Perfect Dark

"Perfect is An Understatement"

Perfect Dark is the Spiritual Sequel to the classic FPS Goldeneye [it shares some things as the past game but the story is different] created by our British friends over at Rare. And to everyone who thought Goldeneye was the best FPS ever made, Perfect Dark surpassed Goldeneye and proved that the N64 can still pump out good games.

Now before I start this review, let me set up something so you can understand how much I like the game. Back in May of 2000 my dad told me about this Game, so I decided to get it. And after I played it I thought that it was the greatest game ever made. Fast forward seven years later and I still play this game daily. I have also logged on over 17 DAYS on the Multiplayer mode, I have almost gotten the "Perfect" rank on there as well, and I am close to beating all of the levels. Well let's light this candle.

Story: 8

I will try to do this without revealing too much. If you read the Background [there is a LONG background and Plot Overview in the game] it says that everything that happens is because of a Cetan Warship that plunged into the Ocean millions of years ago, and the war loving Skedar were trying to find it to use as a weapon, and the Maians are trying to stop them.

Going back into the Present time of the game: the year is 2023 and the Carrington Institute operative Joanna Dark is sent into dataDyne to extract an insider from dataDyne, and she winds up in the middle of a war with dataDyne and their "allies" with the help of some friends of the Institute and her Co-Operatives at the Institute and trying to stop the uncovering of the Cetan Mega weapon [it basically makes the atomic molecules come apart and can destroy planets]. Hopefully I did this without revealing too much, because I left some stuff out that you would need to find out for yourself, or read the Forums.

Also, the character that you play in this game is one of the best heroines I have ever seen in a video game. Even though her character got worse in the Prequel that is out on the Xbox 360, the books and the comics have done a great job establishing Joanna's character that should be used in all of the subsequent games.

Gameplay: 10

Anyone who played Goldeneye should be able to realize just how special that game was. Instead of roaming through levels blowing up everything in sight, you had several objectives and items to collect. Well Perfect Dark continued that and you feel like you are really doing something while you play Perfect Dark, it is so much more than other games, like Halo. No disrespect to the Halo fans [hell I play the game too] but all you do in Halo is run to the next point while killing aliens or protecting somebody, in Perfect Dark a lot is going on at once.

The first time I played this game, the first thing I thought was just how much more is in this game than in Goldeneye. For example, the enemy in Goldeneye could not fire over rails, but in Perfect Dark they would fire at you as soon as they could see you and they would use more strategy, like calling for help, rolling out of the way, or swapping weapons if you disarm them. Yes, you can now disarm opponents in Perfect Dark, and you also have over 40 weapons which all have a secondary function. So you have 80 weapons if you want to call it that.

Also, all of the levels are huge in Perfect Dark; the architecture is more complex than in Goldeneye, although that may just be what I think. There is also [and this is incredible to me] a "training level" that you can roam in between missions, you are able to go into the Carrington Institute and practice with the weapons, gadgets and read up on the Story, and it also helps getting to know the Institute for a mission that you do later. And you are also able to unlock several of cheat codes by completing levels or by doing them in some specific time limit that is quite hard to do for most of them. You are also capable of playing levels with your friends with them either helping you, or playing multiple characters that are against you [hard to explain].

As for the main campaign itself, it is fun, but it is just not as good as Goldeneye was. All of the new stuff works very well, and the espionage style gameplay in Perfect Dark and Goldeneye is capable of making you think. But I just thought that even though the levels were fun it did not live up to the amazing campaign that Goldeneye had. Although, if you are not comparing it to Goldeneye it is still very good, and there is a mind blowing amount of stuff in the Campaign, for the time this game came out.

Unfortunately all of this comes at a price; you NEED to buy the Expansion Pack for the N64 to make most of this stuff work. If you don't have one you only get 35% of the game, and that is because that Perfect Dark sucked so much out of the N64 that it needs more power to run everything. But I promise you if you get it is worth it.

