Everyone wants a superpower of some kind don’t they? Being impervious to bullets perhaps would be handy, or maybe being able to fly. One thing I’ve noticed is that the good guys always seem to have a real easy time in acquiring their talents. Spiderman got bitten by a spider, which is not something you could really say was a hardship, and hell, Superman was born with his abilities which is about the easiest ride you could get (albeit his home planet was destroyed soon after). The bad guys seem to have more of an issue – being demolecularised or inherently mad to begin with seems more the order of the day.

It is one such situation that brings us to Dark Sector, a game that happened into my play list by chance as I wondered into a local shop and happened upon a copy for £10 cheaper than the norm. I’d completely forgot it was coming out due to a busy weekend, so thought I’d give it a go, particularly for that price. It is a game, from the start, that has both entertained and frustrated me to the extremes of both worlds.

As you begin the game in black and white as part of the story’s prologue, you learn that Hayden, an American special forces agent (do you get any other type of agent in games these days? An American freshman? No? OK), has been sent to Lasria to kick some all-American ass, fighting his way through a compound to reach and kill his target, a man called Viktor (your average everyday typical Russian name). Before he’s even really started, Hayden tries to back out of the mission on the grounds that he has a sick note from his mum (slight poetic license - he just says he can’t handle it – we knew he was “Special”) but his boss tells him it’s now passed the point of no return, which you’d think wouldn’t be enough to convince most troops that had gone a bit ‘doo-lally-tap’ but apparently it works for our Hayden. He finds Viktor and after killing him is told to go after Mezner, a guy who started an infection that has been raging through Lasria.

Hayden fights his way forward only to be confronted by a massive metal humanoid (not Ironman) that he tries to take out with an RPG only to disappointingly find the being stopping the rocket and redirecting it at our hero. Oops. To avoid such things as pain and dismemberment, Hayden jumps off a cliff. Which you’d hope he’d looked over first to find out if there was, I don’t know, water perhaps? You know, otherwise you’re just looking at a variant of pain again really. Anyway, I digress, he’s fine to cut a short story shorter, and comes face-to-face with his new target Mezner and the metal humanoid again. After one of those typical Shut-Up-Please-Bad-Guy-Talking speeches, the metal man infects Hayden and it looks as Mezner’s going to permanently expire our hero. Until he blows up a series of C4 explosives he’s rigged throughout the building. Cunning.

Hayden wakes to find things have taken a turn for the more interesting.

So, in the grand scheme of things, Hayden, our good guy, has in fact gone through quite the process to gain his super powers. He’s now infected and finds that he can call forth a Krull-like blade that he can use to cut a variety of body parts from his foes. Well, in theory at any rate. As you advance through the game, Hayden will gain more abilities and begin to look more and more like the previous metal man you encountered.

Oh, and you may have seen me saying “in theory” with regards to dismemberment. What this essentially comes down to is the game mechanic they’ve put in place for the Glaive, your spinning boomerang-like disc. You’ll get various power-ups including the ability to control the Glaive in slow-mo or charge the disc up with various elements including fire and electricity. However, in addition to these is as you press the right shoulder button to throw the Glaive, if you do so at a certain point when the crosshair turns yellow you’ll do 4 times the amount of damage. Because they steer you down the avenue of utilising this, the main attack is pretty weak. Normally, the only way to take someone out will be to steer the disc into their head, which removes the possibility of severing bits and bobs at will. The first hit will usually stagger your opponent at which point you can finish them with your dual-wielded gun or throwing the Glaive again.

I spotted a guy behind a truck using it as cover while firing in my general vicinity. His foot was visible underneath the truck and so I sent off a slow-mo Glaive to sever his foot from his ankle. It was nice to see that I at least made contact with him as intended, but merely staggered him rather than cutting anything off. Shame, really.

I think perhaps as a result of this downgrade to your main weapon, melee is heavily on the weak side. Looking past the fact that this game would’ve been intense if you could creep around a warehouse, sneaking up from behind enemies to perform killing blows. The game just doesn’t support that kind of gameplay; the enemy will turn around pretty much instantly in most scenarios. But, looking past that into a more everyday general combat situation, if you get close to an enemy you’d think holding a massive spiky disc of death would help cut it home to your transgressor. Alas, no. It takes a lot of hits to even think about performing a finishing move, which considering some of the enemies in the game can kill you in 1 maybe 2 hits, is a tad of an imbalance.

The game’s main dynamic seems to be funnelling you into area after area and filling it with enemies, including respawns. At first this isn’t going to be an issue, the games fresh and interesting and you’ve got the potential for carnage. After the 20th time of doing this however, even the Glaive is going to seem pedantic. This, combined with seemingly endless level design can lead to the game getting stale more often than not.

This isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of it mind you. Brushing aside the minor graphic glitches and some out-of-cover animations and you have a game that, while not being overly complex in either story or gameplay presentation, it can still be a lot of fun. Particularly chasing enemies as they run away slow-mo for a decapitation. This, at least, is fun.

There’s definitely another feature of the game worth pointing out - weapons, and the Black Market. In Dark Sector, weapons contain a device, which make them self-destruct if anyone infected handles them after a set amount of time. With this in mind, it’s up to you whether you choose to use these weapons on an ongoing basis or not. However, you’ll always be able to carry around an off-hand weapon as you go that you can upgrade via pickups collected throughout the game and utilised at the Black Market, something you’ll have access to from time to time. You can also pick up cash and buy new weapons at the market, although the price gaps are ridiculous. I’m not sure whether you’ll like or dislike this feature, but it’s likely that you’ll simply use it to upgrade your current weapon. Oh, and I’d get used to weapons if you’re thinking about heading into multiplayer as that’s all you get – no Glaive.

Don’t let me forget to mention that they’ve incorporated the Gears of War sprint with a turning arc reserved only for the biggest oil tankers. Enjoy trying to outrun enemies when you keep flying headlong into walls.

Dark Sector was a game I was hoping would be that much more, and while it stands, it does so in a nonchalant around average kind of way. For those of you who enjoy mindless violence, give it a go, but I doubt you’ll get or maintain your full-fledged rocks off with this title.