At the origins of Warframe |Review of the game Dark SecTOR

In March this year, the game Warframe will be hit for 7 years. I think this project does not need this project at all. Although I do not like online games, but in Warframe I managed to play at one time before it became the mainstream, and the game began to force the game everywhere. Since then, a lot has changed, in particular in the game itself, and once a raw, rather unbelievable network Shutan has turned into one of the largest online chopper, in which dozens, or even hundreds of thousands of players are stuck every day. But do all of them know about how Warframe appeared, about what the developers went through before finally embodying their dreams into reality? Finally, do they know about Warfram’s grandfather, about the game Dark Sector?

The story of the Dark Sector goes deep into the past, at the very beginning of the zero, but I dug even deeper. In 1993 there was a main company Digital Extremes, which, in the first time, did not produce anything interesting, damped all kinds of pinballs until one day she cooperated with Epic Mega Games and did not develop with her innovative in terms of 3D graphics that demolished the roof to the then players Unreal 1998. The guys tore the jackpot and decided to cut another game in the universe of Unreal, but already network, and after a year and a half they issued the first Unreal Tournament. And now the time has come when the developers thought about continuing the tournament, and it was from this idea that the original version of Dark SecTOR grew in the future.

Mass network scientific and fantastic militant with the first person with elements of role-playing game in the setting of a gloomy future. Cool plot, secondary missions, network battles, own ship, stylish futuristic suit, trading, pumping, Black-jack and cyberbluds! And all this is bliss under the sweet sauce Unreal Engine – this was the Dark Secitor at the dawn of the Third Millennium. However, soon the outbursts changed their minds (under the pressure of publishers who did not see prospects in the surroundings too distant from reality), at first they refused only partly their plan, then decided to take another engine, scored online, hit the single and, in the end, the genre of the game changed to the stealth explosion. Even the video demonstrating part of the main gaming chips has been preserved.

But such Dark SecTOR was not destined to reach the release. Digital Extrimes (again, before the threat to be left without financial support for publishers), they decided to hit the “realism” in terms of the setting, plot and generally all fantastic, which was earlier, turn the supercathous futuristic bounty-chanter into a simple rustic Vasya, which was gradually evolving into a kind of superhero, and finally make it out of the pierced“Ninja” is an excess of a simple militant from a third person and already on the third engine. And now, in such a fucking form, the excellent idea turned out to be the Dark SecTOR, which eventually went out in 2008, but we, boyars, received it in 2009 ..

It all starts with an incomprehensible cut-scene in which some grandfather climbs a submarine that suddenly emerged to the surface of the sea, stumbles on a huge hole in the hull, examines it, and suddenly something jumps out from there. What exactly is incomprehensible, because this jumped out to us with a sharp collision of the camera on the face of the sailor. After that, the action is sharply transferred for 20 years ahead. And yes, the whole thing happens in the Soviet Union, in the republic Lasria (fantasies of the scriptwriters can only be envied).

By the way, whether the “union of inconsistent republics” is alive or that Lasria has gained independence, nothing is reported. As, however, about much more, as for the game back

It was 2007. A young CIA agent named Hayden Tenno arrives in the very lasria, in some Station camp, which, as Wikipedia tells us, is part of the Gulag (!). Indeed, well, where else could the American in the post -Soviet space … In general, American intelligence not thoroughly slipped its nose in the former Soviet Union. Some terrible infection-the “technocyt virus”-broke free, and a certain Robert Mesner was appointed responsible for this disaster, and Hayden arrived behind his head and arrived. But, having reached the bastard, Tenno collides with a super -soldier, covered with metal from head to toe … shorter than NIX from Warframe. Of course, our agent was not ready for this, he instantly receives in the cabbage soup, and at the same time also infected with the virus of technocytes. But he manages to escape. Although the very scene of the salvation of the incision carefully, directly masterfully veiled (see. video).

The prologue ends on this and the main «plot» begins. In quotation marks, because those rare, chaotic scraps of history that KAT scenes dilute the gameplay, can hardly be called a full-fledged plot. This is rather a preparation for the plot, a naked skeleton, in which there are not enough details, descriptions, background, drawing characters, motivation of characters and everything else. And all the supposedly «unexpected turns» are easily predicted.

