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Xbox 360 | Action | Dark Sector

Boxart for Dark Sector
Dark Sector 96 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.75
  • SOUND: 3.50
  • CONTROL: 3.50
  • FUN FACTOR 3.50
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.5

Review: Glaives of Fire: Dark Sector Invades Consoles

Review by Cameron Lewis | 03/25/2008 | 14:06:34 PM PST

The best covert operatives exploit every advantage they can find, and Hayden Tenno, the star of Dark Sector, has got a few unique tricks up his form-fitting sleeves. Unfortunately, he also spends a fair amount of time fumbling around in the dark.

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All Too Human
Sometimes fighting metal with metal is less effective than a well-placed rocket or two.

Sometimes fighting metal with metal is less effective than a well-placed rocket or two.

Hayden's adventures as a government operative are already underway when we join him at a dreary prison hidden away in Lasria, a dismal corner of the former Soviety Union made even more oppressive by a noirish black and white palette. Though his immediate objective is a routine assassination, he soon discovers that a villain named Mezner is behind the release of a deadly toxin recovered in a doomed salvage mission twenty years earlier, and sets out on a quest to corner and kill the big jerk before his otherworldly minions can wreck too much havoc.

You're introduced to the most familiar elements of play in short order: basics like taking cover in doorways, rolling to dodge gunfire and grenades, and sprinting from place to place. The control scheme is serviceable, but far from perfect. For example, my character would sometimes somersault into enemy fire instead of taking cover like I wanted him to, and keeping the poor guy alive meant resorting to frequent and frantic acrobatics just to stay alive. Luckily, Hayden's repertoire of attacks starts expanding just as a mysterious viral infection brings saturated color into his world.

Ultimate Frisbee
Light charging howlers up with a fiery glaive, and they might well die before they even get to you.

Light charging howlers up with a fiery glaive, and they might well die before they even get to you.

Most of these abilities are tied to the glaive, a triple-edged disc-of-death nightmare that eviscerates, decapitates, amputates, and bisects anything unlucky enough to be in its flight path if you time your throws to do quadruple the normal damage. You might buy and upgrade a few rifles at glinting black market manhole covers with Rubles picked up in your travels, but the common experience of firing bullets can't compare with the savage catharsis of carving opposing forces up with your glaive. You'll get the most from Dark Sector's combat if you combine well-timed shots from your off-hand pistol with carefully aimed throws of bladed boomerang.

When you're not frantically sending the glaive out on murderous errands, you can tag flaming wrecks, sparking electrical transformers, or icy train containers to temporarily coat its metallic surface with elemental power. Electrocuting or immolating foes is often satisfying, but these fleeting transformations also serve as the basis for some simple puzzle-solving: put out fires to access certain areas, freeze dripping water into impromptu cover, or slip your newly charged glaive through a gap in a fence and guide it to a circuit box with slow-motion after-touch flight controls.


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