Challenge: 9

Like many games out there, if you just want to beat the game on easy mode and quit, it won't be very hard. But if you decide to do everything, prepare to sweat. There are three main difficulty modes in Perfect Dark, Agent, Secret Agent, and Perfect Agent. Agent is simple enough and should not require too much effort to beat because most of the enemy's are pansies, but if you decide to go to the higher levels you will need to think to kill them before they fire a bullet through your head. You are also given far more objectives in the higher difficulties, which is another good way of making the game tougher [like Goldeneye did]. You will also need to work hard to unlock everything there is in the game, some of the cheat codes you need to unlock by beating a level under a certain time, and for most of them this is hard as hell to do.

You will also need to beat all of the Challenges in the Combat Simulator [multiplayer mode] to unlock everything, while the early ones are easy, once you start fighting the Perfect Sims and Dark Sims you will need to pray to win so you can get all of the multiplayer levels and skins for the Simulants. So to put al of this in the simplest terms I can, if you just want to beat the game on Agent so you can say you beat it, that's easy enough. But if you decide to get everything, well let me say it this way... I have been playing for seven years and I still don't have all of it.

Controls: 10

Like I said, Perfect Dark is a sequel of Goldeneye, and Goldeneye had the greatest control scheme of its time for a Console FPS in my mind; in fact Goldeneye paved the way for Console FPS games. Well Perfect Dark found ways to improve on what Goldeneye had. You can aim the weapons with ease in PD, but that seems hard with only one Control Stick, but it was done by using the Stick and the C-Buttons [or other buttons since you can change them] in conjunction to pinpoint your cross hairs on your targets forehead and then pulling the trigger to put them out of their misery. You are also capable of holding down the R-Trigger to bring up cross-hairs and manually aiming at a target by using the control stick [although it is a little hard to aim if your stick is as abused as mine is]. You can also duck down to use cover, and strife and run, it all feels very fluid and simple to perform everything. And most of the actions are preformed by pressing the B button, elevators, doors, computers, gadgets, secondary function, reloading: it is great that they did that so you don't have to memorize complex controls to activate everything.

Anyone who remembers how hard it was to swap weapons in a firefight in Goldeneye, that was fixed as well, you just hold down a button and all of the weapons/ gadgets you have pop up on the screen and you move the control stick to select one of them. Simply put, Perfect Dark is proof that a FPS can work on a Home Console.

Graphics: 9

As I said you need an Expansion Pack for the game to get all of the good stuff Rare gave you to work. And luckily for you also get some of the most gorgeous graphics that the Nintendo 64 had to offer and it also gave a little screw you to the Playstation owners. All of the levels look stunning, and have a great futuristic feel to them. And the AI also looks much better, there is less Polygonal Tearing and they look very realistic [remember this is the Nintendo 64]. It is very impressive what Rare is capable of doing with the Hardware that they are given. And seeing all of the different impact points of the weapons and the blood that will splatter when you shoot someone adds to the realism of Perfect Dark. The Weapons are all beautifully designed, and look exactly how they should, and unlike Goldeneye you can also see the Weapons RELOAD instead of seeing them drop below the screen and pop back up. Each weapon has its own distinctive reload animation, and they all look great.

Hell let me just say that everything looks great in Perfect Dark, and the ability to change the screen size and make it High Res which for its time was incredible is all great. But one of the low points is that there is so much being sucked out of the Nintendo 64 that if there is too much going on at one time everything will slow down to a speed slower than a snail in molasses.

Simply put, Perfect Dark gives you possibly the greatest Graphics ever seen on the Nintendo 64, and for some hardware that was showing its age it was nice to see something that looks better than a couple PS2 games I have seen out there. But the cost of those amazing graphics is that the Nintendo 64 has to do so much to make the game look great that the frame rate will drop really low a lot.

Sound: 9

The sound on Perfect Dark also delivers. One of the first things you will notice is that there IS voice acting, and there is a lot of it [remember the N64 is VERY limited in that market]. Every character [well the major ones] have their own voices. The enemy AI also talks like the enemy in more modern FPS games, they call for help, they make death throes, they will scream in shock, and really how much fun is it to kill someone and hear them call you a b****. Also, if you leave them alone you can hear them having conversations with each other sometimes.

