Dark Sector

Dark Sector

The ill-fated trials of hero Hayden Tenno pan out like The Legend of Zelda and The Darkness combined – ingenious and ‘cute’ even, but vicious and very bloody.

If you’re already reading this with interest, we’ll assume you’re familiar with Blade, Spawn and Jackie Estacado as immortalised in The Darkness. These are all heroes fighting to contain evil within. But for Dark Sector’s Hayden Tenno it’s the opposite – he’s struggling to resist the onslaught of a mystery virus that is eating through his body. His worst fears come true – so much the better for the rest of us!

We’ll zip through the storyline to get to the meat of the gameplay. Hayden is originally a CIA agent, assigned to investigate a Russian gulag suspected of unlawful scientific experiments. We get to experience the onset of Hayden’s infection in a black and white ‘Casino Royale’ prologue. The bad guys get to him before he gets out.

And so Hayden is gradually transforming into a monster. His right arm takes on a metallic appearance, with musculature he’d otherwise quite appreciate. This grotesque limb also sprouts a glaive – a three bladed discus-type weapon. From here on players combine CIA-trained gunplay with plentiful glaive grotesquery.

It’s the glaive you’ll learn to care most about, though you can upgrade all conventional weapons too. In its basic form the glaive serves as a decent melee weapon and can hurt lesser enemies such as Russian soldiers by throwing it out and waiting for the return boomerang style. The “Zelda” reference is already clear, but it’s in the development of the glaive’s ‘on board’ powers that really brings into play the kind of puzzle solving situations familiar to Nintendo’s Link.

Your first upgrade, ‘Steal’, allows small objects to be retrieved from a distance. Hayden needs to keep a look out for items hidden on ledges out of reach for skill-enhancing drugs throughout the game. Next along is ‘Power Throw’, basically super strength attacks that’ll decapitate and dismember most humans in a second. After that there’s ‘After Touch’, which lets Hayden control the trajectory over a short distance. After Touch comes in handy where switches that open doors or activate machinery are hidden behind walls. It’s also fun to have the glaive swoop over the enemy’s hiding place – “What the? Arrgh!” etc.

Of course Hayden isn’t the only mean mother-forgetter in this here gulag suffering from an alien disease. Come Chapter 5 and the place bustles with ‘Maulers’. ‘Skinners’ and ‘Howlers’ – cocky nicknames for “civilians gone bad”. These guys won’t fall for simple tricks; the Skinners for example have metallic skin that asks a question of Hayden as Andy Gray might say.

Back to the glaive for clues: In addition to power and agility, the weapon can absorb elemental powers (fire, ice, electricity) and inflict these as damage. So where a nasty cut won’t do it, perhaps incinerating will. In the case of Skinners, electrocution works just dandy. To power-up the glaive in such a way, Hayden must fling it into a… yes a fire is one good example, but how about light-switches or fuse boxes to take electricity. We forget how you make this thing icy, but you get the idea.

And this brings us neatly to the end of our preview really, but not without a fight. A boss fight that is; and here Dark Sector gets very ‘Zelda’ indeed. Somehow this virus allows Hayden to absorb the talents of defeated enemies, and the larger ones have especially impressive powers such as ‘Shift’ that’ll turn them invisible.

The boss fight at the end of Chapter 5 is against a huge Skinner-type creature called Stalker, so-called because he uses this Shift ability to sneak up on people. The way to spot Stalker when he’s vanished is to observe the floor of a flooded room that this dim-witted fellow has decided to make its hunting ground. Where there be splashes, there be Stalker. Armed with a sub-zero glaive, Hayden watches out for the tell-tale movement then freezes the water, trapping Stalker so that Hayden can get off a few shots from the biggest gun he could find. Thus Stalker is defeated. Clever, eh?

Digital Extremes, who have created Dark Sector for Xbox 360 and PS3, clearly set out to make a feast for the eyes and the senses. There are many more highlights to look forward to, including a walking tank and as many weapons upgrades ala Resident Evil 2 (if you remember that game) provided Hayden can find the cash.

So if your DVD collection includes any or all of those titles mentioned above, and if you loved playing The Darkness and/or you’ve fond memories of playing Legend of Zelda but wish that it was more brutal, get yourself infected by Dark Sector.