For the last year or so, most of our glimpses at Dark Sector have been centered around a dreary, crumbling Eastern Bloc neighborhood in the fictional country of Lasria, populated by a bunch of gasmask-wearing soldiers and a few zombie freaks. Last week, however, we finally got a chance to play beyond that crummy locale - which, it turns out, is the game's fourth level - and got a much broader idea of what lies in store when Dark Sector arrives in late March.
If you've been following the game
We recently gave a detailed hands-on look at Dark Sector’s single-player levels, including a rundown on the game’s signature weapon, the glaive. Last week at GDC we were able to try out the two multiplayer modes, known as Infection and Epidemic. In Infection, one player starts out as Hayden, the main character from the single-player story. All of the powers and upgrades normally earned through progress in the game are
Dec 4, 2007
Hayden Tenno is having a bad day.
A black ops member of the CIA sent into sensitive areas as a cleaner; someone charged with disposing of elements that the government deems unworthy of tasting oxygen - Tenno is what some would call "morally ambiguous," which makes him perfect for introducing a bit more lead into someone's diet. Problem is, he's been dispatched to post-Soviet Lasria in Eastern Europe to take care of a fellow CIA operative, and Lasria is crawling with... well, with
Dark Sector, the bloody and brooding third-person action-adventure headed for PS3 and Xbox 360 this autumn, features one of the coolest weapons you'll ever see. It's known as 'the glaive' - a dinner-plate-sized throwing star that can be used like a Frisbee/boomerang/shuriken hybrid. We had a chance to see first-hand what it was capable of. And boy, is it ever
Few things in life can match the pleasure of slicing someones legs off with a spinning blade. So Dark Sector, at the very least, has that going for it. Thankfully, it has plenty more besides. Taking elements of Gears of War and Resident Evil, this sits nicely in the middle ground - third-person action that mixes things up between ludicrous, head-exploding violence and careful blasting from behind cover.
Forget what the ESRB says - dismembering monsters and punk-ass soldiers with a living steel boomerang in Dark Sector is neither "excessive" nor "offensive." It is awesome. A little disturbing, maybe, but if you don't want to see some bad guy rolling around on the ground clutching at a bleeding stump instead of trying to kill you, then why are you hurling sharp hunks of metal around in the first place?
OK, yes, Dark Sector is pretty gruesome, and its spurting gore - brought on mostly by tosses
Oct. 15, 2007
Come to the former Soviet Union. It's Rubbish. Yep, the various fictional former Soviet states featured in games always look like the very worst place to spend a weekend. Bad news for preposterously-named Hayden Tenno, then; the poor fella's got himself dosed up with mutagenic goo and is stuck in the middle of an Eastern European wasteland between two warring factions - the hazmat-suited government soldiers and the massively freakish victims of a biological weapon.
Dark Sector
Jan 3, 2008
The surprise isnt that developer Digital Extremes action thriller is a Resident Evil 4 rip-off - after all, theyve made a career of ‘borrowing from other games, most notably Pariah on Xbox, a blatant Halo clone - but that Dark Sector looks so polished, despite being wonky at best only six months earlier. Even the plot feels familiar: Lead man Hayden Tenno (a dead ringer for Leon) blasts and hacks his way through the fictional eastern European city of Lasria. Then theres the
We stood there, staring at the vacant spot in front of the HDTV, palms sweating. The screen flashed “Dark Souls – Press Start” – almost taunting us – assuring us that picking up the controller would promise nothing but abuse on a legally actionable level. We smirked and listened as the exhibitor next to the machine went through his schtick about the game being a spiritual successor to the much-lauded Demon’s Souls. Not being a sequel, the game features a new story that the developers are still being tight-lipped about. Anticipation eventually got the better of us and we cut him off, asking to take a shot at the demo. The fellow grinned and tossed us a control. We’d heard enough of the marketing blurb and were ready to take this beast for a spin.
We usually like to relax while gaming, but Demon’s Souls did something to us that made the experience unique – it intimidated us and filled us with anxiety, and yet somehow that was a good thing. We can’t explain it, but the game managed to bring out our inner masochist. It’s important to understand that we’re not normally patient with games that are frustrating. That’s why Demon’s Souls was special – it could turn a regular gamer into an ultra-hardcore one, bringing out the digital hero in the normally faint of heart. Just watching someone else play Dark Souls brought all of those feelings back...
