I don’t know what’s more important – the fact that the Xbox 360 has such a great game in Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ) at launch, or that Rare was able to pull it together with their backs against the wall. Either way, it’s good for us gamers.
I have to say I wasn’t that impressed with PDZ when I popped it in on November 22, 2005. The inevitable comparison to Halo came to mind, going against the collective suggestions of critics. I felt the single player campaign started off confusing, the movement disorienting, and the objectives unclear. Plus I felt it didn’t take advantage of what next-generation gaming should be, by communicating mission objectives with narrations over static maps. Not only that, but the player was forced to pause the game to read (who does that, nowadays) updated mission objectives, feeling like leftovers from the N64 era.
Diving into the multiplayer, Deathmatch felt slow and plodding. The repetitious and rhythmic pulse firing from the bots made me think, “did someone really think this was fun?” Plus, it seemed like there were more bots than humans on most maps. And without a jump function, these maps just felt like they were too constraining, even though they are scalable.
With so many complaints toward the game, it’s no wonder why I spent so much of my time on Xbox Live Arcade. But I always felt in the back of my mind, I needed to give PDZ another chance. Now that I’ve completed the single player in Agent difficulty, my thoughts on the game have obviously changed.
First and foremost, I still have issue with some of those earlier statements. The game is so detailed, it’s almost disorienting and difficult to find where to go next. And there is so much action at times that you might not hear the in-game objective updates, and so pausing takes you out of the action and loses some of the effect. And written mission objectives? Yes, this is definitely a N64 holdover.
But the single player campaign is definitely engaging. Every level is varied and there are several ways to go about completing them. You can go in gunning for every enemy, or try and sneak around them. It’s entirely up to you (and most importantly, your skill, since every time I tried stealth I alerted the enemy). Having recently finished the original Perfect Dark for the N64 in preparation, I found the game was very similar, sans the obvious graphical improvements. That’s a compliment, since the original game was so good. The weapons were great and had a lot of secondary and tertiary functions, and the gadgets are everything a Rare shooter is known for. It even employed the same checkpoint feature as the original Perfect Dark, but where most FPS titles are moving toward quick save features, the checkpoints work here. They are well-placed and provide the right amount of challenge. Also, restarting in the middle of a level actually penalizes the player by not counting statistics for the level on the leaderboards – a nice concept. Still, it was fun and I will definitely play through the game again on the more advanced difficulty levels. But the one fault is that perhaps it was a little too similar, and didn’t really advance the gameplay from that original title six years ago.
Online multiplayer is good, but Deathmatch isn’t the best way to experience it. The DarkOps multiplayer mode employs a Counter Strike-like purchasing feature which allows a good balance during online matches. This in turn makes every other game type better – Deathmatch, capture the flag, infection, etc. And the maps are good, they just need to be learned like every other online game to exploit their benefits. And of course, the secondary and tertiary weapon functions really benefit the online experience, especially in DarkOps where purchasing the right weapon is as important as anything.
I mentioned earlier it feels much like the original Perfect Dark (minus Marvin, thank God), which in turn felt similar to GoldenEye. There are definitely similarities between all three, and it really seems like Rare doesn’t care for reinventing a proven formula. Because of all the changes within Rare (the exodus of the GoldenEye crew, becoming a Microsoft first-party developer), it would be interesting to see if the majority of the game’s design is a holdover of those Nintendo glory days. PDZ has been rumored to be developed for as many different consoles as Kameo, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the design has been sitting on the table for years, and Microsoft finally threw enough resources at the project to get it out the door in time for the Xbox 360 launch. The next iteration of Perfect Dark, hopefully during the Xbox 360′s generation, will definitely be telling.
In the meantime, beware of SpotAnime gunning for your PDZ leaderboard statistics, because I see myself playing this game well into the new year.