Hidden Gems - Dark Sector (360/PS3/PC)

Let’s face it. There are lots of great games out there that haven’t received even a modicum of recognition that they deserve. Be it mediocre reviews or little promotion, these games never made it onto the radar for most gamers. They’re the hidden gems of our generations so to speak.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Canadian-developed Dark Sector. Unless you’re Bioware, Canadian games tend to be massively overhyped (Too Human) and blasted for its mediocrity or underhyped missed altogether. Dark Sector falls into the latter. Released by D3, which is a small publisher, at least in North America and developed by Digital Extremes, Dark Sector received little promotion and was subject to average reviews. But in reality, Dark Sector is a fantastic action-packed Third-Person shooter with an interesting story and its own unique gameplay feature.

You play as Hayden Tenno, a CIA Agent who suffers from a disease known as Congenital Analgia, making him immune to pain. He’s sent to a fictional Soviet-Bloc country known as Lasria, which has been devastated by a virus known as Technocyte, that transforms it’s victims into vicious zombie-like abominations. Your mission is to find a man named Mezner, who is planning to use the virus as a biological weapon. After contracting the virus himself, Hayden isn’t completely transformed into a monster, instead his right arm is all that’s mutated, allowing him to produce and launch a glaive-like weapon from his hand.

The various characters and locales in the game are rather pretty.

The glaive is the game’s most unique feature, though various guns that can be purchased from the Lasrian Black Market, it remains your most effective killing tool. As you proceed through the game, the virus evolves further in Hayden's arm, allowing you unlock new abilities with the glaive, such as controlling it’s direction, allowing you to guide it into enemies and dismembering various parts of their body.

Immune to pain, but still very venerable. The game uses a cover system.

Though it’s rare to find someone on it, the game has some fairly decent online modes, though none of them particularly stand-out. The single-player adventure is definitely the bigger draw of the game.

With little effort, you can find this game cheap, both new and used. (A new copy was $9.99 at Toys ‘r Us when I bought it.) It’s most definitely a steal for such an underrated title. So head over to your local game store and pick up a copy for your Xbox 360, PS3 or PC.

- Kyle K.