| PERFECT DARK Review Review by: Preston Kilday 4/20/01 |
| I have to admit I'm an avid fan of FPS (First Person Shooter) Games I own way too many of them for one but what in the world got me started on this genre? Quake? Unreal? Doom? Turok? Nope, I own all of those yet that's not where I started in the genre. My first true FPS experience was a incredible game created by Nintendo's ace in the hole RARE as you can guess by now it was the spectacular Goldeneye I don't know a true gamer that hasn't at least heard of it and very seldom do I find people that haven't played it. Goldeneye was truly a masterpiece engaging, action packed, with an intelligent way of getting cheats , and lastly it was true fun especially in multiplayer with some friends or family. Then the news came that Rare was giving up the Bond license in favor of it's own creation many fans were upset there could be no other game to compare to Goldeneye now that they had given up the license all hope was lost, this new creation from Rare could not possibly be as good as Goldeneye.....Right? WRONG! Welcome to the world of Perfect Dark life after James Bond as some would see it. This game saw so many delays it was almost unbearable for fans of Goldeneye hoping that this would be the second coming of Rare's masterpiece well the wait was worth it. Rare has crammed almost every last thing you could want from a console game without an internet connection. Yet in this adventure your no longer James Bond a man of action, heck your not even a MAN! Joanna Dark is new protagonist of Rare's latest creation, an agent who was so talented she not only passed her training but made a perfect score on it thus gaining the code name Perfect Dark. Joanna's first mission leads her into a building office of Datadyne a corporation with some seedy dealings that may have truly galactic reprecussions. Joanna will soon find her first mission will lead her into a world she never dreamed possible. Now onto the review. Graphics (9/10) The graphics in Perfect Dark are pretty spectacular you can have high resolution mode with well designed levels and little objects that can be destroyed,but that's if you have an expansion pak but this leads to two of the graphics problems for one if you don't have an expansion pak you can't play most of the game including the one player mode(click on the expansion pak information at the top for more info on the modes. The other thing is the graphics push the N64 too hard not only do you sometimes have slowdown which is mild and no worse then Goldeneye's but worst of all due to the expansion pak which overheats way too easily the game freezes a lot in multiplayer in both COOP on certain levels and the Warehouse level in multiplayer if you have more then 2 people with bots. But despite these minor problems the game normally runs smoothly without problems. The graphics are sharp and the lighting effects in the game add quite a bit to the visuals . If not for the slowdown and glitches with freezing on certain levels I would have given it a Perfect score but this wasn't entirely the games fault, part of it is simply is the N64 has reached it's limit despite how hard Rare tried to make the engine work past the limits. Gameplay (10/10) The gameplay in Perfect Dark is truly perfect if you're a Goldeneye vet or a newbie you'll get the controls quickly a lot of things from Goldeneye made it over to PD including the targeting site which pops up by pressing R with the default setting on the controller but there have been some major additions.One is the secondary mode for all weapons including your fists, simply hold down the reload button for 3 seconds and you'll go into the secondary mode which varies weapon by weapon the Dragon gun is the perfect examply it's a normal rifle in it's first mode but switch to secondary mode and the gun becomes a mine that can be thrown on the ground that appears to be a gun but when someone get's in proximity of it they get a special surprise. Also, new to the game is the ability to jump off ledges which becomes very useful in multiplayer . [Next Page.......] |
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