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And Then There Was Perfect Dark…

We couldn’t do an article on GoldenEye 007 without mentioning its spiritual sequel, Perfect Dark. This game was the long anticipated follow-up game to GoldenEye, and it introduced us to a new heroin, Joanna Dark. Or basically, Rare’s take on a female James Bond. Perfect Dark was set the not so distant future of 2023. Yet it sported futuristic weapons, spaceships and even flying cars in the background of some levels that would explode with one shot of your pistol. Nice.

This game was supposed to be better than GoldenEye in every way. Thanks to the N64 Expansion Pak, it offered glossy “high-rez” visuals, complete with voice acting; an element that was missing from GoldenEye. The voice acting was actually really well done in this game. Too bad Perfect Dark Zero for the 360 didn’t follow in this game’s footsteps for that. A note to anyone who is yet to try PD Zero: Skip all cut scenes!

Although the first Perfect Dark was fun and really well put together, for many people it did not quite live up to the hype as a sequel to GoldenEye. Some of the single player levels were great. But when aliens were randomly introduced in the last few levels… well, they lost me there. That made the game suddenly feel very ‘un-GoldenEye’ for me.

Overall the game was quite a bit of fun though, and definitely should be considered a classic on the N64. The multiplayer mode was a blast, complete with the addition of bots that you and a friend could team up against. It also offered a cooperative mode for the story campaign, which was a nice addition.

Of course, like GoldenEye, this game had a ton of preset control options so everyone could jump in. And as SAKY pointed out, Perfect Dark even sported a control scheme similar to Turok for the southpaw players. Those were the good old days…

Then Joanna Dark went missing. A sequel was planned (as alluded to earlier in this article) for the Gamecube and then the original Xbox. It finally arrived in the form of Perfect Dark Zero, a launch title for the 360. This game was not well received, even though it was one of the first 360 games. Many fans of the shooter genre were too distracted with Call of Duty 2 and the first GRAW. The game did manage to sell quite well though, but many people accredit this to the fact that there was not many games to pick from upon the launch of the system.

Personally, I thought PD Zero was an alright game. It managed to capture the look and feel of GoldenEye & the original PD, but it didn’t quite measure up. Of course, many core members from the development team responsible for the first two titles had left Rare to form their own company: Free Radical Design. So for me, I was aware that the principle guys behind the greatness of the first two installments weren’t part of the PD Zero team. Hence, my expectations were not as high for the game. Those looking for a masterpiece in PD Zero because of its namesake were surely disappointed.

But looking at PD Zero with that frame of mind allowed me to get a little bit of enjoyment out of the game… at least from a nostalgic perspective. It was the first 360 title that I played through, but its now been retired in favor of better games. However, I would say that it’s worth a look at every now and again. Maybe on a rainy day. Just don’t expect an experience like you had on the N64.

For that kind of experience, you will have to try Haze by Free Radical Design, currently slated for release on the PS3 this year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 am and is filed under Classic Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.