Dark Sector Review
(I'll do my best to avoid any spoilers.)
StoryDark Sector's story follows an American agent named Hayden. He has been sent to stop a man named Mezner from releaseing a virus. Along the way, events occur that end with Hayden being infected and gaining special abilities that further develop as the story progresses. Hayden then uses his new powers to carry on his mission as the story and its twists unfold. There are cutscenes that break down the story but they only show enough to let you understand what the story is about, not enough to actually care about any of the characters.
Single Player GameplayDark Sector plays as a cover based, third person shooter. The controls are very similar to Gears of War as far as the cover and shooting system but much less refined which causes them to feel clunky at times. Although clunky, the system still works pretty well. Tap A to go into cover and you can rest while your health regenerates. Hold LT to pop from cover and RT to fire. Pretty much your standard.
Where Dark Sector's gameplay becomes unique is with the glaive. It is a multi bladed boomerang of sorts. Although the game includes your standard weapons (handguns, shotguns, rifles, and missile launcher) you never really need them outside of a few bossfights if you utilize the glaive. It can be thrown as many times as you like. Headshots kill 90% of the enemies in the game with one throw, even on the hardest difficulty. If that wasn't enough, it also has the ability to be controlled in flight, the ability to imbue it with the elements (fire, ice, electricity), and the ability to explode at the press of a button when imbued with an element. The glaive is a force to be reckond with, which is awesome to a degree, but will also get very stale if it is all you use.
This leads me to the guns and other combat mechanics. I mentioned the standard guns earlier but there is a small twist to the norm. The only way to permanantly have a gun is to buy it at the black market (sewer lids throughout the game lead to them) You find money and upgades throughout the game which you use to make purchases and improve your purchased weapons. This has been done in many other games. What is new (I think) is that you can also pick up your enemies weapons for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds, the weapons detects your infection and explodes in your hand causing a small amount of damage.
There is also the standard melee gun swing. If done from behind an enemy or from the front of a near death enemy it activates a brutal finishing move. There are also energy shields and invisibility mechanics thrown in at later parts in the game.
The last gameplay mechanic is mech mode. There are a few instances in the game where you take over a slow walking, four legged mech. It has 3 weapons which are machine gun, missiles, and decoy flares to draw away enemy missiles. You pretty much just fight your way through 5 - 10 minute strips of enemies in these parts. I'm not typically a fan of mechs but this was pretty fun since it was so short and sweet, A nice break from the norm.
Now for enemies. The smaller enemies are well varied but they do get a little tedious by the time you reach the end of the game. They can be broken down into 3 main groups. Soldiers, infected, and mechs. You will fight ALOT of soldiers and infected as the game unfolds and they come in several shapes and sizes with different fighting techniques/weapons. The mechs are rarer and more difficult which is a good thing that forces you to change tactics a bit.
Bosses are all unique (unless you consider the mechs bosses) and quite fun. There are bosses near the end of a majority (not all) of the levels. Each one has weaknesses you have to learn to exploit. They are all a decent challenge but non are really hard enough to be rage inducing.
All in all, the gameplay is pretty well done.
Multiplayer GameplayAs enjoyable as the single player is, sadly the multiplayer does not follow suit. It has all the gameplay that makes the single player fun but is put together in an unbalanced mess. There are 2 gametypes. They are Infected and Epidimic.
In Infected, one player plays as the infected person (all the powers you gain in the single player) while everyone else is a standard soldier with a gun, grenades, a mine, and no powers. They soldiers also have much less health. It plays out as a typical juggernaut gametype where all the poor little soldiers ban together to take down the all powerful infected. Unfortunately it is easy to wipe every soldier off the map in under 5 seconds with little skill when playing as the infected. Unless their is a huge skill difference, the infected is near unstoppable making the game very irritating. If by some chance the infected is killed, the person with the killing blow takes over as infected and the slaughter starts over. The goal is to get X amount of kills as the infected.
Epidimic plays similar except each team has an infected person on their side and a point is awarded each time a teamm kills the opposing team's infected player. This gametype is fun for infected players but everyone else in the game is essentially worthless minus the lucky grenade or mine to help your infected brother. This leads to irritating gameplay once again for anyone not infected.
None of this really matter though, because at the time I am writing this, the online community is dead. After 2 weeks of boosting the multiplayer (which I will cover later) I only ran into 2 stragglers (also trying to boost) playing the game outside of my boosting group.
GraphicsThe graphics for Dark Sector are suprisingly good. There are solid textures, environments, and character models. Some of the single player areas get repetetive in their look but there are many areas in between that have their own unique look and feel so I found the visuals to typically be new and stimulating. The element effects are also well done. It looks great when you throw a fire glaive into an infected and watch them catch fire and explode. For a game that went as low under the radar as Dark Sector, the graphics are very impressive. Nowhere near the best out there, but very impressive none the less.
SoundThe sound is hit or miss depending on the part of the game. Music is well done. The voice acting is above par. Many superhero geeks like myself will recognize Michael Rosenbaum's (Lex Luthor in Smallville, The Flash in Justice League cartoons) voice as Hayden. Him and the rest of the cast do an amazing job. There are some sounds that get old quickly though. The glaive cutting through the air will haunt your dreams by the end of the campaign but then again it's worth it when it's followed by the panicked screams of a soldier who sees his impending death flying at him. Also in the multiplayer, soldiers have the option to tap Y and call out enemies with an alarm like beeping sound. It gets VERY annoying, very quickly. Myself and a few buddies drove each other crazy with this after weeks of achievement boosting! (don't judge, I guarantee boredom will bring it out of you too if you decide to boost :P)
AchievementsNow the part that everyone reading this probably cares about the most...ACHIEVEMENTS! If you are looking for a quick 1000 GS, THIS IS NOT THE GAME FOR YOU! The campaign is about 10 hours long, maybe longer depending on your play style and it has to be completed twice for all the single player achievements. Brutal difficulty has it's own achievement but you can't play on brutal until you've beat the campaign once on any other difficulty. Also something worth noting is that Brutal difficulty is said to have a glitch that lowers the difficulty on it's own mid playthrough which has screwed a lot of people over. It's good practice to quit after every chapter and load back up to make sure it doesn't happen to you. There are also upgrade collectibles you have to find for another achievement which means a lot of searching or a guide. Sadly, that was the easy part!
Multiplayer is a grindfest and it requires a boosting party! Each gametype has an achievement for 2000 points. Infected requires atleast 4 people to boost efficiently and Epidimic requires 2 or 3. With infected, you can get about 400 points every 3 hours (1 point per kill) . With Epidemic, you can get about 750 points every 3 hours (up to 3 points per kill). It's not as bad as Gears 1 Seriously by any means, but it's quite the grind. I wish anyone luck who decides to try for it.
Final RatingStory: 7/10
SP Gameplay: 8/10
MP Gameplay: 3/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
Achievements: 3/10
3.0