Dark Sector (PS3)

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True story: During a recent demo in a ritzy hotel in midtown Manhattan, I found myself so disappointed with the game at which I was looking that I wrote down the words "ARTHRITIS SIMULATOR" in my notes.

But another game has swiped that hallowed title away from that as-yet-unreleased title.

That game is Dark Sector.

Exactly how is a game an arthritis simulator? Dark Sector depicted for me, in a very tangible way, what it will be like when I'm in my dotage and having a very difficult time opening my pill bottles.

The game tells the story of a black-ops-style soldier named Hayden Tenno, whom in the opening moments we see creeping around an old castle wearing an outfit that appears to have come from the Sam Fisher Collection at JC Penney. He's on a mission to stop some sort of vague menace.

After snapping a henchman's neck in a cut scene, he tells his commanding officer via com-link, "I can't do this." I'm guessing the idea here is to humanize the character a little, and make me like him more, since he seems to have no stomach for this kind of work.

But one word came to mind, and that word was "pussy."

During the unsurprising 15-minute opening level that plays like Gears of War Lite, I first dispatched a series of bad guys by using cover and waiting for them to pop out so that I could shoot them, and then I fought a helicopter. This officially marks the 294th time in all my years of gaming that I have fought a helicopter. Conveniently, there was a rocket launcher nearby. Rocket launcher versus helicopter? Rocket launcher wins every time.

After this, a creature appeared that looked like it just got off the 9:45 flight from a Devil May Cry game. It looked pretty cool, with its shiny exoskeleton body armor, and I was worried that I was going to have to fight it, but it just stabbed me in the shoulder and went away. Then an old guy with a Joseph Stalin beard showed up and made a long, totally forgettable speech while I writhed around on the floor.

Apparently, this creature infected me with a virus that makes my arm turn black and shiny, and -- better sit down for this -- makes a glaive, a.k.a. a boomerang of death, come out of my hand.

INTERMISSION: This is your chance to run to the store to stock up on disbelief, in case you've already suspended every bit of disbelief you had in the cupboards.

OK, we're back. The birth of this hand glaive should be exciting, but it's not. Instead, I had to fight three or four bad guys using my glaive. I was ready to f*** some people up with my glaive, but this is the feeling I got from it: THIS GLAIVE SUCKS MAJOR ASS. I think throwing Kleenex at these guys would have done more harm to them.

I died once, twice, five times, 10 times while trying to get the hang of the glaive. I finally took out my pistol and shot my way through the bad guys. Case closed.

After this I began looking for a pawn shop where I might be able to trade in my hand glaive for a broken CB radio or maybe some old romance novels that I could toss at the bad guys, who might pick them up and start reading them. Or maybe a can of creamed corn, or Mardi Gras beads, or blankets doused with polio.