Recent reviews by Neo9421

Simply put, this is a good product, but it has unused potential which I think it would benefit a lot from.


The in-game advertisements for the real money & platinum versions differ in description with the real money version including "+ Gemini Emote", while the platinum-based version of the product doesn't have such in its description, only listing the Protoframe skins and not the emotes ― even though *BOTH* deliver the same contents (Protoframes AND Emotes), save for the extra platinum from the Steam version. Overall, an unexpected shady move from DE.


These are some of the issues I've had with the Gemini Skins, while they're not exactly "dealbreakers", it personally makes using them a bit more inconvenient.

• Players are forced to allocate a slot solely for the Gemini Skin
This is rather inconvenient, why can't I have a Warframe & Protoframe Skin on the same slot? Players would be able to make a matching Protoframe customization as a counterpart to the regular Warframe customization on the given slot, no harm there. We could put both on the same slot. Could just toggle the starting appearance similar to Equinox.

• Attachment Colouring
Protoframes come with their own "attachments" which are colourable (straps, gloves, armor pads, etc.), with two of them being removable ― Amir's Goggles and Quincy's Beret. So far so good!
But my gripe with this is that you *cannot* colour regular attachments/armor equipabble on any other Warframe (Shoulder Pads, Knee Pads, Chest Pads) separately from the *Protoframe's* attachments, meaning that if you want to give your shoulder pad attachments a golden hue on the metallic parts ― you might end up accidentally colouring an unintended part of your Protoframe's built-in armor/attachments.

• Color Channel/Tint Bias
This seems to be a trend on every Protoframe, as it stands, colouring something on the Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary colour channels will have some level of influence on another colour channel, especially when you get to the Attachments tab. Whether it's a minor or impactful influence, it depends on what Protoframe you are customizing and what colours you have set up, and in the long run just feels like a dice roll and a headache to customize sometimes (also present in Hair Customization).

• Hair Customization
Model-wise, they've done a pretty good job with the hair for each character, and there's not much to talk about in this aspect, but as mentioned above, hair customization also suffers from tint bias when it comes to customization, aside from other issues.
Tint Bias makes it difficult to find the hair colour you're looking for, black and white work fine, but if you're searching for other colours, you might notice that the hair colour will be inclined towards either warm or cold colours, and sometimes the hair will display a highly saturated colour even if you've selected a light/pastel/desaturated colour (Daybreak, Easter, and Dojo colour palletes are examples of this).

• Hair Colour Slots
Probably the most vague part about customizing a Protoframe.
You're given Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Accents, and Energy (What???) Colour Slots to customize the hair.
Some of them work, some of them don't, and the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, etc. labels are pretty much placeholders and you'll see that "Primary" doesn't really mean Primary when you're customizing hair ― Amir's hair as an example illustrates all of this, only the "Accents" slot works, and it colours the entire hair, all other slots don't change anything, so, shouldn't it be on the Primary slot with the other slots hidden?
Overall unintuitive, and the usage of placeholder text in a "final product" you're being charged money for if you want to experience the content feels wrong.

• Eyes cannot be customized separately from Warframe's Ability Energy Colour
This is probably more of a nitpick, but having the eye colour use the same colour as the ability's energy colour doesn't make sense.
I was hoping for heterochromatic eye customization like how you can do with both the Operator and Drifter, but it turns out that even if you have applied Forma on your Warframe, it just lets you customize both the Iris and Pupil colours for both eyes instead of only the Iris. If hair can be customized independently, why not eyes too?

• Protoframe-native attachments cannot be used on different skins
For a while, this was possible, but was patched out. You got to carry over the military apparel from the Protoframes. I get that they looked out of place when paired with deluxe skins, which have different models instead of being just reskins of a warframe's respective default model, but I see no harm in having them equipped alongside skins that don't change the model, especially Tennogen since the only custom mesh they get to make is a helmet, the body remains with the same model, just different textures ― and the patch could've just taken the Protoframe's voice out when equipped on another skin. A missed opportunity to turn a bug into a feature and allow players to use a protoframe's apparel on other skins, just like how using the Atomicycle outside of 1999 turned from a bug into a feature.



• Arthur's Gemini skin does not allow to remove the bulky leather gloves that started showing up in the promotions after Warframe's Steam post "Warframe: 1999 Coming in December" (posted on Friday, October 25th), his gloves looked way less bloated before, and it'd be nice to be able to use the slim glove on the right hand and the gloveless style for the left hand, which makes for a missed opportunity to make more use of attachments on protoframe skins aside from just toggling Amir's goggles and Quincy's beret on & off.

Similarly, Protoframe attachments such as dog tags (Arthur's) and Tamagotchi (Amir's) cannot be removed as attachments to reduce clutter or simplify appearance.

• Protoframes don't have subtitles for their lines.
How come Railjack Crewmates get subtitles for their voicelines but players don't?
It is difficult to disambiguate the speech of the protoframes from the constant sounds you hear in frantic battles. Even if you set your SFX volumes in such a way that you can only hear voicelines mostly, it still is difficult and to a degree inaccessible to those who have problems with hearing.


