Dark Sector almost hits the mark
Dark Sector is a game that manages to pluck a chord with fans of the Gears of War style third-person shooter with that familiar over-right-shoulder camera viewpoint. Unfortunately, being a clone often means that doing something new is out of the question. Dark Sector manages to take an old style, bring new game-play to it, but fails to do much more than that.
Immediately after putting the game in, one will notice the breathtaking graphics of what you can only assume is the latest build of the Unreal Engine. The prologue takes place entirely in black and white, just like an old film. Adding context to the feeling of it being non-color is the fact the series of events takes place in an alternate reality Russia in the 1980's. During a deep-sea excavation a mysterious, yet highly infectious plague has come back with the naval team and has infected most of what we would consider the Soviet Union.
Since the game struggles so hard to be the new Gears of War, you'll find that all the cover mechanics work pretty much the same, just less elegantly. Instead of being able to run directly into cover you have to stop and hit up on the analog stick + A, this just slows things down and can cost you a life or two when playing on the harder difficulties. The other controls are borrowed from other places and there's no real issue with any single one of them apart from the cover system.
The new idea that Dark Sector uses to set itself apart from the (now) highly over-mentioned Gears of War is a weapon called "The Glaive." This is a cross between a boomerang and a knife. Curved into a circle this highly destructive weapon can cut limbs off of enemies as well as retrieve distant items and power-ups. After a while your character gains the ability to control the Glaive in mid-flight. This can be useful for hitting specific points on a boss creature or decapitating an enemy for a quick kill. Unfortunately, in the night levels, the overuse of blur effects makes hitting a target near impossible.
The worst part about Dark Sector's controls is that apart from the Glaive, there is no tutorial telling you which buttons do what, so for the first part of the game if you didn't know better, you wouldn't know there was even a cover system in place. This can be highly annoying once you realize you have to test every button and figure it out. This isn't to say there aren't sequences later on when you acquire new powers, there is just nothing upfront in the first level like you would expect to find in a Gears of War or similar title.
For the moments you can't hit targets with the Glaive, there are guns in Dark Sector that you can use. These are armed with a device called "governors" which will destroy the weapon within around 30 seconds after you pick them up. This is because at some point during the game you become infected and the device prevents the use of weapons by infected people. You can buy guns without governors in the black market (for a price of course) but most of the time if this happens you'll be trying to melee the enemies. Due to the inclusion of a finishing system you can pull off brutal kills in short cinematics after you damage an enemy a certain amount. The bad part is that it is never quite clear how much damage is required until an enemy turns red indicating you can do a finisher. Most of the time you'll simply kill off the attacker in your attempts.
However, usually when these annoyances occur you'll be overwhelmed by a sense of immersion and anticipation because the graphics carry this title a long way. Unreal Engine 3's latest update contains some of the best visuals ever seen on consoles. It doesn't make the same leap as the original Gears of War did, but it certainly makes vast and noticeable differences right from the first level. Color correction and particle effects are all highly elegant and realistic. During the game you can add elements to your Glaive by running it through fire or an open electrical field to get the desired effect. In fact, some of the fun of Dark Sector is taking these new elements like ice and fire and using it on enemies and the environment just to see how it looks and affects other things around it.
The game's real flaw isn't where it copies from or where it tries to go. It's the complete lack of a story coupled with waves of enemies over and over again in every level. Mainly the waves of enemies are controlled and not completely ridiculous, but the lack of story really gets in the way, and when new characters are introduced it is almost never clear who they are, why they are important, and where they belong in the back-story. In fact, the story is so lacking, that if there was one the game would've enjoyed a ton more success and been a really interesting place to explore.
Overall Dark Sector isn't a bad game, but if you're looking for a really new experience or an interesting story you won't find it here. Instead of being a blatant copy, this title manages to introduce a lot of new elements that, if you're a fan of third-person shooters and you don't mind a bit of repetition, is definitely worth a look at the very least.
