When Digital Extremes was largely known for collaborating with Epic Games on the Unreal Tournament series, they created a little game called Dark Sector. Released in 2008, the film is in the fine tradition of post-Gears double-A action films, which basically involve taking a gruff man, throwing him into a world of sand, gravel, and burning oil drums, and giving him a killer grip. The Dark Sector’s gimmick was the glaive, a pointy boomerang that could be used to collect items, solve puzzles, and kill things in a third-person view.
Result? Quite a memorable video game. In fact, this is the first time anyone at Rock Paper Shotgun has published a post dedicated to the Dark Sector. But Dark Sector’s stature, if not its quality, has grown in hindsight – it’s a sort of “original version” of Warframe, a ridiculously over-dressed free-to-play shooter that hopefully needs no introduction. If you’re a Warframer who wants to take a trip down memory lane, Digital Extremes will do just that is currently giving away Dark Sector on Steam.
Dark Sector takes place in a current world, albeit full of “Technocyte” biological weapons, but was once conceived as a sci-fi space adventure in which you play a character with an exotic mechsuit.
Ultimately, Digital Extremes brought back the science fiction elements to make the story more accessible to gamers of the era – let’s not forget that this was the mid-nineties, when every game had to vaguely resemble a less-than-stellar Bruce Willis movie. But after the release of Dark Sector, they dug out their original notes and used them in the concept of Warframe. In the latter case, there are several respectful nods to the Dark Sector, including a more sophisticated species of glaive.
If you’re tempted by the excellent quality of Dark Sector, you’ll definitely want to put on your skates. Free only until Saturday, November 30 at 9:00 PT, 12:00 ET, 17:00 GMT and 18:00 CET. The idea behind this discount is to celebrate the upcoming Warframe expansion from 1999, which takes the story back in time. Pay attention to this in December. Personally, I’m more interested in Digital Extremes’ fantasy RPG Soulframe than Warframe right now, mainly because after 10 years of updates, Warframe seems too convoluted to think about.
If Dark Sector doesn’t convince you, even at a very low price multiplied by nothing, I have an additional historic Digital Extremes game to share – The Darkness 2, which is currently 80% cheaper. It’s the sequel to Starbreeze’s game about a trenchcoat-wearing gangster with snake hands, and it’s pretty decent – decent enough that it could make Alec Meer’s elderly Celebration Of Perfectly Average Action Games (RPS alone).
