Dark Sector comes with two multiplayer modes: Infection and Epidemic. Infection is like a game of ‘It’ where one person plays against a team of other people. The person who is 'it' plays Hayden while everyone else plays soldiers. The soldier who deals the finishing move on Hayden becomes 'it' in the next round. Epidemic follows the team vs. team formula except with a Hayden in each team that must be taken out in order for the team to win.
I enjoy playing Infection more in random public games because it's easier to work as a team when it's everyone else against one person. At the same time, it's a bit scary being 'it' because you're against so many people. Luckily, the invisibility skill and the head- decapitating Frisbee makes the odds pretty fair. In one game, the person who played 'it' was so good that even against a team of 5 other people, he was still slaughtering us.
Epidemic is harder to play with random people because to be a successful team involves staying around the person playing Hayden and protecting him while at the same time trying not to get your head chopped off by the other team's Hayden. It also doesn't help when your teammate who is playing Hayden is clueless and just runs around while the rest of the team is trying to protect him.
Unlike Infection mode, Epidemic isn't as newbie friendly. It takes a while to figure out who is an enemy and who isn't in a split second in Epidemic mode. In Infection, it's pretty clear who your enemy is no matter what team you're on.
Multiplayer mode gave me a Gears of War vibe, but I'm glad they went with the different modes instead of your standard team vs. team or death-match. I could see myself getting bored of the same small maps over and over again, but for now I'm still enjoying seeing all the eye-candy like the fires in the corner and how peoples limbs fall off when they get maimed by an invisible 'it'. I just wish it wasn't so hard trying to get into a ranked game. Most of the time, I can't connect to a ranked server and the rest of the time I'm in the lobby waiting for people to join and ready-up.
Published: Apr 3, 2008 10:09 am