Dark Sector

Dark Sector is a fairly little-known game, much to my surprise seeing as the UK's Official Xbox Magazine has been anticipating it over the last few months as if it came with a free emu farm, but seems to be the most ignored new release since they brought out Cabela's Badger Cull, or whatever the hell they called the last one. I guess my best explanation is that it had the misfortune to be the only game to come out alongside Condemned 2, which in the scale of things is like being at a battle of the bands and going on after The Darkness, then cursing yourself for living in Lowestoft. Oh, and sorry for the lack of pictures this week, I've been really busy.

I'm not exactly sure where to start this review, which I guess is a similar problem Digital Extremes had with Dark Sector. A safe way to start a review is to waste time talking about the story until I can think of something more interesting to write, but in this case I think I'm missing half the story somehow. I don't mean I played the game for 10 minutes and gave up out of boredom, I reached the end credits. No, no, no, the bit I'm missing is the first half of the story, which is rather odd considering the first chapter is entitled "Prologue" - which is a piss-poor title seeing as a) it doesn't make any attempt to explain the backstory, and b) it shows the events taking place about 5 seconds before the first "real" level. No tutorial level, but then again the game blankets your screen with help text whenever you stumble across something slightly different.

I'm usually not bothered enough about a game's backstory unless I can really take the piss out of it, or if it tries to take the piss out of me by having all the characters knowing a hell of lot more than me and new characters popping up with apparently strong relationships with the lead character and no evidence of it. I looked through the instruction book to find only a page on controls and a load of bollocks relating to guarantees and the French.

The effect of this is you spend the game feeling like a camera man, only the first camera man unexpectedly died and due to a tight production schedule, no one has time to let you know what the fuck is going on, or even pay attention to you. This was so bad that I spent the entire game thinking the main character was called Aidan, which is a bit odd for an American, but still a real name; only to learn from the internet that he suffered from the much more stupid name Hayden. That's a pretty honest mistake, but I still don't know who the hell everyone else was or what they were talking about when they shouted at Hayden for killing "those people". No, it's nothing I did, it started in the opening cutscene.

Enough of complaining about the story of (left in the) Dark Sector and onto the bits you'll actually care about. I'll try hard to avoid the GTA IV comparisons, but I played it so much recently that over the last few days when I wake up I've had to remind myself that my name isn't Niko Bellic, and I don't know anyone called Roman.

Over recent years the concept of games being divided into levels just isn't cool anymore, so now they're split into "chapters"... which are like groups of levels with only the best games getting the logic between the splits right. Maybe they just don't want us to feel that sense of pride from finishing a difficult level anymore. Anyway, what this generally means is that rather than sitting down at a game for about 10 minutes to finish a quick level on a game, we now have to cushion our arses for lengths usually exceeding half an hour. I say generally, because some tit involved in the Dark Sector development forgot how long each chapter was, which results in some chapters being about 20 seconds long (I'm not even kidding) and others taking the ugly side of 2 hours. It's nothing particularly serious, it's just a bit thick, especially considering the on 360 version this means the game constantly vomits achievements at you which neatly lands on your lap spelling out the words "that's it?".

I wouldn't call Dark Sector a bad game, but I'd gladly call it a bit of a cock-up. You see it's taken an ill-fated turn down Rip-Off Alley, which we all know is full of rapists and murders. Don't worry, Dark Sector made it out alive, albeit a bit battered and bruised, and most likely pregnant with Gears of War Jr, another Tomb Raider game and Resident Evil 4.2. By the time I'd reached the credits, I'd given up counting the number of games it had ripped off. The Resident Evil rip off was impressive, considering my entire Resident Evil experience involves watching someone play Resident Evil 4 a bit, then getting hold of the control for a few minutes before I wished I was playing Dead Rising instead.

Now, that confused me. Not Resident Evil, I just didn't like the idea of playing someone else's save game in a strictly 1-player game. No, what confused me was why they felt the need to rip off other games, especially when you see how badly they ripped off Gears of War. I mean, you play some bloke with an infected arm that's now basically turned into metal with the world's sharpest boomerang and a pistol in the other. That's a good start for an action/puzzle game. There's plenty of evidence that there are people in the production team with brilliant ideas for puzzles for the glaive (that's what they decided to call the biggest "fuck you" to Australian Aborigines), but unfortunately someone locked them in a cupboard somewhere in Digital Extremes' offices, meaning that the only ideas that got used were the ones people heard on their way to and from the toilets while they passed it.

Aside from ripping off an almost impressive catalogue of games, Dark Sector also suffers from trying too hard to be an American action movie, even though it would be much better suited to some kind of puzzle game. I honestly think the lead designer visited Russia as a child only to watch his parents get brutally murdered by the entire Russian population. It's the only explanation I can think of which explains the cringe-worthy amount of Russian-bashing going on in Dark Sector. Seriously, they're presented as a race of ruthless (and stupid) thugs ready to shoot anything that moves, evil scientists, and of course, they all speak perfect English in a Russian accent for Hayden's sake. I forget to mention "really bloody corrupt" then, because the best example of this is the representative of the "black market", where you go to upgrade your weapons, but I was trying to forget that motherfucker because he's the single most annoying person in the game. Being British, I don't appreciate being called Yankee-doodle by anyone.

There's issue with the boss battles too. Aside from being introduced with drama as intense as a soap opera, yet still ending with an ending that feels a bit, well, damp, they're about as difficult as putting on a pair of socks: as long as you have working hands, you're not in any trouble. That isn't the case with the first boss, which goes to show that Digital Extremes really don't understand the word "prologue". The first boss involves leaving you in an arena with a helicopter gunship buzzing around overhead, mercilessly mincing you as if it wants to make a nice chilli con carne out of you, while you're left scampering around until you find a rocket launcher to send his Black Hawk ass straight to hell. There's also the fact that all the bosses seems to be tactlessly nicked from Metroid Fusion, but at least that shed some light on a little mystery: I knew that little bastard wouldn't have died the second time either. Actually, in Dark Sector you fight it twice too. Then there's the guy in a powered suit of armour with a massive gun, and a final boss you hurt by attacking giant tentacles before shooting him in the face. Sorry, lobbing the glaive at, not shooting.

It must be said though, Dark Sector isn't that bad a game, just misguided by a crap attempt at remaking Gears of War. A great way to relieve most of the stress the game throws at you by way of crap guns on your half and weird gas grenades the Russians have that sends you on an acid trip, which as far as I could tell only hindered you by not letting you know how injured you are, was to take control of the glaive mid flight and remove some limbs to the chorus of wails of agony by the little fucker who tried ruining your day. It's just a shame that it's almost impossible to do that against the bastards with big metal shields who walk right up to you with no way to hurt them, then start hacking your face off. A grenade would do the trick, but only if you can figure out how to get one to detonate between his legs, because they sure as hell don't work any further away.