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A modern-day superhero saga, Dark Sector is a third-person shooter where players assume the role of the protagonist, Hayden Tenno who gains the ability to morph into dramatically different combat forms. Set in the crumbling infrastructure of a fictional Soviet-bloc country in the near future, the game features both single and multi-player action, with players working their way through a world where bio-weapons are no longer science experiments, but a hellish nightmare let loose on an unsuspecting populace.

Genre: First-Person Shooter

Publisher: D3 Publisher

Developer: Digital Extremes

Online Play:

Local Play:

March 25, 2008 –
Nearly four years ago, Digital Extremes announced Dark Sector would be coming to the PlayStation 3 and — at the time — Xbox 2, showed a 45-second trailer set in space and, vanished from the radar.

A lot has changed since then.

Set for release this week, Dark Sector casts you as Hayden Tenno, a government agent sent into Lasria — a small USSR country — and saddled with the objective of taking care of a bad guy named Mezner. See, Mezner’s gotten a hold of this toxin that turns everyone into monsters — zombies, metal-skinned freaks, weirdo dogs that can turn invisible, etc. Hayden is on hand to stop that plan and ensure you and I don’t end up as test subjects, but when he has his first face to face with the bad guy, Mezner’s infected bodyguard with a giant blade for his right hand infects our hero with the very virus he’s been sent to destroy.

Pretty soon, Hayden’s arm goes from gooey and disfigured to a metal super-power that allows him to generate telekinetic shields, turn invisible and a few other abilities that put mortal men to shame.

If you’ve never seen Dark Sector in action, the easiest game to compare it to and give you a frame of reference — in terms of gameplay — is Gears of War. As you progress through this third-person shooter and take on the monsters Mezner’s created for you, you’ll need to tap a button to take cover behind pillars and then roll to other crates to stay alive. Certain objects will break up as fire rains down from enemy machine guns, you can peek around corners to aim, and once you’re on foot, you can run by holding A.

However, what sets this game apart from Gears is the glaive.

If you’ve never seen this jagged instrument of death, imagine an oversized ninja star that Hayden can throw like a boomerang. In Dark Sector, you have two weapon slots — yes, you can only hold two guns at any time — that are governed by the D-Pad. Left is your shotgun/rifle slot and right is your pistol slot. The guns in Dark Sector are cool and all — more on that later — but what makes this game is the fun of running around with pistol in one hand and the glaive in the other.

You’ll come around a corner, spot an enemy, hold the left bumper to switch to the over-the-shoulder aiming view, and be faced with a choice — to glaive or not to glaive. You can pop the bad guy in the head by pulling the trigger with right bumper, but you can also tap right trigger to throw your glaive and behead the baddie. It can take out multiple opponents, it can open doors, and it pretty much makes the game.

This is going to hurt.As you progress, the glaive just gets cooler. You’ll get a power throw (you’ll need to hold the glaive button and release just as the on-screen icon turns yellow) that can break chains and slice an enemy in two with one hit, you’ll be able to pick up ammo and objects with the glaive, and you’ll be able to steal fire, ice and electricity with the device and use them against bad guys as well as puzzles. All of this stuff is fun — Who doesn’t like setting guys on fire from afar? — but it pales in comparison to the supreme Dark Sector power known as Aftertouch. Here, you’ll press and release right trigger to throw the glaive and quickly hold the button again to make the camera follow the glaive in slow motion. Using your right analog stick or Sixaxis controls, you can then pilot the glaive as you see fit.

It’s awesome.

Don’t get me wrong, mastering Aftertouch is going to take time. When I first got the ability the glaive seemed sluggish and was a bitch to pilot, but once I got to the point where I could power throw, switch to Aftertouch, slice off one guy’s head and take out another dude’s arm, I realized the feature is a thing of beauty.

The “Damn, that was a cool kill” feeling is what Dark Sector is all about. Aside from the slicing a guy’s leg off with the glaive and hearing him scream in pain, there are a number of different finishers for each enemy. These kill moves can be implemented when an opponent is injured and begins to glow red. That’s your cue to rush in and tap B for a finisher that can be — but isn’t limited to — Hayden snapping a dude’s neck, him slicing off the foe’s arm and hitting him in the head with it, and Tenno burying the point of the glaive into a beast’s forehead and watching the blue blood spurt out of it.

Australia doesn’t know what it’s missing!

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