Dark Sector starts off in an interesting monotone color scheme that grabbed my attention alot quicker then most opening cinema cut scenes can.  Sliding back into a comfortable control scheme, almost exactly the same as Gears of War, it felt like I was coming home.  The third person vantage-point, again like Gears of War, allows a nice view of the protagonist that gets somewhat disappointing after you become infected and lose the face mask.  The animations and modeling are good, but for some reason the main character is probably one of the ugliest guy’s I’ve had to misfortune to control for a few hours.  His head seems grossly out of proportion to the rest of his body, as if he angered a Voodoo WitchDoctor in some past life.  

     Small head aside, lets move on to the real main character of the game, the glaive.  There are a few weapons that seem to take on a personality of their own in gaming, and the glaive is no different.  Think Predator disc, of Arnold fame, injected with steroids.  As you continue in the game and the infection continues to take hold on your body, your glaive starts to acquire power.  Eventually, you’ll be able to control the glaive in mid-flight and if you’re like me, you’ll waste an hour or so just trying to decapitate as many enemies as possible on one throw.  Various elements in the game are interactive, and allow you to charge up your glaive with fire, electricity, or ice.  Once powered up, the glaive can be used to light bad guys on fire, freeze them, or you can choose to release all this bottled power from your glaive in the form of an energy explosion.  Also, just to spice things up a little, the glaive can be used to effect your environment.  Certain doors can only be opened if hit with a fire-powered glaive, while others will take electricity.

     I did not find the story itself that appealing, I usually enjoy a good story with my games, but this one didn’t stand out as anything new or exciting.  It seems like they built an entire game and story around the glaive.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because the glaive is quite fun, just don’t expect some great story telling revelation to hit you in the head after you beat this game. 

     The firearms you receive in the game are fun to use and are appropriately powerful.  You will be able to purchase new guns and upgrades for them at the various Black Market sewer grates dispursed throughout the game.  You can also pick up guns that are dropped by enemies, but they explode after a certain amount of time because they have proximity sensors that are incompatible with your new infection and powers.  Melee combat gets old very quickly, as there aren’t a large amount of different moves.  You also have the option of using a "Finishing" move if an enemy reaches a certain point of damage.  The animations for the "finishing" moves are brutally fulfilling, but there aren’t alot of them so you’ll be seeing the same material over and over again.  Enemy AI on normal difficulty was good enough to hold my interest, but wasn’t very demanding.  You’ll mainly see problems when you get bogged down with the melee type zombies that rush you in various intervals in the game.

     Overall, I’d say that Dark Sector is worth picking up for its gritty mood and weapon mechanics. We give it a 7 out of 10.