Virtually all of our play time through the first three levels of the game served as something of a trail of virtual breadcrumbs that helped us learn to use Tenno's abilities. The glaive is indeed multi-purpose, and within an hour or so, we'd unlocked the ability to charge up a throw to do quad damage to enemies, as well as pull off a Heavenly Sword-style SIXAXIS-guided throw that let you steer the glaive into enemies -- or parts of 'em anyway. It not only lead to some great depth of field-blurred so-mo eviscerations, but it controlled surprisingly well.

But chucking the glaive is really only have of Tenno's moveset. Since he can throw and fire at the same time, making the most of weapons in the game is key, and through a cover-based system and over-the-shoulder camera angle for aiming, the game bears more than a passing resemblance to Gears of War or, by proxy, Uncharted or Resident Evil 4. There is a catch, however: all of the soldiers in the game have magnetic locks on their weapons, so about 15 or so seconds post-pickup, the weapon will go dead.

This leads to some heated firefights as Hayden races to use the weapon before it locks, but there is an alternative: buying lock-free weapons from the black market. This also opens up a wealth of customization options for boosting capacity and adding more bits and pieces to the various weapons Tenno can make his own... for the right price. Digital Extremes showed off a slick little burst fire pistol that had us excited about what future loadouts could hold.

If the first three levels are a rather lengthy tutorial (as it turns out, focus testers just weren't retaining the info prompts that popped up mid-firefight, so they made sure the player would learn about new skills and abilities by doing -- at least to get the basics down), then the third chapter ends with a hell of an introduction to the rest of the game proper. A huge, infected monkey-like creature absolutely tore through a dilapidated building (literally, it blew through chunks of brick wall like they were little more than paper), and demonstrated something we weren't expecting.

Not all fights in the game are one way; so the soldiers that were originally trying to kill Tenno quickly found a new target, which made taking them out a little easier before squaring off against the mini-boss (one of four in the game, we're told). After learning to dodge roll to avoid incoming chucks of the wall that the monster picked up and threw, we found out that it was really just a warm-up to the real confrontation that took place later in the game. A mysterious siren called the monster away and we were left with a whole lot of promise and the itch to play more.

Sadly, we didn't really get that chance. Dark Sector has a hell of a setup, first introducing you to the basics of cover and gunfire and then slowly working in the more superhuman aspects of Tenno's transformation. We saw normal firefights, some melee-based conflicts in the dank, claustrophobic underbelly of the city, and were teased with some later levels that we can't really talk about. In short, the first three levels of the game were a fantastic warm-up, and they served their purpose quite nicely. Now we just have to count the days until the game will hit in February...