Dark Sector Review

While it's true that imitation can sometimes be the sincerest form of flattery, and often a quick route to success, the problem is that if a game is too busy imitating a smash hit its own merits are in danger of getting lost in the mix.  That’s the trap Dark Sector, developed by Digital Extremes, almost falls into trying to mimic Epic Studios uber sucessful Gears of War.

Dark Sector was one of the first next-gen games announced, going through several iterations, including one as a power suited Sci -fi adventure, before finally emerging as a brooding post-cold war spy/superhero survival horror yarn.(Is it really allowed to be all those things at once? - Ed)  Playing Dark Sector, it’s immediately clear that its developers had Gears of War very much in mind designing it. (They’ve happily admitted as much in interviews the wags!-Ed ).  Both in its dark, bloody style and combat system, Dark Sector borrows heavily from Gears play book, with a similar ‘pop and stop’ style of game play and gruesome enemies. But the inclusion of biological ‘super powers’, and more importantly a cool special weapon, help makes Dark Sector stand out from the pack as more than just a Gears of War clone.

But Hayden isn’t the only one with superpowers, all the other infected people in the area have been mutated into ‘zombies’ and have gone mad. Unlike them, Tenno’s inability to feel the pain has kept him sane. When he discovers someone from his espionage past wants to spread the disease across the world, Hayden needs to fight his way through armies of infected, and the soldiers sent to contain the contamination, to prevent an apocalypse.

Just like the combat, the overall art style of Dark Sector is very reminiscent of Gears of War and here’s where the game nearly makes its fatal error. Make no mistake; Dark Sector is a good looking game technically, with a high level of detail, shading and nice textures, but none of that is used to get much graphical flair. The biggest take away that the art team seem to have gotten from Gears War was that everything was very dark and ruined. It was, but unlike Dark Sectors , Gears of Wars’ ruined world environments were actually interesting. We know Dark Sector is set in a crumbling former Eastern bloc country, but you get the same dark, disused buildings, ports and labs that could be in just about any game. Enemies are equally generic, and you’ll fight plenty of soldiers with dehumanising gas masks and environmental suits or long armed zombies covered with various deformed growths. You’d be forgiven for assuming Dark Sector was just a graphically uninspired Gears clone if you didn’t get to play it beyond the opening stages.

It’s lucky then, that once you get into the meat of the game there’s a fun combat engine lurking underneath the boring art style. The enemy AI is largely solid, there are no unreasonable difficulty spikes and you’re able to fight with a nice variety of guns- as well as super powers you develop over time as the mysterious infection takes hold. None of the powers or weapons however, compare to the games signature toy - the Glave. Dark Sector’s game play stand out is a huge 4 pronged throwing star with very, very sharp blades for putting the hurt on your enemies.(Oh my god, it’s the weapon from Krull, that crappy 80’s fantasy movie!-Ed)

Much of Dark Sectors game play revolves around the Glave, and frankly it’s the best thing about the game. It’s like a Bata-rang on steroids and linked to the powers from your infection. As you progress through the game, you become more adept at using it to slice up your enemies. You learn how to control it in mid-air, it can be set on fire to ignite your foes or blow them up, chuck it into electrical sources and you can fry them or into cryogenic canisters then freeze and shatter them. It all makes Dark Sector feel quite pleasingly old school as you use the different powers to solve puzzles and progress through the game. 

While all the various puzzles in the game involving the Glave aren’t particularly difficult, it’s a blast just fighting with it- chopping off enemies’ heads and limbs has never been so satisfying. Not only that, but when you use the Glave in hand to hand combat you can perform some gruesome finishing moves.  Most of the huge bosses you fight in the game require you to use the Glave’s powers to beat them, and are enjoyable to fight, although they could do with visible health bars to let you know you’re actually doing them damage at times.

While Dark Sector is fun as a single player game, lasting between 10 and 15 hours, sadly multi-player seems very thrown in at the last moment, with just two modes. There’s Infection, where some players are soldiers and try to take down a single powerful infected player and Epidemic, where two teams try to take out each others leaders. Neither is particularly inspiring and if you like the game, as we did, your time will be better spent beating it again on the Brutal difficulty and unlocking all the weapons, secrets and Glave Achievements.

Dark Sector plays and feels like a cross between a superpowered Gears of War and a frantic Resident Evil and for the most part it’s an enjoyable ride. It’s just that both the environments and Hayden need to lighten up, as this hero has the potential to go places. Here’s hoping that there’s a sequel and that Digital Extremes has the courage to move away from the Gears of War mold and make this series more their own. The best part of this game, the Glave, is a good example of Digital Extremes own innovation can pay off. For the moment, if you can look past Dark Sectors art style you’ll find a solid play experience, which any third person shooter fan will enjoy.

Dark Sector is out now on Xbox 360 and PS3

Written by Sam Bandah