The Music is also breathtaking, and there is also an "X" version, which is a sped up pumped up version of the Techno-Metal of Perfect Dark, and it all sounds great for a System with limited sound capacities. You are also hearing the sound effects of the bullets plinking off of the walls, and your boots crunching on the snow or tapping on the metal walkways or concrete. And the weapons, oh god they all sound the exact way that they should sound, and hearing their bullets ripping into the enemy's flesh and splattering their blood on the wall is equally satisfying. Really, just think of how limited the N64 Cartridges are, and compare them to CD's and DVD's, it is very impressive how much these geniuses at Rare were capable of cramming in there.

Atmosphere: 9

Perfect Dark sets up the atmosphere very well. The levels make you feel like you're sneaking around, the music you hear also helps out with that, when the music changes and gets faster you get more excited and stuff like that. But for me the most immersing thing is all of the little details that there are, the sparks of the bullets pelting the walls, the screams of the enemy when you fire a bullet through their throat, the lighting and all of the other effects on the levels, which can change how it looks. Perfect Dark really does suck you in.

Multiplayer: 10

This is the Holy Grail of Perfect Dark, and the greatest Non-Online Multiplayer ever for a game in my opinion. Anyone who has played Goldeneye on Multiplayer, take that fun and multiply it by 10, and you have Perfect Dark's Combat Simulator. The massive amount of things you can do is mind boggling, you can create different Mission Modes like Capture the case, Pop a Cap, Hold the Case, Hacker and basic kill everybody, with Teams or Battle Royal. And you can also chose the weapons in each of the levels out of the 40 you are given, and that is very nice since you can set up levels to your hearts content. And there are also up to 8 AI in each level, and you can order the ones around on your team and they can fight like humans except they cant use some weapons [Remote Mines].

You are also able to adjust their difficulty, and their behavior since there are some special settings you can give them, like Speed-Sim, which moves very fast, and so many others it gives you an even bigger feeling of customization. And you are also able to select the appearance of the AI in the mode, and there are at least 50 different bodies and hundreds of heads, so that is impressive as well. And you can set up the music from all of the songs you have heard in the game, but since I don't care I leave it on "play all songs". And the game records all of your stats, and it makes you think of just how much time you spent on the game when you look at it. The only problem is the slow down when you have 8 Simulants and 4 Humans blowing lead at each other.

But as simply as I can put it, Perfect Dark is the God of N64 Multiplayer games. And, Rare has put things in a game made over 7 years ago, and its Multiplayer still has not been eclipsed in just how much you can do with it.

Replayability: 10

Lets see... the Cheats, the adjustable difficulty, the amazing Multiplayer, and it was made by Rare, if I could I would hook it up to my brain and play ALL DAY LONG until I die.

Pros:
Great Graphics, sound, multiplayer, AI... great everything! Joanna is a great character.

Cons:
Slowdown, levels aren't as good as in Goldeneye [although they look better], need an expansion pack.

Should you get it:
You must buy this game right now; Perfect Dark is the best FPS game on the N64, and possibly one of the best FPS games of all time.

I would also recommend getting the prequel Perfect Dark Zero [even though it is not as good], Goldeneye, and any of the games made by the people at Free Radical because that company is made up of people who worked on this game.

Overall:

Yet again Rare has created a Gem, and it is sad that they can't make em like this anymore, hell it's a shame that so many Modern FPS games have not come close to being as good as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark were. And Perfect Dark is a very hard game on Single Player mode, which will take up plenty of time getting everything, and easily worth your time. This game is one of the many examples of how Rare kept Nintendo alive during the Nintendo 64 years.

Although, if you only like the newer FPS games I doubt that you would like Perfect Dark because a lot of modern FPS games are just run and gun. But you might like Perfect Dark Zero, because even though it has plenty of espionage in it, there are still some Halo-esqe firefights.

10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/07, Updated 03/24/08

Game Release: Perfect Dark (Player's Choice) (US, 2001)