Dark Sector

So much effort went into replicating the glaive's flight and awe-inspiring kills that every other aspect of Dark Sector took a noticeable hit in quality and polish, save for the visuals. Remove the glaive, and this game's appeal drops below mediocrity into a rinse-and-repeat nightmare.

Dark Sector goes for gore and glory, but does better spattering blood than it does applying polish. Despite a number of original elements and a fairly solid gameplay core, the game isn’t able to add substantially to the formula and mechanics it’s borrowed from other games in the genre.

The first few levels drag a bit, but by the time you hold your full suite of special abilities, the combat really clicks. [May 2008, p.80]

Outside of the glaive, the game boasts little that feels original, although Hayden’s sprinting ability is intentionally difficult to control, which adds makes the simple act of running more challenging.

Dark Sector is bipolar rollercoaster ride that tops out at gorgeous, innovative, and striking (glaive, visuals, virus powers) and bottoms out at a bland, unoriginal, and buggy (gunplay, storyline, melee attacks). The extremes are both high and low, but at least Digital Extremes has a solid base moving forward to the inevitable sequel.

Dark Sector is a good game that has some great hooks, such as the wonderful glaive and a powerful shotgun. It's unfortunate that other elements, such as unpolished combat and some very generic NPCs, undermine its ambition (though they don't render the game unplayable).

Shooter fans may not respect it, but they will enjoy it. [May 2008, p.54]

Worth weathering the doldrums for the good bits, but don't rush through or you'll miss them. [May 2008, p.103]

The game has some nice action, original weapons and funny endbosses. The game isn't very original though, and it's more of the same. So if you are bored to death and have some money left, then Dark Sector could be a nice solution. But don't expect an earthquake in this genre.

It does, on occasion, achieve brilliance. [May 2008, p.110]

You might get three days of amusement out of it instead of only two. Wouldn’t that be something? Not too shabby for game built around a prop from a twenty five year old movie that nobody’s ever heard of. Not bad at all.

It does exactly what a game is supposed to: It entertains throughout its duration, it flexes the muscle of both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, and above all it squeezes your testosterone gland just enough to make the gaming experience enjoyable.

It’s one of those out-of-nowhere games that really does get cooler and cooler the more you play it. It’s so much fun in fact, that if you told us to pick a fun activity for the afternoon and our only choices were between: chucking a Dark Sector disc into the PS3 for a play, or chucking a metal Frisbee at our annoying neighbour’s greenhouse – we’d almost certainly choose both.

Dark Sector just has so much unfulfilled potential. The ideas are there, they just aren’t executed well.

Dark Sector is plagued not only with mechanical issues but user-unfriendliness. Some exciting battles, atmospheric lighting and mere intrigue for the Glaive can't nearly make up for that, but that's all it has. [Issue#165, p.84]

It's initially quite good, until the horrible story and unnecessary puzzles drag it down.