During the month of May, Rare released a "sequel" to Golden Eye called Perfect Dark. When I broke the news that I have played Perfect Dark to my friends, the first question they asked me was "is it better than Golden Eye?" This review will surely tell you the answer...
GAMEPLAY
In this first person shooter, you play agent Joanna Dark working for the Carrington Institute. Like usual agents, you are assigned missions and in this particular case, your basic mission is to find out what a company named Datadyne is up to. When you find out, the story dramatically changes from then on.
Like all first person games, you'll constantly find yourself killing a bunch of enemies. To help you do so, there are cool weapons like sniper rifles, rocket launchers, ozie like guns (most common weapon found in the game), silencers, shotguns, and high-tech machine guns that can be found in the game. Getting rid of the enemies isn't as simple as point and shoot, however, thanks to Perfect Dark's advance AI. When I played the game, I found enemies that would find cover to protect themselves, actually call out "cover me!" (and as the resul
t they would aid themselves), roll out of a corner to avoid your fire and then shoot at you, and most importantly switch on an alarm if they spotted you. Besides going on a killing spree, you'll find yourself doing such things as taking pictures, hacking computers, shutting down things, or playing bodyguard. To help you do those things, there are extrodinary tools that you'll receive at each mission. These are some examples of what tools you can use: an infered scanner,
x-ray goggles, some sort of a "tricorder", and a horizon scanner.
All in all, it takes quick reactions and thinking to pass each level in this game. I strongly believe that the missions are more intense than Golden Eye's.
My favorite part of Perfect Dark's gameplay is its co-operative mode and its counter-operative mode. In co-operative mode, you and a friend can team up to pass the game! Cool! Although, you may find yourself arguing on who gets what ammo or weapon...but hey, that's an issue to be solved between you two. In counter-operative mode, one player plays Joanna Dark and the other plays the freakin enemies! The player playing Joanna, tries to pass the level while the other player
controls and switches between enemies to try to stop it from happening. Now that's tight!
Multiplayer death match is pretty cool also. This time, unlike Golden Eye, you get to have "simulants" in the arena also. These simulants are computer controled and they strive to kill the players. This adds more action to the match! Great addition!
The ONLY problem I had with Perfect Dark's gameplay are the constant frame skips. It runs pretty well with only one player, but when it comes to two or more, it skips a plenty. Even lowering the resolution doesn't really help! To tell you the truth, though, you'll get used to it.
GRAPHICS
With the help of the 4mb ram, no wonder Perfect Dark offers such great graphics. The enemies are so detailed you could see each of their faces, if you blow up a light source the environment immediately gets darker...everything is just stunning! However, because of the good graphics, Perfect Dark suffers from constant frameskips.
SOUND/MUSIC
Perfect Dark offers good sound effects. The enemies' voices, the environment sounds, the gunshots, Joanna's voice, and anything else sounds pleasing to the ear. However, during the cinematics, I couldn't realy hear exactly what the characters were saying. I recommend to turn on the subtitles before starting the game.
CONTROL
Perfect Dark has great control. Controling Joanna is as easy as it gets. There's a training center designed to make you master Joanna's movements if you have some difficulty. Oh! Here's a good tip: to "hide & shoot" from the corner of a wall, hold the R buttonand and press either c left or c right to lean to the side. Shoot by pressing z button and let go of c button to hid again (this only applies to "Golden Eye" control setup). Cool, huh! No problems in this catergory.
CONCLUSION
With incredible gameplay, good sound/music, stunning graphics, and great control Perfect Dark is the best first-person shooter so far for the N64. With that in mind, it is as clear as day to say "yes, Perfect Dark is better that Golden Eye."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Screen shots are from
www.rareware.com
|
|
|
Innovative Gameplay.
|
|
|
Frequent frame skips.
|
|
"Is it better than Golden Eye?
Oh you betcha!"
-RJ2
|
|
