(continued from previous page) ...They only remain useful for a certain amount of time after you pick them up. This is because they are all assigned to certain government troops and the use of these weapons by any other individual will cause the weapon to be rendered useless after so many shots.

While the weaponry obtained from soldiers is limited, the weaponry made available within the Black Market will always be ready for use. The Black Market also has other uses outside of just buying up weapons. You’ll also be able to sell previously bought weapons, grenades, and weapon upgrades. Another option given to you within this underground world is the ability to enhance your weapons with upgrades you’ve found throughout Lasria. Each weapon is given a certain amount of upgrade slots, though you can find an increase slot upgrade to add one more slot to any weapon.

The upgrades come in an assortment of ways and work much like the perks do in Call of Duty 4. Some examples include the option to extend your clip size, speed up your reload time, lessen your recoil, quicken your firing rate and so on. There are plenty of upgrades available, but you’ll have to find the rest yourself because some of them are pretty well hidden. The upgrade system also brings about one downfall of the game itself. Once you’ve used an upgrade slot on a weapon, you can no longer use it again. This means you can’t swap out upgrades with one another in hopes of finding the best combination. As a result, you may have to wait before using certain upgrades because some work better than others depending on the gun you’re implementing them on.

Dark Sector also gives you a nice variety of enemies to use these weapons on. You’ll be taking on Elite Troopers, standard Technocyte Troopers, Howlers, Colloses, standard military soldiers, and a few others that we’ll let surprise you as you progress through the game. One key factor that is always important in regards to the enemies you’re going up against their intelligence. This just happens to be another hit or miss scenario for Digital Extremes.

While there are times where the enemies come off as incredibly intelligent, there are also equal amounts where foes come off as utterly stupid. Whether they’re just randomly standing around staring at a wall or they’re watching one of their buddies get shot, the enemy AI can sometimes have a depressing moment. The odd part about this is, it doesn’t always happen. It’s almost as if the entire situation of intelligence is randomized. Some soldiers will appear stupid, while if you die and respawn, that stupid soldier may appear in a different location and has evolved into a smarter troop. We’re not sure if this is a glitch in the coding or if it was intentional, however it just seems a bit off in some places. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem for the game's bosses.

Dark Sector will introduce you to a nice variety of bosses in terms of originality. You’ll do battle with a huge colossus in a church, a nightcrawler-esque boss, Nemesis of course, and Robert Mezner in the finale. Though there are only really four bosses, they’re spanned evenly over the 10 chapters of play. While 10 chapters don’t sound like much, it actually equals out to roughly 11-13 hours of gameplay.

During this time of play, you’ll be treated to a dark gloomy world brought to life by DE. The graphics are very well polished and have a lot of detail to them. The blood splatters from headshots, legs, arm, and head severances are beautifully done and you’ll never grow tired of them. Not to mention that watching an enemy shatter after you’ve placed a shotgun shot in their frozen corpse is wonderfully done. The only issues we had with the look of the game stemmed from the poor cloth animations and the slight tearing that we can only compare to the tearing you’d experience in the jungle and caverns of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. We make this comparison because we’re sure you’d agree that the tearing in Uncharted did not take away from the experience at ... (continued on next page)