"This game is perfect....almost a little TOO perfect...."

Perfect Dark is a game that needs no introduction. When you take away Halo, Gears of War, Half-Life, and Call of Duty, you go back to a shooter that, console generations ago, still redefined the standards that all good shooters strive for. The unofficial sequel to Goldeneye 007 takes the same simple run-and-gun formula and wraps it up in a shiny package loaded with more features than a Swiss army knife and extraordinary graphics that were rivaled at that point in time. Of course, you probably already knew that, either by word of mouth or by prior playing experience. But for Perfect Dark, a game that seems to do everything “right,” there's just some fundamental things that irk me.

From starting this baby up, you can't help but be amazed by a “whooshing” Perfect Dark logo and the futuristic menus (yes, even the menus in this game are good). The game takes place in the 2040's and in the game's story, you play as Joanna Dark, a secret agent working for the discrete Carrington Institute. You can walk around the Institute and engage in a few training exercises, or you can dive headfirst into one of the game's modes. The plot begins with the “evil” dataDyne corporation designing some kind of computer under the pseudonym “Dr. Caroll” that senses some malintentions from his superiors, so the Carrington Institute tries to retrieve it. In the process, more sci-fi elements are introduced to the plot, such as aliens, Area 51, the President of the United States, human cloning (in the body snatcher sense), and underwater submarines. Cutscenes are voiced-over by actual people instead of Goldeneye's basic “in-and-out” routine. It's campy stuff for anyone interested in this genre and keeps the storyline moving.

One thing the game deserves credit for is the wide variety of missions you will engage in. Environments include a five-star office building, a villa, a fictional Area 51, Air Force One, an Arctic tundra, and a spaceship here and there. In one mission, you even defend the very Institute you work in from foreign invaders. Also, if you have love for those “little grey men” from alien folklore, you're gonna love this game as a stray alien named Elvis befriends you for half the game's missions. For fictional levels, environments look absolutely gorgeous with crisp lighting, bursts of texture goodness, and doodads abound. Each mission has its usual set of objectives and most of them are practically assorted around the level and generate a little thinking on your part. There's three difficulty levels—the harder ones tack on more objectives and make it easier for you to die. Needless to say, the missions will keep you occupied for a very long time by themselves.

The bulk of the game's shooting should be labeled as “Goldeneye 2.0,” as basically, the same fluid gameplay remains. The button configuration is nearly identical. You can speed-strafe and run-and-gun just like old times. However, new to the game is a crosshair that remains on-screen even when you are not in manual-aim. Also, smarter, more “living” guards encompass the mindless drones of old. They speak, yell, and even groan in pain and death. Guards won't flock towards you in stupidity and can even punch you if you get up close to them. You can even disarm them and watch as they go to retrieve their weapon, pull out a pistol, or put their hands up in surrender. Sure, the AI isn't perfect and you can duck behind cover while they do their shooting animation, but they add more depth to the game.

The new selection of weapons encompasses that of contemporary firearms and rifles to unforeseen alien technology. One gun in particularly, the Farsight, allows you to look through walls and kill enemies across the level in one hit. Another, the Slayer, is basically a fly-by-wire rocket launcher (you know you wanted to play with one of those). To top it all off, every weapon in the game has a secondary function that can be toggled on in an instant. Some of it is as basic as a pistol that can shoot and melee an opponent, while another can turn a normal rifle into a grenade launcher or even an portable sentry gun. The reload animations are a leap beyond Goldeneye's nonexistent animations as you can see your character slap a new clip into the gun with ease. There's about forty unique weapons in the game, and that is very good indeed.

The story mode holds a lot of value, but the Combat Simulator takes the cake. This is the game's definition of a deathmatch mode in which you can duke it out against other players AND bots in one of sixteen arenas. Kind of like how everything in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory is edible, EVERYTHING in this mode can be edited in some way. You can create your own playable characters by selecting from a multitude of heads and bodies and save a profile with your own settings and statistics. Bots can be arranged in numerous difficulty levels and can even be be equipped with specific personalities, such as using only his fists or by running around the level non-stop. You can assign up to eight bots and put them into teams in a few basic scenarios, particularly Capture the Case and King of the Hill. Even the weapons can be hand-picked and arranged however you like. The multiplayer maps include a few makeovers of Goldeneye classics (Temple, Complex, Facility) as well as thirteen original arenas. This mode basically guarantees lots of replay value, especially topped off with its revolutionary gameplay.

Under normal circumstances, a game like this would be easily handed a ten, but no such thing here. Why? No online play? Too un-nostalgic for Goldeneye? Petty Xbox fanboy? Two complaints really keep this game from being “perfect.”

One problem would be the game's incessant lag. Perfect Dark seems too powerful for the Nintendo 64 to run. Occasionally in the game's missions, you'll stumble across a rather populated area and the framerate dips into the single-digits. This makes playing the game MUCH more difficult, often leading to plenty of stupid deaths. In the Combat Simulator, you will still get some lag now and then, especially when several players appear on the screen at once. This is mostly due to the massive level geometry in certain locations. I do give Rare credit for really loading this game up with detail, but more often than not, you don't have the option to bypass these laggy sections and I would prefer to sacrifice a few liberties here and there to make sure the game runs fluidly (maybe an overclocked N64 would work, but I don't trust one).

The other problem, which is partially due to even minute amounts of lag, is the slightly annoying aiming reticule. While I was never a fan of Halo's fixed reticule, PD's moving reticule seems a bit stiff as well. What will happen, especially when you are getting used to the game, is that you'll “trust” auto-aim to blast away a poor fool only to have it give out at the last second, thus you'll unload a whole clip into the wall. While I may seem jaded for lacking “skill,” I have beaten the story mode on the hardest settings and have faced many hardships to do so. The N64 Controllers are also at fault because when worn out, it becomes much more difficult to aim.

I really hate to bring up one little point despite the rest of the game's praises. To end on a good note, this game has an outstanding original soundtrack—the kind of stuff you may even listen to on your iPod. Plenty of synthesizer, Goldeneye-ish stuff, but each song, whether or not hyper-quick or low and moody, really sets the mood of the mission that you are in. You can also customize the soundtrack in the Combat Simulator to cycle through whatever songs you enjoy the most.

This is a great game and I'm sure that most of you already realize this. It's worth a buy if you don't own the cartridge already because it does so many things right that we could hope for in a first-person shooter. I would be willing to confess this game deserves a better score if only something as basic as the framerate could be kept under wraps, but to no avail. However, the rest of the game is perfect.

Presentation: 10/10 – Not only are the menus breathtaking, but you can also walk around Carrington Institute in a pseudo menu-ish way. Very cool.
Gameplay: 9/10 – Solid shooting single and multiplayer loaded with tons of features.
Graphics: 8/10 – The future looks bright, pardon that terrible framerate.
Sound: 9/10 – Besides a few low-key sound effects, everything from the gunfire to the soundtrack is spot on.
Replay Value: 10/10 – Story mode is stellar and creative, while the Combat Simulator is more than enough to solidify this game's value.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/14/08

Game Release: Perfect Dark (US, 05/22/00)