gears with blades
User Rating: 7 | Dark Sector X360
When Dark Sector was first introduced as an early PS3 game and had several development hells, it had a lot of hype. While the final release of Dark Sector has some fun moments, they start to where off after the first 3 hours of the game. Dark Sector tells the story of a solider who is sent in to find info on an infection and soon becomes part of the infection. He then gets a blade attracts to himself that he can throw at enemies. The story is too forgettable and the characters make you wander, "Why do I care about this person?" The visuals are impressive for an early console title though. The basic game play behind Dark Sector is Gears of War with a glaive. You take cover and throw your blade around to kill enemies in grotesque ways and these are fun to watch. You can even combine elements for deadly attacks like electricity and fire. There is shooting in the game but the shooting is flat. After a while the overall game play gets repetitive as you face the same types of enemies over and over again. There are some great boss battles in the game, however, like the last boss battle. You can purchase guns in the black market but these guns are expensive and its more fun to kill enemies with the glaive. There are only two multiplayer modes, but both of them will afford you the opportunity to play as Hayden at some point, complete with all of the skills that he has at the end of the single-player game. Both of the online games, titled Epidemic and Infection, are designed for 10 players and can be played on any of five specially designed maps. Epidemic pits two teams of five, each led by a Hayden, against one another in a battle to see which team can kill the other's leader first. Infection tasks one player, as Hayden, with killing as many of the other nine players as possible before they manage to bring him down. When you're not playing as Hayden, you assume the role of a garden-variety soldier armed only with a firearm, explosives, and the ability to move in and out of cover. One Hayden versus nine might not sound like a fair fight, but when used in conjunction with shield and stealth abilities, Hayden's glaive-and-firearm combo gives him a significant edge over the competition. Ultimately, our experiences with the lag-free multiplayer modes thus far suggest that the balance is about right. Dark Sector has great ideas but it played it too safely with game play. 7/10
