Dark Sector is one of those games that makes me glad that I'm not being paid to write these reviews. If someone was paying me for to review Dark Sector, I'd have to play the whole game. And that, dear reader, would suck. That would have me reconsidering my choice of career. Dark Sector is a 3rd person shooter that really wants to be something else. Sometimes. Except for when it doesn't. It tries really hard (and fails) to be a brutal close combat game. Sometimes, it will try to be a action adventure with environmental puzzles. And this too, it will fail at. Based on the first 30 minutes or so, you might think that it was intent on delivering a high concept story with well developed characters. And on that point, you'd be wrong.

The only really good thing I can say about Dark Sector is that it annoys early and often, thereby allowing me to get on the with the business of playing games that don't suck.

Dark Sector has some interesting, or at least unique-ish, ideas. The guy you play, a whiny no-chin having emo-boy, will acquire (for reasons unexplained) the ability to wield a glaive which magically appears in his right hand. Ever see Krull? The guy in Krull had a glaive too. I'm guessing that the developers are big fans. Yeah, I loved it too. When I was twelve years old. Moving on. Near as I can tell, there's some sort of virus which the Ruskies were involved with some years ago. In an effort to prevent its spread, Mr. Personality (that's you) moves in to kill some guy. Except that he doesn't want to. And he's got a headache. Seriously? If you're going to put wierd crap like that in, make some sort of effort to explain it, K?

If I had to guess, I'd say that the virus is alien in origin. I only say this because the first "person" that you come across that's been infected looks sort of like a cross between an Alien and a Predator. It also has psychic powers which allowed it to deflect the rocket I shot at it. Anywho, Mr. Personality gets captured, gets infected, but only kinda. His arm is all infected and he makes a glaive come out of it and he can throw it at people and kill them. And he can throw it at things and pick them up. And if he throws it at electrical stuff it will become electrified. This is handy for opening doors which have electronic locks, apparently (and there's your environmental puzzle, buddy).

I don't know if you ever really find out where the virus comes from. And I don't care. The story is presented about as badly as a story could be. You don't who you are. You don't know who you're working for. You don't know who your enemies are. The only thing I'm fairly certain about is that you start off somewhere in Russia.

This game is a shooter. It's got shooter mechanics which are very similar to those found in Gears of War. You've got the "take cover" button, the aim trigger. Most of the gun battles require patiently waiting behind cover and shooting the other guy when he pops his head out. But here's an interesting bit: you can't really use the good guns. The good guns all have some sort of "virus detector" thing built into them, and they self destruct like 30 seconds after you touch them. There may be better guns later in the game, but after picking people off with a pistol (and the stupid glaive) for two hours, I could give a shit.

Here's the thing (well, a thing) that perplexes me: this virus isn't supposed to be "in the wild". So, it hardly seems likely to me that which ever gun manufacturer is being used by the bad(?) guys is so hip to secret government bio-warfare that they've bothered to make a whole batch of weapons that can't be used by someone infected with the virus. And I'm not talking about a few guns. I've talking about hundreds. You kill a heck of a lot of people, and all of their guns will blow up after you try using them. Just doesn't make economic sense to add that kind of expensive feature to a weapon just to prevent, what, two people from using it. More likely, this is just a cheap, artificial game play mechanic designed to force you to use the glaive.

But then again, perhaps the virus is more widespread than I initially thought (and it's not like any of this is explained anywhere). In the sewers there are zombie monster things. I can only assume that they're infected humans. But here's the weird thing: they rise out of the sewer goo as though they were made of it. And fighting them is a major pain in the ass. In fact, it was my first sewer fight that made me question this questionable purchase. You basically have to fight them hand to hand. There are too many, and they bum rush you, so shooting really isn't an option. Unfortunately, melee combat in Dark Sector is even worse than the story telling. It's clumsy and stupid and all you can do is try to point Mr. Personality in the right direction and mash on your attack button and hope you make it out alive.

And this where I get off. Dark Sector just isn't worth any more of my time. The melee combat is frustrating. The gun combat is tedious and annoying. And I am so sick of listening to that guy scream because I cut off his leg. Seriously. It's really annoying. There are way better shooters out there. There are far better stories. So, unless you've got some sort of freaky glaive fetish, I doubt that Dark Sector is going to be worth your time either.