Digital Extremes seems to try to prove every chance they get that, if it weren’t for Epic Games, they’d never have become a name anyone knows.
Let’s look at their flagship titles, shall we?
Unreal-A thoroughly average FPS with horrid SiN-like anyway, load times.
Unreal Tournament-A great series, heavily guided by Epic’s design and direction, and effectively made by Epic.
Pariah-An extremely shitty FPS with a few ideas taken from other recent games that didn’t work out in any way.
Warpath-Essentially a sequel to Pariah, which also stole some ideas from recent games, and sucked in a stunningly generic way.
Now, Dark Sector. It, like most other pure DE work, is a generic suckfest, showing they just can’t be let to roam too free from Epic.
Dark Sector is 100 blowing 100 guys at the same time in an orderly line, viewed from a distant camera that’s low resolution and grainy. Most guys are going to see it, and say “Oh man, this is awesome!” But then they notice everything is starting to look the same and there’s no real detail or depth. Nothing stands out as special, and it never seems to get anywhere. When it finally does, you only know because nothing is happening anymore, not that you bothered paying much attention by that point.
Dark Sector steals from every recent successful game, and while it does that fine at points, it does it lazily. The aftertouch has little real control. The cover system is awkwardly implemented and hard to use. The sprinting is hard to control and serves no real function beyond exposing yourself to fire. Okay, that they clearly got from Epic’s Gears of War. They also spent the entire first chapter of the game in black and white, which I’ll also snarkily say was taken from Gears of War! It’s too bad they didn’t take the great high-res textures and models to match.
Loose control plagues the game. It defaults to maximum sensitivity, which seems absolutely horrid at first, since a light press of the stick will swing you 180 instantly. Then you aim at an enemy, and the turn speed is somewhere around point oh five are-pee-em, at full tilt. I don’t expect the exact same aimed speed by any means, but jesus christ, these are polar opposites. The fact there’s no reticule at all, unless in aim mode, just adds to the frustration, since you’ll never be close to your target upon the depression of the left trigger. And somehow, you’ll still never get a good shot. The main character, Hayden, gets more accurate throughout the course of the game, but nobody will care about getting that far.
The game’s signature weapon, the glaive, is stunningly underpowered and generally not useful. It’s slow to use, not that strong unless timed perfectly, and while using it, you’re stuck with a pistol, which is relatively weak no matter how often it’s upgraded. Plenty of early sections in the game leave players against a horde of enemies with AI smart enough to have ideas like “run toward the player” and “punch the player.” Not much more, but oh, there’s plenty of that. At points they respawn from nowhere. Sometimes they emerge from six inch deep pools of water, sometimes they simply appear in front of you. The mechanic is incredibly weak and completely unfun. How a big spinning triple edged blade winds up shitty to use is beyond me, but hey, there it is. Even with the aftertouch, lifted poorly out of Heavenly Sword, it’s hard to use well, and awkward. Using the aftertouch is often worse because the game is so intent on you firing the pistol right after tossing the glaive.
It should be noted, at least, that the game’s shotguns are pretty damn nice, and all you’re going to use besides the glaive anyway. They’re the only thing capable of hitting what you aim at, gunwise, and thank god something can.
But the rest, well, it’s a mess. The game’s animation is choppy and unconvincing, and lots of death animations are repeated. When they’re not, the ragdolls are simply awful, springing around like every joint is held by rubber bands. The audio is sloppy at best, though at least the vocals are clear. The damage indicators are undersized and easily unnoticed until it’s too late, and the game’s sense of scale simply feels wrong. Enemies are small looking, generic, and blend in too well, especially for guys in hazmat suits early on.
Simply put, Dark Sector is as unpolished as this article. Feature creep is obvious, and it took away from any real testing or balancing. When the close-range melee attacks from a player simply swing on by the enemy more often than not when you’re close enough to kiss, it’s obvious there’s a problem. There’s just a distinct lack of enjoyment to the game, and some major bad decisions. In the end, you’ve already played this game, but in 10 distinct pieces that were much better on their own.
It never does anything overtly bad, excepting for the animation and some presentation decisions. And the controls. Okay, it does a few things badly, but most of the game is a thoroughly average theft of ideas that were done better in a more specialized focus. And the novelty of the glaive wears out rapidly in the frustration of cheap kills and a lack of any creativity. I’m not one to knock a game for not being terribly innovative if it’s incredibly well done(Unreal Tournament 2004, Half-life, Bioshock even was an incredibly well done FPS without being terribly revolutionary), but this just isn’t. There’s no polish, it’s bland, it’s uninspired, and it will have you frustrated before it even truly starts.
Dark Sector gets 2 out of 5 stars. It’s not all the way to “bad”, but it’s rarely a title that makes it to “average” and never “good” or “holy shit awesome.” It definitely doesn’t live up to the potential, or even the hype, which is a real shame. Digital Extremes needs to step it up next time, otherwise, they may not stay around much longer.
