Back when Digital Extremes were largely known for collaborating with Epic Games on the Unreal Tournament series, they made a little game called Dark Sector. Released in 2008, it’s part of the fine tradition of post-Gears double-A actioners that basically consist of taking a gruff man, throwing him into a world of grit, gravel and burning oil drums, and handing him a murderous gimmick. Dark Sector’s gimmick was the glaive, a pointy boomerang you could use to scoop up objects, solve puzzles, and kill stuff in third-person view.
The result? A pretty forgettable video game. This is the first time anybody at Rock Paper Shotgun has ever posted specifically about Dark Sector, in fact. But Dark Sector’s stature, if not its quality, has swelled in hindsight – for it’s sort of the ‘original version’ of Warframe, the absurdly over-dressed free-to-play shooter that hopefully needs no introduction. If you’re a Warframer who’s up for a roady-run down memory lane, Digital Extremes are currently giving Dark Sector away on Steam.
Dark Sector takes place in an approximately real-world, present-day setting, albeit one full of “Technocyte” bioweapons, but it was once envisaged as a sci-fi, outer-space affair in which you’d play a character with an exotic mechsuit.
Digital Extremes eventually dialled the sci-fi elements back to make the story more relatable to players of the era – this was the mid-noughties, don’t forget, when every game had to vaguely resemble a less-good Bruce Willis film. But after releasing Dark Sector, they dug up their original notes and spun them out into the concept for Warframe. There are a few reverential nods to Dark Sector in the latter, including a fancier species of glaive.
If you’re enticed by Dark Sector’s sheer OK-ness, you’ll want to get your skates on. It’s free only till Saturday November 30th at 9am PT, 12pm ET, 5pm GMT and 6pm CET. The thinking behind the discount is to celebrate Warframe’s forthcoming 1999 expansion, which takes the story back in time. Look out for that in December. I’m personally more interested in Digital Extremes’ fantasy RPG Soulframe right now than Warframe, largely because after 10 years of updates, Warframe feels too knotty to get my head around.
If you’re unconvinced by Dark Sector, even at the low, low price of nada multiplied by nothing, I have a bonus ancient Digital Extremes game to share – The Darkness 2, which is currently 80% off. This one’s a sequel to the Starbreeze game about the trenchcoat gangster with snake hands, and it’s actually quite decent – decent enough to make Alec Meer’s (RPS in peace) old Celebration Of Perfectly Average Action Games.