A moment ago, the hero calmly killed a person with his bare hands, and now he whines that he can no longer … cannot kill? Cannot participate in operations? Mystery

In general, as you understood, to the proposal to introduce the good script of Digital Extreme in the words of the Glaveroer: “No thank you”. There are no memorable characters in the game: that Hayden is our Tenno, that Grandfather Yargo Menshik, that is black Russian Nadia, that the evil uncle Mesner and the suspicious boss of the Glaveroro A.D. – All of them are banal and almost do not show emotions with the exception of the only one inherent in their archetypes;They do not have internal conflicts, their motivation is not clear, there is no background of their background … and there was practically nothing left of the declared «evolution» of the protagonist, and what remains of strength can be called only superficial.

This story leaves more than answers: who is Nadia? Who is the heb? What experiments on him and the main character were talking about? What program he wanted to broadcast to the whole world? Where in Lasria combat robots in the ranks of Russian -speaking soldiers? From which the soul of Hydeen was saved (as reported by Menshik’s orders in the final KAT-scene)? In the end, how the technocyt virus appeared? Of course, here many will object to me and say that the plot in such games is not important. Well, then we will move on to the game process, and see how the main component of the game corresponded in 2009 (2008) by gaming norms.

By the way, the potential of this script was, https://xlcasino.uk/ sorry it was not promoted. We could get a very extraordinary story about the epidemic of a very extraordinary virus … Eh, dreams ..

After many years of developing and changing several concepts, the final version of Dark Sector has become much closer to such a game as GEARS of WAR, That is, to the shooter from the third person with shelters. As there, the Glaverorea knows how to “stick” to the walls and barriers, quickly jump from one shelter to another, and fire in short bursts, leaning out for only a few seconds. No, of course you can, but the opponents in the game do not spare, and Hayden is not that a bulletproof monk. If you open, they shoot right there, if you do not open – they still shoot, sometimes even through shelter (but this happens rarely). Opponents represented by Lasria soldiers, although they beat aptly, but they are incorrigibly stupid: they don’t know tactics, and they will not run after you, they just sit in their shelter or stupidly stand in the open and shoot at a violator of calm, and they can be not only the Glavger, but also other infected, though these clashes do not occur in the game not so often and often often and often.

Basically, Lasriyans run to light flounders that protect against infection, but several times there are guys who are very similar to Starcraft infantrymen: in powerful armor, and with a minigan for advance. They are slow and seem even more stupid. Unlike ordinary fighters, these easily lose sight of the player, they can be ignored without problems and hit the batteries on their backs, which will not kill them, but will cause significant damage. In addition to these peanuts, there are also robotic fighters: such a powerful, and the same inactive machine, armed with machine gun and missiles. But here is the oddity. She uses missiles only if Hayden «sticks» to shelter, and then after the explosion he instantly dies. And if you just stand behind a bunch of drawers, this mechanical … either a beetle, or a dog … It will just fade without stopping until the barrel is overheated, and it can slowly begin to go around you, well, purely for decency for decency.

And remember the case when the robot Boris turned out to be a man in a suit for 250 rubles? So Digital Extreme turned this topic back in 2008! The contraption that I initially perceived as a high -tech robot, in fact, turned out to be only an awkward exoskeleton, inside which another “Russian villain” settled. A couple of times per game we are even allowed to steer this beauty, though very short.

Of course, these are not all the bastards who stood in the way of Hayden Tenno. He is also opposed to the disgusting appearance of infected Lasrian – local zombies. From the most typical slow brains, armed with sticks, to more fired and completely out of the ordinary – shabby giant gorillas on proteins. Technocytes – the virus is not simple, people infected by them gradually begin to be covered with metal formations, which happened with Hydeen’s hand. But some creatures mutated so much that there was nothing left of people at all: they are dexterous, jumping, tenacious and spit in a hero with an unpleasant multi -colored shot. These are already behaving more interesting than all other opponents: some constantly change shelter, run and jump high, while others are also awarded invisibility, and discard disguise only when they open firing at us. In the second half of the game there are more and more of them, and therefore the stupidity of the bulk of the opponents is slightly smoothed out and playing becomes more interesting.

