Short Game Review: Dark Sector
For a game that only cost me nine bucks, this is pretty rad. While infiltrating some near-future, former-Soviet nation, you (a super-spy) get some weird metal-skin “infection,” complete with a spinning blade of death to decapitate your enemies. Its light puzzles and weapons shops are reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, its control style feels like a less annoying Gears of War, and its plot and premise feel like something straight out of Rob Liefeld’s entire Image Comics output from the 1990s. And somehow, this doesn’t really get old. As long as you’re content just to shoot and dismember some dudes in interesting ways for a few hours (it’s not super long), this game will deliver that with nice graphics, a half-decent destructible cover system, and relatively unobtrusive autosaves and loading screens. There are even a couple multiplayer modes, but my experiments with this so far suggest that there’s just one other guy in the world who still plays (against bots), and he leaves when you join his game. (On the bright side, at least, matchmaking works much quicker than Gears of War 2.) You should go spend nine bucks on it too so I have someone to play with.
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Addendum now that I have actually finished the game: In the middle to latter part of the game, I do wish there was more time spent killing dudes than killing monsters, but there are some fun things in there that do help mix things up. Also, this is even more inspired by Resident Evil 4 than I originally acknowledged (especially the ending, which I feel like I’ve played three times now—once for RE4, once for Dark Sector, and once for Dead Space).
By Jason on 04.19.09 1:25 am
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