed.
Once you’re fully powered up with all the different abilities, you have some options for how to best deal with enemies, but you’re always stuck with a few nagging problems. Hayden moves extremely slowly, plodding around the environment like a man twice his size. For a guy who looks like he should be flipping out and beheading enemies like a ninja, the movement speed doesn’t make much sense, and it really makes things drag. You can sprint for short periods of time, but the sprint is Gears of War-like in that you lose a lot of lateral control. Again, that’s something that makes sense for a linebacker-sized dude like Marcus Fenix, but when applied to a lithe operative like Hayden, it doesn’t fit.
While you’ll be inclined to do most of your fighting with the glaive, you’ll also get some guns to work with. You start with a pistol, and as you collect rubles and briefcases with weapon upgrades in them, you can make your weapons better or replace them at black market checkpoints found in the levels. The weapon purchasing and upgrading systems don’t seem to be a major part of the game, and you can make it through with limited purchases.
Most of the game has Hayden running from place to place, occasionally stopping for an encounter with gun-toting humans or pipe-wielding zombies, neither of which are very smart. Humans will randomly shoot into your cover point without ever getting tactical, and the zombies move too slowly to ever be a serious threat. This reduces most encounters to an easy shooting gallery where the only occasional problem is the range of your glaive and the general lack of ammo for your weapons. Once you earn the power to turn invisible, the game gets even easier, since you can just blink out, run up behind a guy, and take care of business.
The game has a basic cover system, letting you pop in and out of cover to take shots or toss your glaive at distant enemies. Up close, you have a melee attack, and if you get behind someone–which is super-easy with the slow-moving zombies–you can execute them with a finishing move, which triggers a canned animation that shows you snapping a zombie’s neck, slitting the throats of some enemies, or just jamming your glaive into the skulls of some creatures. The finisher animations look great and do a nice job of showing off the game’s detailed character models, and it’s a shame that there aren’t more of them, because they get really repetitive. The rest of the game looks pretty good, too, with decent-sized environments and nice blur effects. Hayden’s face is probably the only thing in the game that doesn’t look so great. It’s too flat, maybe? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the way it looks and animates just seems totally wrong.
There’s a multiplayer option in Dark Sector that lets up to ten players play one of two modes. One has two teams, each with one Hayden that must be protected. The other puts one player in the Hayden role, with the other players trying to bring him down for the right to be Hayden in the next round. Neither mode is much fun, and the whole game can be a mess if everyone isn’t using a good, fast connection. Dying for no visible reason, warping around the map, and other glitches came up pretty consistently in every match I played.
Dark Sector feels OK for the first two chapters, but there are eight more to slog through after that, and if I wasn’t working on a review of the game, that’s probably where I would have stopped. The occasional variety of a boss battle or vehicle sequence doesn’t break things up enough to make the campaign an interesting one, either. Between the dreary action, the sluggish movement speed, and the seemingly tacked-on multiplayer, you’ll probably want to pass on the whole thing.
51 Comments
Well done Jeff for getting through this heap of CRAP
Hmm, I thought this game looked at least interesting. Well It’s still going on my gamefly queue regardless. Good review!
I completely agree,and a few of my friends kinda had the same “I started this game..it was ok but now I have no interest in finishing it” kind of deal.There aren’t many games that seem interesting at the start that I at least don’t mind playing until the end,but Dark Sector is definately an exception,not worth anyones time.
Wait a second… don’t kick ass graphics make a game the best?
Congrats on getting through this nicely disguised piece of shit.
Well, at least you got some more achievements.
It must feel real good to not be constrained by the man to make you finish the game in a timely manner!
brave man the gerstman
Finally a like minded review!
Nice review, I play it for a bit a really could not get myself to play it again.
There was a point where this game looked straight-up like RE4. It seems like a victim of the developers just not knowing what they really wanted to do with it.
I don’t know if this game is bullshit or a masterpiece (which i don’t believe it is after reading the review), but since i ain’t got no 360, PS3 nor Wii, I think it would be great if someone gave me a 360 or PS3 with this game, i wouldn’t really care about Hayden’s stupid-looking face.
I wish Digital Extremes would have kept to the initial “futuristic stealth game” that they had first planned Dark Sector to be 4 years back. When I first saw a teaser trailer for it I was really intrigued to see what would come of this. Too bad what did ended up in a totally different direction for the worse.
I definitely don’t like his face. It looks kind of… melted.
Hey you finally made it through the game. Hehehe Congrats, I guess.
Jeff: I, too, am glad you finished this and put up a review. There are plenty of things wrong with most game reviews nowadays, but I’d consider sitting through the whole thing a good part, and something admirable, as I have no idea if I could put up with the above shit.
My advice to people is that it’s a solid rental. I enjoyed it as a place holder game, killing time while I waited for the next big thing. It’s got great tech, but the game play is sorely lacking. I think this game can be summed up with “where’s the joy”.