There is another positive moment – these are bosses. They are always different and always sweaty. I almost did not happen to any of them that I immediately guessed how to lime. And even when he determined their vulnerability, he continued to fall from afar for a long time, when it was just necessary to approach and finish off. We do not tell us “come and make it up”, but you must remember that when the enemy’s silhouette is highlighted in red – this means he is vulnerable to a near attack. In addition, these creatures, all to one possessed one very difficult to work: take the hero from one or almost one blow. And I played only in average complexity.

Well, now we know with whom Hayden is dealing with the game, but how did we expel all this evil spirits?

The trunks in the Dark SecTOR are divided into 3 types: the first two could be carried with you at the same time – this is a light barrel, such as a pistol or semi -automatic machine and all kinds of rifles and guns. Well, the third type is heavy guns-a minigan and a grenade launcher that the hero throws to the ground when switching to something else. These guns are felt so -so, not just bad, but also to realism as before the stars. In general, as in most games of this category. Although here they delivered the hearths directly, if I got an adversarial between my eyes, then I immediately felt it.

Sometimes the hero took the “Russian villains” busy to the battle with evil spirits. It was pleased that the outcome of such contractions was not scribbled and in the same clash could be defeated by both others

Each barrel has several slots for improvements that can be found when exploring locations: the improvements themselves are quite standard, I will not list them. Honestly, the special difference is what with the mods, what without them, I did not feel. Modernization is carried out on the black market – this is such a menu that opens when the hero approaches a special sewer hatches. That is, there is no transition, no simplest animation, just clattered the key, and you are already there. Here you can buy or sell weapons for our wooden currency and change heroic inventory.

“Um, something somehow … it’s rotten or something”-you could have thought now. Yes, for now, all of the above is unlikely to even pull on a passage, but I left the most interesting thing at last. The very juice, so to speak … Hydeen’s infection not only made it prettier and gave a logical explanation to automatic restoration of health, but also gave a special weapon – a boomerang with three blades, called Glaive’s development, and in the Russian version – Glef … and both options never correspond to what Hayden wields in their historical significance.

Our three-Blade is a continuation of the hero’s infected hand. Whenever you throw him into the enemy, he returns back. When it gets, he disables the enemy for a few seconds, his silhouette begins to glow red and Hayden can quickly finish him into hand -to -hand (the game is very stingy for achieving animation). And if you clearly make a powerful throw for taims, then our boomerang cuts off the limb or even cut the enemy’s body in half: the dismemberment in the game is juicy, bloody and, in general, is made at the level.

You can manually manually manage the glefa, changing the direction of flight in slow -time time, breaking the boxes with it – one of the very few destroyed objects in the game – and attract ammunition or other people’s weapons, and by the way you can use only a very short period of time, after which the barrel is blocked, and the hero discards it. In addition, Glef interacts with fire, cold and electricity, adopting their effects on itself, which is very useful in battle, and it is simply necessary when solving puzzles. The latter were not very difficult: to find the source of electricity to throw a boomerang to open an electronic door, to adopt freezing from a chilled barrel to put out the fire and everything is like that. Sometimes they were combined, but again there were no particularly difficult tasks in Dark SecTOR, only our attentiveness was required.

But the hero had several supernatural abilities, which gradually opened during the game: the power shield, which not only blocked the damage, but also beat off the enemy shells in the direction where the player watched;short -term invisibility and energy explosion that works if Glef was charged with a source of this energy. And none of these abilities seemed superfluous or useless. Health is shot down quickly enough, and therefore the shield becomes our constant faithful assistant, but it is not eternal and has its own Cool-Down, and therefore invisibility also has to be in place (though it opens closer to the end), but the explosion will help quickly reduce the number of opponents on the battlefield. The hero could fight Glef in close combat, but it was realized frankly lousy.

No matter how ironic it may sound, it was the fantastic details that the developers so sought to save their product, in the end, and made Dark Sector playable. However, in order to completely outweigh all the shortcomings of the game, this was not enough.

