"Now that I look back on it, Goldeneye was better. But I am Still laughing in PlayStation owners faces!"

Perfect Dark is the best shooter ever, the one of the best Nintendo 64 games ever, and it will make PlayStation owners everywhere scream for mercy. PlayStation owners will never get a decent shooter; unless RARE Ltd. Corp joins your developing list. Tomorrow Never Dies didn't cut it, Time Crisis plays nothing like it, and if The World is Not Enough is the winner, Nintendo 64 owners get it too. Medal of Honor is as close as you get. And I do not work for Nintendo, or RARE. This game is just that good.

GAMEPLAY--9
Perfect Dark is a shooter, nothing else. Unlike many shooters though, it has a point. The gameplay can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make it. You can make up your own strategies to get through the missions. In multiplayer you will need to change your strategies for each of the different types of battles, including, my favorite, King of the Hill.

The fact that your objectives are more varied than in Goldeneye is both good and bad. It is good, because your gameplay will be more varied. It is bad because you will need to remember how to do even more different things than in Goldeneye.

GRAPHICS--9
The graphics are great. There is no polygon tearing, a major graphical problem in Goldeneye. There is absolutely no slowdown. The enemies are not blocky, and they all look realistic-just like humans. The blood looks fakey, but not nearly as much in some other games like Mortal Kombat. The textures look eerily realistic. (I say eerily because there is no way they should look that good.) The glass looks better than in Goldeneye, but it still looks pretty bad. (Especially the bullet holes in it. Ugh! Should that glass not crack???) There really is no way of telling what Joanna looks like in her various outfits besides pausing the game, and in multiplayer, but the all look different enough to see easily that they are different outfits, but not different enough that you do not think it is Joanna wearing them.

I am going to devote a special section to the lighting. The lighting quality varies throughout the levels. No, it is not the programmers fault. Some rooms are supposed to be brighter or dimmer than others, and this was carried out with amazing success. My one, however small, gripe, is that when you shoot out the lights, the lighting does not change at all. If it did, you could devise intricate strategies to use against the enemy.

MUSIC--7
SOUND--10
Hmmm...what is up with this music. I swear I have heard it before. Oh! Now I know where! I heard it all in Goldeneye! Well, not quite, but close enough. The songs are all songs from Goldeneye, with a couple of small changes to avoid suspicion (and copyright laws). They should have made more, because even by listening to the opening track you could tell that Goldeneye: The Remix was coming.

The sound on the other hand, is not a remix and it is much better than what is in Goldeneye. The voice acting is much appreciated. Hearing those innocent desk clerks pleading for their lives, and the dying (and living) enemies spewing out profanity raises the realism bar a few notches higher, so that even the best video game pole vaulter will have trouble clearing it.

CONTROL--10
Controlling is exactly the same as Goldeneye 007. ‘Z’ fires your guns, grenades, knives, or whatever else you have set as your weapon. You can change the weapon you have set by pressing ‘A.’ ‘Start’ pauses the game, and you move with the Control Stick. ‘B’ gets you back to the previous menu you were at, and the Control Pad? It just sits there and does nothing.

Joanna Dark responds quickly and effectively to everything you tell her to do, providing you press the right buttons to do so.

FUN--8
This game is not fun at all in one player. The missions are horribly dull, and on Perfect Darkness difficulty, impossible to beat. Most of the mission are completely different, but all the same boring. And the levels were thought out better in Goldeneye. They were even thought out better in Jet Force Gemini.

Half of you people out there will buy this game just for this section: Multiplayer. Multiplayer options abound and will amaze you. More characters could have been added in it though. But anyway, setting up custom modes and choosing from the 12 different 'sims' to be in them is engrossing. And then getting to play multiplayer in any mode is why this game exists. I consider the one player game a side bonus, and multiplayer what this game is about. You can change everything in your custom multiplayer scenario from which gun appears where, to the team names and colors in Team Battle Mode. I set up one of these battles, fully customizing every option and name for the maximum of twelve characters (four human controlled and eight simulants) and it took me well over an hour.

Write it 500 times: I will not become addicted. I will not become addicted. I will not become addicted...oh forget this. I'm going to go play more multiplayer.

CHALLENGE--PERFECTLY VARIES WITH THE DIFFICULTY
If there ever was a game with difficulty levels done perfectly, it was Goldeneye. If there ever was a sequel that has difficulty levels surpassing perfection, it is Perfect Dark. The game is fairly simple on Agent, and it substantially gets harder through Special Agent and Perfect Agent. Then, on Perfect Darkness, the game is downright impossible. The mission difficulty is set up exactly how it should be done. As for in the Combat Simulator (the fancy-schmancy term for multiplayer mode) you can figure out the perfect combination of the simulants that can make the game easy or hard for you-whichever you choose.

REPLAY VALUE--COMBAT SIMULATOR--HIGH
You will be playing these battles for longer than you will Goldeneye. There are so many customizable options, bells, and whistles, that you will always be experimenting to find the perfect combination. And you need to complete all of the challenges to unlock many of the weapons, plus a few missions and other things, in the game. The Combat Simulator is even fun to play alone.

REPLAY VALUE--MISSIONS--LOW
You will want to play these missions as little as possible. You will play them only to advance between the classes and that is all. You will try as hard as you can to beat the missions the first time through so you do not have to suffer through them again. But, you will have to suffer through them all three times to get to the hardest difficulty.

CLOSING STATEMENT
This is where I am going to issue a plea with Nintendo for the Dolphin: Give us Perfect Dark 2, Metroid, Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and Banjo-Kazooie early in the system's life. It will assure they get done and make sure you get all of your Nintendo 64 owners back. And do whatever it takes to get Capcom, Square, and Namco back.

FINAL CLOSING STATEMENT
Perfect Dark is a great game. It has a few flaws that prevented it from the perfection it says it deserved, so they should change the name of the game to Nearly Perfect Dark or something like that. But, nonetheless, it is the greatest shooter since Goldeneye, and it probably will be in the Top Three Shooters for a long time to come.

OVERALL--9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/00, Updated 07/18/01