Sometimes, promising games announced way back when a new console gets unveiled can fall by the wayside, languishing in that place known as Development Hell. The Xbox 360 has a few high profile titles that fit this bill - think Huxley or Too Human – games that despite their prolonged development are titles we still really want to play and read about. But sometimes these promising titles just drop off everybody's radar, the gamer collective's hive-mind either blocking them out or just forgetting about them once all those other goodies inevitably drop around November. One such title is Digital Extreme's Dark Sector, a game first announced in 2004, which has undergone some dramatic changes before finally making its way to Xbox 360.

Originally conceived as a pure science-fiction shooter set on a futuristic space ship, Dark Sector re-emerged from the darkness of a media blackout as an almost totally different game, set in a grim near-future where the fictional Soviet nation of Lasria is on its last legs. Twenty years ago, the unfortunate nation was ravaged by a mysterious virus that has the unusual side-effect of turning flesh into a sort of living metal that mutates the host, either killing them outright or driving them mad as it rewrites their DNA into something monstrous. Enter Hayden Tenno, a special-forces operative working for the USA, engaged in clandestine wetwork behind the iron curtain in Lasria.

The game opens in black and white, and the entire first mission, which acts as a tutorial, plays out that way. It's a nice touch and the stark contrasts highlight just how great Digital Extreme's proprietary Evolution Engine looks. Ostensibly, Hayden is the tip of America's spear in Lasria, a lethal human weapon they point at things and he makes dead. Of course anyone who has seen or read anything about Dark Sector knows that Hayden doesn't exactly stay human for very long, or on mission for that matter. By the end of the black and white backstory introductory mission, Hayden will have been infected with the lethal Technocite virus, but for reasons unknown, its efficacy falters when it meets his immune system, rendering him immune to its maddening effects and able to keep the progress of the infection in check.

A more sanguine personality would take this as a win: you survived a usually fatal disease, and gained a bad-ass metal arm that grows a tri-bladed boomerang called a glaive that you can use to dispatch legions of foes or easily prune those tall trees in your back yard. A lucrative future in topiary and your own segment on Better Homes & Gardens awaits if you play your cards right, but sadly, the developers didn't share my enthusiasm for Dark Secateurs, so Hayden decides instead to put a stop to the virus and those who try to spread it, saving humanity and blah blah blah.

Now I'm not just being bitter here; Dark Sector's story is pretty thin really. The premise itself is solid and this alone makes the game engaging enough, but in terms of actual storytelling, well, Dark Sector just decided not to worry too much. Basically, Hayden will journey from one decrepit Soviet-bloc styled location to the next, killing a bunch of enemies, and meeting a handful of characters whose relationship to the story is tenuous at best. But who am I kidding, we aren't playing a game about a guy with a blade-boomerang arm for its literary merits, and thankfully Dark Sector lives up to its potential in all the areas that actually matter.

It really needs to be said again that the Evolution Engine looks great, very Unreal Engine 3 but without the glaring texture pop-in that marred Dark Sector's doppelganger sibling, Gears of War. The art direction is actually pretty similar to Gears of War's "destroyed beauty”, which means lots of crumbling architecture and a real post-apocalyptic flavour to everything you see and do. Lasria has long since been evacuated of anyone who escaped infection, but that doesn't mean the place is deserted...for starters, there's lots of creepy biohazard waste bags littering the city that you just know are filled with dead bodies, and more pressingly, there's hordes of infectees staggering around like zombies who, when provoked, will charge at you a lot faster than zombies should be allowed to charge.

I blame 28 Days Later for the Fast-Zombie Syndrome, but it isn't just the speedy dead you need to worry about. The truly unfortunate who get infected with the Technocite virus end up unrecognisable, mutating into howling beasts or hulking monstrosities hell-bent on destroying everything they encounter. Chuck in a few platoons of soldiers in hazmat suits trying to contain this flare-up of the virus, and you've got a lot of nasty people standing between Hayden and his goal of saving humanity and joining the team of Gardening Australia.