I feel the Gemini Skin Emotes are an essential part of the whole Protoframe skin ordeal, making the skins feel more like a gimmick without their emotes, so...
If you already have a warframe with all six appearance slots already being used, is it really worth the hassle to cut down your favorite fashion slots in half to accomodate for these skins so you can use the Gemini Emotes somewhat properly? Or if you don't want to do that, maybe the even bigger hassle of crafting a second copy of each warframe that has a Protoframe Skin, buy three more appearance slots in order to have six slots, but only be able to use 3 for regular warframe appearances, and 3 for protoframe appearances, when all of these problems could simply be fixed?

I've been very hyped for these skins since Arthur's Gemini Skin first showcase, but it is rather disappointing to see that DE has apparently released an unfinished bundle and being seemingly deliberate about not being transparent enough and not disclosing all trade-offs and nuances that come with these protoframe skins, problems that could've been solved with just some more polish and time to work with.

I like these skins, using them, and the concepts they bring.
These skins had and may very much still have lots of unused potential, and I hope DE gets to give them a proper quality pass before/instead of moving on to the next new thing.

Bottom line on top: Good Game. Bad Port.
If you don't want a bunch of technical problems with the game, but still want to know what this is about, I suggest you watch someone else's playthrough on this game, as this port of Dark Sector can really spoil your first impression of the game and hinder your experience.



Given the time the game was released in, Dark Sector is a fairly creative, action-packed game with novel concepts for its time and gives the player interesting insights regarding the inspirations of Digital Extreme's next title, Warframe, and just how similar two separate games each with their own universe and worldbuilding are at a core level.

If you are patient enough with the quirks that this game's port brings, it is still a solid game to pick up and play despite its age. Like most single-player games, it is a nice and fun break from all the rush you may find to be abundantly present in the online video-game scene.

And that's about it on what I can think of the game's positive points, though, just because there are significantly more negative points, does not detract from this game's legacy, nor its importance for what would become Warframe today.

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The game does seem to suffer from more archaic game design standards and a quality bar that was fairly loose in its time.

To point out negative points game-wise:

• No moments of relief and ease in the game narrative and gameplay.

• Abundant and constant influx of enemies in inappropriate places.
‬ • Yes, this is an action game, however, it is not fun to try to scavenge for resources and collectibles while you are being chased by a horde that doesn't seem to diminish. Every time you eliminate a unit, it seems that another one spawns in its stead, forcing you to either actively ignore a chasing horde & search for supplies in spite of it -- or get out of that place as soon as possible, ignoring possible resources such as ammunition, weapon modifications, and currency.
(And frankly just feels like padding artificial game time into the experience)

• Level exploration not rewarded properly.
‬ • It feels frustrating to fully explore levels only to find they are devoid of any substantive collectibles or places that could provide the player with lore & factoids about the game, its universe, worldbuilding, and characters. Instead yielding only weapon modifications and mundane resources such as ammunition and currency for buying weapons, which is still awarded at a low amount, making it nigh impossible for you to experiment with all the weapons at your disposal in a single run.

• Rushed story, scarce in lore.
‬ • To elaborate on a point mentioned before, there seem to be no moments of ease in the game narrative or gameplay, the storytelling and its pace are constantly at a climax, and the lore that this game has is mostly drip-fed from cutscenes - that is, when a cutscene does provide any lore at all. You can find some hints of background on your current situation in a few levels where there are looped recordings being played, but there are far too few of these spread throughout the game.

• Certain units become generic after some time.
‬ • When far enough into the game, the player will find that the ranged infected units behave too similarly to their uninfected counterparts, employing the same tactics, making it feel like you're just fighting the same enemy with a different coat of paint.

• Emplacements (mounted machine-guns) have very low accuracy (which would not be a problem if they weren't placed far away from its intended targets) and tend to have frustrating blind spots, defeating the point of using them as an occasional "spike" in firepower or a fodder unit cleaning tool.

• One-shot bosses feel too cheap.
‬ • Though very few of the bosses can one-shot, the ones that can one-shot you feel very cheap.


This port is very finnicky and has many issues, some even outlandish. Prompting the player to use outside resources and third-party programs to play the game as intended.

Some of the issues that I faced:

• MSI Afterburner/RTSS Overlay not showing up.

• Framerate limiting not working properly.
‬ • Limiting the game's framerate through both NVidia's driver settings and RTSS did not work consistently, making it sometimes run at a limited framerate, and sometimes at an unlimited framerate, making its performance sometimes unreliable.

• The game does not like Alt-Tabbing.
‬ • The game may lock your cursor to the game even if your active tab isn't the game itself, making you unable to use your cursor outside of the game without a workaround.

• Unreasonable amounts of GPU usage that caused throttling, somehow beating Warframe.
‬ • Apparently, decreasing the game's processor affinity seems to make the game not cause throttling so often, but this may be a placebo, as the problem is GPU-related, not CPU-related.


All of these things really make booting this game up a dice roll, which puts into question if shooting some baddies down in this game is really worth all this hassle and setting up.

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Despite both the game and its port suffering from multiple flaws, the legacy that this game has left behind for the future of Digital Extremes and for what sparked Warframe into being what it is today and has been in its many phases ― is commendable, and makes you wonder what Warframe wouldn't be had Dark Sector not been made.

As said before, just because there is a significant amount negatives and points of friction in the experience, it does not detract from this game's legacy, nor its importance for what Warframe is now.


At the end of the day, Dark Sector is an overall fun game centered about just shooting down baddies and having fun while saving the world with a funny fidget spinner, even if you struggle or experience issues in the process.
Whether or not you should play this, depends on you and how patient you're willing to be with this.