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.

Truthfully, the glaive isn?t completely useless. The game eventually doled out new techniques that made it sort of OK to use. Holding down the R2 button, for example, let me charge up the glaive, meaning I could deal four times the damage to my enemies. I could also steer the glaive through the air -- hit the R2 a second time to cue up your behind-the-flying-glaive camera -- to direct it towards specific targets.

Yet, despite these improvements, more often than not I got through the game?s firefights not by using the glaive -- which should be the star of the show -- but by running like hell and shooting guns.

The game gets eight percent more interesting when a giant hairless ape shows up several times. (Crispy Tip: Whenever you see him, STAY THE HELL OUT OF HIS WAY.) The hairless ape terrorizes your enemies and does a whole bunch of property damage, throwing old cars around and smashing buildings. The game teased me with the ape for hours, giving me little glimpses of him here and there, so I knew that the ape and I were going to have to get it on at some point.

When he and I finally went toe-to-toe in a ruined church, the encounter wasn't very interesting: I set him on fire a few times and then he died. I looked at his charred corpse for a while. It was around this time that Dark Sector began to make me feel like one of those people on "America?s Funniest Home Videos" getting struck in the groin with a Wiffle ball bat.

And yes, I did say "a ruined church," which is just one of the countless clich?d sites in which Dark Sector's action -- or rather "action" -- is set. In addition to Old Crumbling Castle, you get Standard-Issue Military Compound That I?ve Seen in About 800 Other Games, and Eerie Graveyard Filled With Zombies.

Speaking of zombies, Dark Sector features the most piss-poor lot of zombies I have seen in all my days. I love zombies as much as anyone, but these zombies give their kind a bad name. Like everything else in Dark Sector, these zombies gave me no satisfaction. They shamble around, they groan, they try to sound like zombies, but being attacked by them is an annoyance. I?ve felt more menace from the stroller-wielding moms in my neighborhood than I felt when confronting these zombies.

I know that it?s hard to make games. I haven't made any games myself, but I'm friends with people who make games. It's hard work. I see the sacrifices they make. I see the love they pour into their projects.

The bottom line here is this: Some people tried to make a good game here, and they did not succeed. They failed.

Despite my hours of trying -- and trust me, I tried like hell to love this game, to give it every break I possibly could; I tried to look past the sluggish controls, past the nonsensical plot, past the fizz-free boss fight; I bought it flowers and chocolates and left little Post-It notes on the mirror in the morning saying "I love you" and "I think you're awesome" -- in the end, it let me down and broke my heart and kicked me in the teeth for good measure.

Verdict: Fried.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.