Just as well he's got that glaive thing though, huh? Yep, Hayden is going to be tossing that fatal Frisbee a lot, and it's pretty good fun. You can use it to disarticulate enemies with ease, and – in a move considered too violent for our beloved OFLC – if you charge up a power-throw and aim it right, you can actually decapitate people. Funny, I distinctly remember popping heads and chainsawing people to death in Gears of War, but I guess the difference between ‘humanoid' and ‘human' enemies is too much for our MA15+ rating. Let's be honest though: throwing a deadly bladed boomerang at enemies is hardly likely to spawn many imitators amongst impressionable Australian youths, especially since in reality you'd have to go collect the damn thing after you dismember people.

Still, if someone could actually get the returning-to-sender-without-cutting-off-their-fingers thing down pat, the glaive would be a pretty handy tool. Hayden can also use it to collect enemy's weapons or boxes of ammo lying around, as well as charging the glaive up with some elemental attacks in the form of fire, ice and electricity. The former is handy when you're too lazy to bend over and pick something up; the latter will allow you to solve a variety of environmental puzzles, or kill your enemies with a bit more flare than usual. These puzzles are rarely taxing, but they at least spice up the gameplay a tad, and occasionally they require you to use the ‘aftertouch' ability, which is essentially a controlled slow-mo throw that lets you guide the glaive around corners and obstacles.

Of course if it was all glaive all day, even the How To channel on Foxtel would get sick of Hayden's blade. So to spice things up, there's a slew of more conventional weaponry available to use, and in a novel twist, the human's guns are DNA coded to detonate after a few seconds of use in the hands of the infected. Granted, it probably would've made more sense for the gun to not fire at all if a deranged half-metal maniac got their mitts on it, but it means Hayden has almost always got access to a firearm if he needs one. Still, you'll probably want to swing by the Black Market and spend those hard-earned Roubles you pilfered from the deceased, and get a ferrous-friendly firearm that won't blow up in your hands. You can also apply any upgrades you find along the way, which can increase firepower or the size of your clip, or more interestingly, fire rounds coated in Enferon, which is poisonous to any infectees you encounter.

Shooting people usually elicits screams of pain, and Dark Sector fails to disappoint in this department. There's lots of screaming, yelling, crying out and even some growling to be had, and it all sounds as you would expect. For fans of Smallville, Michael Rosenbaum, who plays Lex Luthor, phones in a performance as Hayden Tenno, but his talents are sorely wasted. Still, the ambient sounds are atmospheric and work particularly well in 5.1 surround sound. Dark Sector plays more like a survival horror game than a shooter in some levels, and at these times the audio and soundtrack truly evoke a sense of unease. The music oscillates between high-octane rock and more ambient tracks depending on the on-screen action, and while the tunes are ultimately forgettable, they work well when playing the game and at emulating Gears of War.

Speaking of, Dark Sector controls a lot like Gears of War too, and anyone who has played Epic's classic shooter will be right at home here. The glaive itself is the only real control anomaly, and it's simple enough that using it will be second nature by the time you beat the first couple of the game's 10 missions. Hayden handles smoothly for the most part, although there are some awkward moments when trying to stick to cover that instead see you combat rolling out into the line of fire. As is the trend these days, the game eschews a health bar or any sort of heads-up display; if the screen flashes red you're almost dead, and reloading or selecting another weapon will bring up your ammo and available guns. It's incredibly simple really, and it works for the game, giving it a strong cinematic flair.

But like all good movies, Dark Sector has to end eventually, and in this case, the end comes after about 8-10 hours. There's a lot of great set-piece encounters and some enjoyable boss battles though, as well as an unlockable Brutal difficulty for those who want a tougher challenge or more Achievement points. Additionally, Digital Extremes saw fit to include two multiplayer modes, which take the somewhat daring approach of not letting everyone run around as super-powered Hayden characters. Infection is like Juggernaut, which sees one player assume the role of Hayden while up to nine others play as simple soldiers tasked with taking down the seemingly unstoppable. Epidemic is essentially a team-based variant, whereby two teams each have an infected player with all Hayden's moves, and they try to take out the opponents infected player. Multiplayer handles well and the minor lag can be attributed to the dearth of domestic players, but with only 2 modes and 5 maps, it's not likely to usurp Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3's throne.