kenshin-guy's Full Review: Dark Sector for Xbox 360
I'm going to just say it right now, Resident Evil 4 could possibly be the best action game made in the last ten years. Any game that has come after it (at least in my eyes) has tried to duplicate the formula of RE4, and have either A) failed miserably or B) got enough right that it was a good game overall (I.E. Gears of War). Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune took the familiar third-person shooter formula and upped the ante with its improved visuals, but so far nothing has come along for the Xbox 360 along those lines.
I’m happy to say that after years in development, Dark Sector brings the noise. Does anyone else remember when this game was slated as a launch title for the system? The game has been retooled more times than I care to count, but it looks and plays all the better because of it.
The game starts off rather briskly, as you take control of Hayden Tenno (an Abercrombie and Fitch meets J-Pop name if I ever say one) as he’s infiltrating a small country named Lasria to take down some bad guys. These bad guys have deadly nerve toxins that turn people into zombies, et cetera et cetera, and you see where the game is going. Story-wise, nothing too spectacular, but the quality of the game vaults it above mediocrity. While the characters stories are chiseled out of marble and parts of it are vague and (for lack of a better word) “meh”, the driving action and constant battles always keep things entertaining.
Within the first twenty minutes, you get a sense of the environment with the overwhelming landscape. Everything is either deteriorated or wet and the pungent air seems to rise off the stone-laid walls around you. Developer Digital Extremes paid close attention to the surroundings and they’re almost so lifelike they feel like a character. Each level looks and feels different. From a rain-storm outside a prison to the seedy underbelly sewers below, you’ll always be going somewhere new.
As I’m sure you can deduce, the graphics in the game are simply phenomenal. The level of attention paid to detail is akin to game of the year Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Perfectly animated characters with crisp renderings really bring a sense of realism to an otherwise surreal story. At times the graphics (for what seems like no reason) get dull in some rough spots, but immediately pick back up. Also, I cannot help but think that special attention was paid to the blood amount in the game.
Oh yeah, you didn’t know? This game is banned in Australia because of the gruesome violence. And it shows.
You can slice and dice your foes with a weapon called the Glaive, a sort of medieval super powered boomerang that is always temperamental towards your enemies. And this thing is nasty. I can’t remember how many times I laid in wait just to slice off an opponent’s head, but it sure felt good each and every time. The Glaive is what sets the game apart from RE4 and GoW, it’s not just a weapon, it’s used as a tool to gather weapons, flip switches, and other tasks. You’re sure to come across a few other funny uses; personally I tried to see how many decapitations I could string together before the Glaive returned to me.
You’ll come into contact with assault rifles, shotguns, and handguns of all shapes and sizes, but the Glaive is where it’s at. The game functions well in that you can switch off most of these weapons on the fly and play the game however you like. What is frustrating is that the game doesn’t require a ton of skill to play.
Basically, you can be in a wide open area with little cover and you’ll be forced to pick off certain enemies before you can make it to the next area. The only problem is (and this seems to be a recurring trend in games) that they keep on coming. Enemies and monsters keep respawning until you either A) turn the system off or B) make a mad dash for the next area and the game figures you’ve left. Doing this eliminates skill and challenge. If I know I can just run for the next area instead of killing all the enemies, I’m going to just run for the next area. It’s just a minor thing, but that’s what made killing everyone in a level so satisfying in GoW or even Army of Two. That “gong” sound let you know you completed your task and that you could move on. Not so much here though.
The controls sometimes get a little complicated. It’s not that the buttons are mapped poorly, there’s just so much you can do that your hands may not be able to do it all in a fluid fashion. A minor detail, but can nag at you over time.
I am a huge online gamer. Most of the reasons I buy video games is so that I can play them online. So when a game like this that has such an amazing single-player mode has such an awful multiplayer mode, I tend to get angry. Granted, third-person shooters tend to degrade online (I.E. GoW) and this one is no exception. Video games need to stop trying to invent new multiplayer games modes because they’re just not very interesting. I don’t want to play some newly made up game called “Infection” (where one person has a Glaive and must kill all others) because it’s isn’t that interesting and hardly fun at all. I just want a simple Team Deathmatch or CTF. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 knew that simple multiplayer modes were the way to go, and they designed all of their maps around them and in the end, they were wholly successful. Here, all of Dark Sector’s online modes seem like failed experiments added on to try and pad the game’s replay value.
Once you go through the game a first time, there’s very little reason to jump back into the fray. A new difficulty setting is unlocked after your first completion, but unless you’re going for all 1000 gamerscore, you’ll probably not play it again.
Dark Sector, in the end, is no Resident Evil 4 or even as good as Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. However, it’s still a fantastic game. Seeing as how both those games are benchmarks for their respective systems, to allow Dark Sector to be that good would have meant that it’d have to be near perfect, and it’s not. It’s a very refreshing, incredibly dark game that uses a familiar combat system with a graphics engine that feels alive throughout the entire game.
Hey, for $60 bucks, if you’ve nothing else to play, pick it up, but you can easily finish it with a rental.
USA NTSC format for North South America! Will not play on most European or Australian consoles - check your format. If you are a "known" PAL format co...More at eBay
Product DetailsOriginal Title:Dark SectorCondition: NEWPlatform: Xbox360Genre: ShootersDescription: "A new kind of weapon for a new kind of hero.Dark ...More at iNetVideo.com
Dark Sector thrusts players into the role of Hayden Tenno, an elite black-ops agent sent on a dangerous assassination mission into Lasria - an Eastern...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Battle your enemies with incredible superhuman powers - like the deadly bladed glaive - that evolve and become more powerful throughout the game 3rd-p...More at Amazon
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