I totally agree on his face, there is just something wierd and boxish about it.
I think i definatly had some fun with it. But there are still all kinda problems here. I had that same lag at about Ch 6. Just had to really work to finish it.
Hey Jeff I agree with the Gears part but actually its more like Gears + Resident Evil 4 - Awesome = Dark Sector
Noted- thanks Jeff. I won’t be playing this one.
I like how your screenshots pop out of the thumbnail version, makes viewing very effective.
I am kind of surprised you gave this game 2 stars considering how completely uninterested you were in finishing it. I was hoping for the first ever negative star score!
2 stars, WOW! Is it really that bad?
On the podcast he said it was a solid game so i thought it would get 3 stars at the very least.
I agree. Dark Sector had great potential, unfortunately it just doesn’t come together. The story felt vague. It doesn’t keep you wondering what happens next, instead it keeps you wishing you could skip to the end. Some levels felt like they were there for filler. Taking out enemies with the glaive never gets old, but there’s just not enough variety in the types of enemies.
The multiplayer is different (they deserve points for that). It probably looked great on paper, but it just doesn’t play out well when everyone is trying to take out Hayden.
We should have been given that suit and mask right from the beginning. It serves no real purpose other than covering up his face.
SUPER EASY ACHIEVEMENTS THOUGH…I GOT 675 IN LESS THAT 2 DAYS.
Sh*t…sorry ’bout the caps…im not yelling…EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
holy crap…i went off the flipping grid page!
Looks like you finally mustered the strength to finish it, Jeff. Good job. You’re a strong man than me.
In addition to the obvious Gears Of War influence there is also a bit of Resident Evil 4 and what I believe to be, a small amount of Lost Planet, thrown into the mix. Some of the character designs for the human enemies, as well as things like the Jackal, remind me of the latter.
Damn i kinda liked it but as i dont think its a good game, just an average one.
Good review.
Personally, I really enjoyed playing through Dark Sector. I’ve already finished it 2 times on different difficulty levels.
Just an awesome title guys, couldn’t of been clearer or more concise, Thanks.
I see that playing this horrible game has affected your typing. Inflected?
I knew this game was gonna suck.
I actually thought it was good.
Seriously. I can’t believe how many good scores this game has gotten.
I had the exact same reaction to this game. When I started playing it, I thought “hey this is a decent surprise!” By chapter four I groaned at the thought of another generic long corridor to stop-and-pop in, another “puzzle” that involved “fire beats black goo”, or strangest of all, another melee-focused area where your melee combat controls, gameplay and hit detection blows.
Great review, I really wasn’t expecting much from this game when I first heard about it, so I’m not really too shocked or disappointed. Still definitely a shame though, I’ll probably give it a miss.
i have to stand against giantbomb on this one i thought it was a good game. single player was good and fun, i can understand with the fire and how u had to burn that wall but other than that good.later on yea it does the same stuff but still good. online is ok yes the connection is not as great but there are time when its good. only two game types and not that bad.again not a bad game just not a great game. This is a game to have some fun with by killing a bunch of people and things and to waste some time with just to make it faster for upcoming games like gears of war 2 and others.I would say to get this game for anyone that has 60$ on them. 8.0/10
let’s all start using absurd math! Jeff Gerstmann + 50 pounds = impending serious medical altercations.
They game really doesn’t look detailed at all by the way.
I thought it was more a 2.5/5 lol.
Just wanted to also say that I initially hadn’t heard about this game much, and none of my friends had played it. I saw the commercials on TV about 2 weeks after it’s release and it actually looked like a quality game. It is smooth, fairly detailed, stable and somewhat interesting but unfortunately it’s incredibly repetitive.
I’m quite disappointed because this game actually looked really solid and fun at first.
wtf that was a good game.
What a shame. It held so much promise. The title of the review says it all.
Know you can leave it behind you Jeff!
A couple of years ago, I was looking forward to this game. It’s such a shame that it turned out the way it did.
To its credit, it was the best Guyver fanfic I’ve ever played.
This review sums up my feelings on the game exactly. I did play it all the way through for the achievements, but by the 3rd chapter I was pretty bored of it.
I’m just about through this game and while it most certainly isnt great i’m actually quite enjoying it.
I would disagree with the score but its hard as the game doesn’t have any sparks of brilliance that takes it from mediocre to decent. For a braindead experience just killing stuff its actually OK. i’d give it a strict 2.5 out of 5, strictly mediocre but can be quite good.
That said Ive borrowed it from work. if I paid for it id probably return it
I wish this game retained its original feel when it was announced back in 04.
Dark Sector initially had this mystique about it that really intrigued me.
This should be the review for gears of war, the game sucks and its to short.
I disagree, it may not be a great game by any means but i’m on my second play through, and while the narrative sucks, the gameplay is a blast.