Born for Wii: Dark Sector (page 3)
Chopping baddies in half, beheading them, and shearing off limbs remains satisfying throughout
Dark Sector, especially in slow-motion. Thanks to its boomerang design, the glaive can also be used to steal guns from enemy soldiers, but there's an interesting twist. Weapons stolen from enemies can only be used for about 30 seconds before Hayden is rejected by the gun's unique ID tag. The focus remains squarely on the glaive, but picking up an enemy assault rifle or shotgun to wreak some quick havoc is occasionally a welcome change to the combat. The game also features a black market where new pistols, rifles, and shotguns can be purchased, as well as upgraded. Unfortunately, there's not exactly an excess of funds in
Dark Sector, so you won't be able to pick up more than a couple new weapons over the course of the adventure.
Hayden moves much like other third-person heroes in the
Gears era: he can take cover behind most objects in the environment, run and dodge, all with the use of the A button on the Xbox 360 controller. He can also lean around corners to fire and aim from an over-the-shoulder perspective with the Left trigger. Hayden can even perform some brutal
fatalities finishers on wounded enemies, which typically involve shattered limbs and a glaive to the face. The virus he's infected with also grants Hayden the ability to produce a temporary energy shield that reflects attacks back in the direction they came from, as well as the ability to turn temporarily invisible.
All of this leads up to how
Dark Sector would work as a Wii game. I think the Wii Remote, with the addition of
Wii Motion Plus, would turn a good action game into a great one. Imagine hurling the glaive exactly like a frisbee, dictating the height, angle, and curvature of each throw. Imagine using a twist of the wrist to control the glaive mid-flight, guiding it towards enemy soldiers that think they're safe behind those pitiful sandbag walls. It's the glaive that made
Dark Sector a unique experience, and on the Wii, the glaive would be even more badass.
There's a good deal to
Dark Sector I didn't even mention, both good and bad. On the good side, we have vehicle sections, in which Hayden commandeers a walking tank, and the online multiplayer, which includes two fairly original modes that certainly couldn't hurt the Wii's online gaming community. On the bad side, we have minor annoyances, such as finicky weapon crates (seriously, destroy them with the glaive -- the melee attack is frustratingly unreliable) and, well, Hayden. He's a pretty bland, unappealing protagonist. Still,
Dark Sector is an adventure worth taking, and if developer Digital Extremes were to port the game to the Wii, they'd have the opportunity to improve some of
Dark Sector's weaker aspects.
Plus, you get to fight the Guyver. And that's just plain cool.
