"Must…resist…urge to keep…N64…getting…stronger…"

One day during my junior year in high school I decided to ditch class and go over to my friend’s house to play this new supposed “reason to own a Nintendo 64”. My friend had been preaching for a good portion of that week, about this new game on the Nintendo 64 that was like Goldeneye, except better. Quite a statement if you ask me, and being as pathetically gullible as I am I was convinced I had to try out this new game. Thankfully for myself my gullibility actually worked for me instead of against me. I was a little skeptical at first but after enough play time I was convinced that Perfect Dark was the new game to own on the N64. So I decided to buy it and add to my understandably small N64 game collection. Suckily for me though, in order to play all of Perfect Dark I was conned into purchasing the memory expansion pack for the N64. I say conned because you have to buy a part for your system to play the “better” games, which could have just been included in the N64 in the first place.

Gameplay – 30/30
If you think you’ve played every “First Person Shooter” type game, and feel like there is no reason to play Perfect Dark, you are more wrong than someone who picked the Orlando Magic to win the 2004 NBA finals. I implore you to play Perfect Dark, even if you feel the urge not to. Perfect Dark is like the true sequel to Goldeneye, except minus James Bond. PD uses the same game engine as did Goldeneye, which is obvious seeing how similar the two games are. You play as Joanna Dark who is one bad motha-shut your mouth!

The best part of this game is the weapons. They are some of the best weapons for a First Person Shooter type game. One of the reasons for this is that each weapon has a primary attack and a secondary attack, that can be activated by holding down the B button. My favorite weapons range from, but are not limited to, a laptop gun which is a machine gun that can be folded up into a laptop so it can bypass security. What makes this gun special is that upon activating the secondary mode you can turn the gun into a sentry gun and toss it onto a wall or ceiling where it will stick and shoot down anything that moves without input from its owner. Once the ammo has been depleted you can go right over to the gun and pick it up off the wall where it is returned to your weapon stash. Another great gun is the SuperDragon. On primary mode it is a machine gun, which becomes a grenade launcher upon activation of secondary mode. Another is the FarSight, which is an alien made gun that allows its user to see through walls and kill its target in 1 shot. Other guns are an assault rifle, a RC-P120 that is a machine gun, equipped with a cloaking device, a gattling gun that turns into a drill in secondary mode, and a rocket launcher that allows its user to remotely control where the rocket goes. The guns in Perfect Dark are what help make this game so good.

Another great quality or Perfect Dark is the ability to play through single player mode with a friend. That’s right you can play through all the missions with 2 players. One guy can even control Joanna Dark, while the other controls the baddies. The baddies are also very lifelike. They move and act like real people. For example if you shoot an enemy in the hand he will drop his gun, hold his hand as he tries to shake off the pain, then pick his gun up off the floor and come after you. The guns are extremely accurate, which is great considering how important accuracy is. Perfect Dark’s gameplay is every thing Goldeneye’s was and more.

Multiplayerability (hmm is this a word) – 20/20
The multiplayer aspect of Perfect Dark is perfect. There is nothing that can be done to make it better. You can choose what guns you want for each level unlike Goldeneye where you had to select from a set list of specific weapons. Also unlike Goldeneye, you can get dual guns (like 2 handguns, etc.) in multiplayer mode. You can now select bots to even out the teams, or to use in case you wanted to play by yourself. There are about 50+ different characters to choose from, 16 different levels, including a few classics from Goldeneye (go go complex, *drools*), 30 + unique weapons, 6-8 different game types, capture the flag, king of the hill, uplink, and others, plus 15+ different types of bots using prespecified behaviors, up to 6 teams, and a maximum of 4 players and 8 bots per game. Multiplayer here is a gamers dream. It does not get any better than this.

Funfactor – 20/20
Lol, lets see. On multiplayer alone it says I have played this game for about 49 hours. You, the reader, need to understand that most of your gaming time will be diverted towards the single player part of the game. So if I played this game for that long then it had to have been fun. Multiplayer is hands down the most entertaining aspect of this game. Living in a small town where there is nothing to do made this my primary option on Friday nights. I would invite 3 of my friends over and we would play Perfect Dark on multiplayer all throughout the night. This lasted on and off for about 4 months. I wouldn’t be surprised if you did this as well.

Graphics – 9/10
You must buy the memory expansion to play this entire game. So from the get-go I was expecting outstanding graphics. Did Perfect Dark deliver? Yes and no. Yes because the graphics are great. The characters look good, as do the levels; they are very detailed down to the last plant, desktop computer, or wall texture. I say no because when you are playing multiplayer with 3 or more people that graphics get a lot worse. They become just average. I dunno if this is because there is too much going on the screen to deliver great graphics without massive slowdown, or what, but with more than 2 players the games graphics become noticeably worse.

Control – 9/10
Unfortunately you must play this game on the Nintendo 64, which means you will have to use the worst controller ever made. That being put aside, the controls are still pretty good. The only problem is that there is no jumping. This one other aspect could have made this game a lot better, but oddly it was excluded from the game.

Music/Sound – 7/10
I like the music here. It is all techno, but is still good. It is mostly upbeat which keeps you pumped up for the fights. You can choose which tracks to play and which not too during multiplayer modes. This is helpful since some of the tracks are terrible.

Story – 4/5
It isn’t Final Fantasy VII, Suikoden 2, or Xenosaga, but for a first person shooter it is good enough to keep you interested. There are a lot of plots twists and this will keep even the casual gamer interested. If you don’t care about the story then you can press any button to skip through the screens where they explain it. It’s hard to explain the main part of the story because it involves a major plot twist.

Replayability – (Bonus) 5/5
Each level has 3 types of difficulty. Each difficulty upgrade involves one or two new objectives. You can also get cheats by finishing the levels under a certain amount of time. Plus there is so much fun to be had in multiplayer you will be playing this one for awhile, and well after you finish the single player mode.

Overall - 99/100

Damn. That is a pretty high score eh? I don’t like giving out many scores that high but it cannot be helped. Perfect Dark is a must own game for the N64. I would even go out on a limb and state that it is the best N64 game ever made, but that isn’t saying much considering how crappy the games are on this system. You owe it to yourself to play this game.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/02/04