During GDC, the Ripten crew was privy to an exclusive invite-only shindig presented by the good people at D3Publishing. What did we do? Well, we sat down in front of some system-linked Xbox 360s and proceeded to tear the shit out of each other in a few rounds of Digital Extremes’ new game, Dark Sector.

Steve Sinclair, Project Lead for the game, ran through a bit of the single player with us first. He showed us what is essentially the tutorial, the events leading up to Hayden (Dark Sector’s main character) getting infected with awesomeness, and then skipped around to later levels to show us some upgraded bad-assery.

As you probably know by this point, Dark Sector is synonymous with “giant throwing star thingy that looks like it’s from Krull” — a reference to Hayden’s main weapon, the glaive. Later in the game, you can enter a bullet-time-like mode where the glaive flies through the air in slow motion and you get to steer it around like a UFO.

You can use this time to appropriately slice and dice your enemies, literally. Body parts are sent airborne in the process with a playful amount of gooey redness, just enough to make Jack Thompson weep for the children. Josh Austin, the game’s producer (and the guy holding the controller), said there is even an achievement for cutting off two heads in one throw! Slightly more understandable now as to why it’s banned in Australia, eh?

So after our appetites are adequately whetted (with the thirst for blood, no doubt), we are handed controllers and sent off to kill each other.

The game controls much as you would expect a third-person, over-the-shoulder shooter to control. It does feel slightly slower than, say, Gears of War, as if the character is a little floaty. Maybe I was just used to playing other games, but it didn’t matter — I got used to it in 5-10 minutes.

There were two multiplayer modes available: Infection and Epidemic. Infection pits one buffed-up Hayden character against a group of normals — regular old hazmat-suited soldiers. Whoever takes down Hayden becomes him in the next round. Epidemic is team-based, with one Hayden on each side. He serves as the team’s VIP — protect your Hayden while trying to kill the other team’s Hayden.

Both game types are fairly straightforward, but they offer something most other multiplayer games don’t: bots! Both game types can house up to 10 players, but if you don’t have (or want) enough actual people to play with you, you can fill out the remaining slots with AI-controlled fodder. This is a great feature, something I never understood why it wasn’t implemented in more games.

I was Hayden in the first round of Infection, and I got two kills before being gang-banged. After that it turned into an every-man-for-himself type of deal because everyone wanted to be Hayden. There was very little team play, but I think that’s just because everyone I was playing with was a selfish bunch of dicks. Then again, where’s the motivation to team up and take this guy down if your best bud becomes your enemy? It really is just an exercise in kill-stealing, but it was fun.

In Epidemic, my team was slaughtered repeatedly until I got my turn as Hayden. Once that happened, we won 5 rounds in a row before I was dethroned by a backstabbing insta-kill (sneaky bastards!). Steve showed me where to get a freeze power-up for my glaive, which I then used to “ice” one of my opponents. Ha, see what I did there with the words and stuff? Needless to say, Epidemic was the favored of the two modes.

Overall, the game looked fantastic and felt pretty solid. Steve and Josh both stressed that the single-player game will be constantly evolving, giving you more powers and more things to do. “Never stop learning,” they say. That’s what keeps people interested and driven forward. As for the multiplayer, it will ship with just the two modes, but more are being considered.

Dark Sector is scheduled for a March 25 release on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and I’m itching to play it again.

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