The levels in the game are not remarkable: we wander around some ruins, sewers, abandoned factories … Yes, you know, even all these ruins, sewers and factories can be presented beautifully and leave an unforgettable impressions, remember Fallout3 or Stalker. But in Dark SecTOR this is one continuous despondency, both visually and in content: there is almost nothing to explore, there is no interaction with the world, everything is dead and around the void, and the faded gamma does everything only worse. But I will not say that absolutely all levels were like that. Still, Hayden was also thrown into locations, the darkness of which has a beneficial effect on the overall picture. Such levels had a good hit on the horror – gloomy, with a terrible emboss, frenzied zombies – and, although, passing them, it became quite terrible for me, they still could not scare the player. I would like not only these cases, but all the other stages of the game, at least something was remembered, but this, alas, is not in them.

The locations in the game are small and corridor, they run very quickly, so you will often see loading screens often. All of them consist of several arenas, where the battles and quiet empty transitions between them are taking place. When Hayden steps on the arena, enemies sharply arise from the opposite side and a continuous stream of rod and rod, especially concerns infected: they simply crawl out of the walls, and after death they dissolve on the ground, so that I have to do something, activate some kind of script so that this endless spavn stops, and you can go further. This continues until the finals, with rare breaks to bossfi and robops management. All this greatly spoils the impressions of the game. But you just have to tolerate and get to the fashion suit in the Excalibur style closer to the end of the game, how … In the game, nothing will change in the game: a few more arenas with shootings and cutting the limbs of three-Blide, with a difference only in the number of enemies, and a couple of bosses. That is, despite receiving a spacesuit, we were not even given any new ability, and even according to the sensations, the hero in it died as well as without a suit.

Even despite the hand covered with steel, the hero has only a few hits to fill the screen with a red gamut and start knocking a frantic heartbeat in the player’s ears

Being a schoolboy, I have not passed this game to the end, it seemed too uncomfortable and boring to me too much. This is exactly what I remember, and again, having launched it after 10 years, I only convinced of this once again. Dark Sector is an uneven, raw, unpretentious game that seems to be torn from the hands of the developers before they managed to complete it, and the crooked porting with the consoles only emphasized once again. The only thing they brought to mind is Glef, whose mechanic was really impressive at that time, and now again passing the game, I enjoyed all those manipulations that could be carried out with this “Shakram”.

But, unfortunately, in addition to pretty costumes, Nemesis (NIKS) and excalibur, which almost unchanged migrated to Warframe, and three-Blavic mechanics Dark SecTOR is not remembered anything else remembered. Almost all other gameplay elements were taken from other games. Of course, it is impossible to blame for this development, this happens constantly, but it is one thing when all this is brought to mind and works as it should (which smooths out all the irregularities, a feeling of secondaryness and allows you to enjoy the gameplay), and the other – when it is delivered so that you go through the game creaking with your teeth creaking.

Hero management is not very responsive and smooth, both with ordinary movement and when being in shelter, which is why the unpleasant sense of discomfort does not leave during the game

The large half of the opponents is hopelessly stupid, and all the battles take place on arenas with the merciless shooting of endless adults;The gameplay with shelters turned out to be unfinished (GEARS of WAR, which was released 2 years before Dark Secitor in this regard, was a cut above);Nauseated gamma, cheap cut-scenes with a curve of animation … In addition to this, there is a cranberry plot, which is served too chaotic and fragmented, and in order to understand it and to understand everything in the game, there is simply not enough information, and the disgusting setting and dull, inanimate characters are only aggravated by the whole thing.

If the original English voice acting was simply not impressed by me, then in Russian localization the game breaks the bottom right. Although, perhaps, what heroes, such and voices. They are quite consistent with the gray and unremarkable characters of these boring boobs. In general, sound accompaniment in the game is good, and if there were jambs, then I did not pay attention to them. The decanter was also not bad at that time, but all this dullness somehow oppressed and repelled once again from the game. I have not met any beautiful memorable species, but here the special effects associated with the three elements with which Glef interacts was very inspired.

Sometimes in the reviews of some old second-rate games, I say that although they have a bunch of flaws and can objectively go away at a maximum of once, they did not torment me for a long time, and I still passed them, having received at least a drop of pleasure. But in the case of Dark SecTOR, I literally forced myself to get to the end and in the end I was only disappointed. Due to the same type of what was happening, the game seemed to me excessively protracted. All positive moments are exhausted and cease to deliver to the middle of the game. If she was interested in someone, then you may well feel it personally, but spend time to go from beginning to end, in my opinion it will no longer cost your time.