Perfect Dark Review

By Coxster

Rare's first shooter on the N64, GoldenEye 007, was a huge success both from a technical and commercial standpoint. Its popularity is still evident as owners of the current generation of consoles continually beg for its release through XBLA or the virtual console. The sequel to GoldenEye 007 was never released, but many consider Rare's follow up shooter to be a sequel, even though it might not have the bond license, it still managed to do all the right things and even improved upon the groundwork that Goldeneye had laid down.

Perfect Dark did everything spot on, it had better weapons, better graphics, a rollercoaster thrill ride of a plot, better multiplayer maps and options, it could do no wrong. Remember that back in the days of the N64, there was no online network however Perfect Dark was able to run up to four player split screen multiplayer and co-op on the same console which was a huge achievement for back then. If you didn't have any friends handy or simply wanted to practice up on your shooting skills, there were options to have bots populate the maps and you could square off against them. You could customize and tweak the bots and the AI at the time was quite impressive. You could turn them from calm little bots into bloodthirsty killers, which was handy to keep up your skills in the multiplayer. Perfect Dark has obviously been designed with the player in mind as the game is thick with options and control that can be adjusted.

You play as Joanna Dark, an agent working the enigmatic Carrington Institute as it attempts uncovers a significant conspiracy within the secretive dataDyne corporation. It's a very juicy plot that involves clandestine governments and secret societies revolving around the use of covert alien technology. When this game was released, aliens and government conspiracies were all the rage and Perfect Dark was able to add to that trend admirably. With such a robust and complex story in place, it was vital that Rare execute the telling of it without any confusion. I will admit that for the most part, Rare did an excellent job, but if you're not paying attention be prepared to have the story run away on you. This is just one of the many areas where Perfect Dark completely owned Goldeneye007. At the time there weren't many stories offering such a deep narrative, especially on the N64 which is why so many gamers were so impressed with what Rare pulled off here. I remember replaying missions and missions over and over again as I tried to perfect my techniques of infiltration and espionage, finding the best paths to take and loving every minute of it. I can still play it today and enjoy it without the rose tinted glasses, it really does stand up to the test of time even if we are more spoilt these days when it comes to first person shooters.

As you progress through the single player campaign, you will unlock more and more weapons and gadgets. There are guns that allow you to see through walls using X-Ray, powerful automatic weapons that wield plenty of destructive power and can target incoming enemies. The best thing about Rare's choice of weapons for PD is that they are balanced perfectly. While one is good to use in a certain situation there will be a drawback to using it. You might have wave after wave of enemies heading your way and need to take them all out, so using a more powerful and faster shooting weapon may seem like the smartest choice, of course you would be right, but this is compromised by the gun taking longer to reload or not having better accuracy. It is very obvious that Rare worked back many late nights to slowly go through every aspect of every weapon and gadget to make sure the player used more strategy and tact. The camspy was one of the standout gadgets for me. I loved being able to fly around levels and to work out the patrol patterns of guards so that I could surprise them.

The levels are all very different from each other, making progression a joy rather than a grind because you always wanted to see what was coming next. One moment you're stalking the boardrooms of dataDyne, the next you find yourself in Area 51. All the environments were very different from each other and you rarely saw a repeating texture. Plus how can you not love the Rare style of character modeling?

One thing that Perfect Dark did (which Perfect Dark Zero later adopted on the Xbox 360) is that with each difficulty you are given more objectives to complete before you can progress. On Agent difficulty you will breeze through the single player campaign in about five to six hours and will have largely a shooter based experience, but go higher in the difficulty than that and you will have to complete more objectives that will require you to employ more stealth and skill into the mix. Now the objectives aren't just copy and pasted from level to level, each stage has its own unique goals to achieve and completing this game on the Perfect Agent setting is really going to test the hardcore from the casual player. One of the rewards for completing this game on the harder difficulty settings is that you will unlock cheats which can then be accessed from the corresponding menu and gives you another reason to play through this game as some of the cheats are hilarious.

To add more longevity to this crammed cartridge there are so many modes and mini games that you can complete to unlock further weapons (all the weapons from Goldeneye007 can be unlocked too…w00t!). Some of these challenges come in the form of shooting gallery style games and combat simulations to play through against Bots. It's so crammed full of extras that in all the years I've owned Perfect Dark, I always find myself coming back and doing something I hadn't done before which really marks the amazing job that Rare did back in the day. They may have suffered a bit of a backlash with this franchise with the release of Perfect Dark Zero (which I seemed to like more than just about anyone I know, probably because I'm a raving fanboy) but even then, to me it was proof that Rare respects the gamer and tries to offer as much freedom and fun as possible. If anyone from Rare ever reads this (yeah right) next time a sequel would have been better than a prequel.

Let's talk about the graphics. Of course using the same engine as Goldeneye, PD looks very similar to its earlier cousin as you can see from the use of colours, the weapons and polygon textures and of course the unique character models. While the similarities between the two games are obvious, Perfect Dark has far more to offer and apart from one or two other games, it is by far one of the best looking games that ever appeared on the 64. While there were moments of slowdown, this game ran much smoother and the guys at Rare really must have been. They even put in real time lighting and the animations were vastly improved. Probably the most impressive part that still manages to amuse me today is how well the guns are animated, the reloading and firing of these weapons still offer hours of guilty satisfaction. Also let's not forget that this game had blood which was very controversial back in the day and the way the bullets hit the bad guys with a resounding thud was always satisfying.

Overall: If you want the best example of a shooter on the Nintendo 64, forget Goldeneye007 and settle the argument by offering Perfect Dark. From its large environments and explosive plot, this game was head and shoulders above anything other console game developers were trying to pull off back in the day. It had so many modes and options that even today after all these years have passed it's still one hell of an enjoyable romp and should very much be a required game to play if you are ever going to label yourself a gamer on any level. Recently I asked someone at Nintendo if they were ever planning on releasing Perfect Dark on the Virtual Console for the Wii to which the answer was "Not a day goes by where we don't get asked that question." So I guess that is a big no, double that sentiment when you consider that Microsoft own Rare…I haven't heard back from them confirming any appearance of Perfect Dark on XBLA, but I guess we can always remain hopeful…although I was hopeful in the past hoping that the original Perfect Dark would appear as an extra feature on the special edition of Perfect Dark Zero, but alas it wasn't to be. Hopefully the companies have heard from us about PD making an appearance on our new consoles, until then just make sure that you keep your N64 in good working order because this game is essential to own and should demand some of your time.