"Perfect
Dark is an excellent game and its designers should be very proud of
the numerous options they thought up. It is a must have for any serious
action gamer or multiplayer frag-artist."
Platform: N64
Genre: Shooter
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Rare
ESRB: M
(Mature)
Released: Q2
2000
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Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark
represents the next logical step in the evolution of Rareware’s 1st
person shooters on the N64. Their first breakthrough was the Player’s
Choice Award Winner (or whatever the heck it’s called), Goldeneye.
When I first saw the television commercials I thought that we had
another bloody Tomb Raider rip-off. But I lost entire weekends playing Goldeneye
multiplayer with my friends, and it was going to take one heck of a game
to make me play anything else.
Perfect Dark
did just that. The multiplayer options are spectacular, giving people
the opportunity to play as one large team towards a specific goal. The
cooperative missions are a treat to play, especially on some of the more
difficult missions where teamwork is difficult for a pack of lone wolves
like my insane friends and me. But don’t kid yourself – most of the
fun of playing multiplayer is turning your friends into pools of bloody
goo. Perfect Dark has options in spades – all sorts of weapons
with the randomizer making frag-fests more frantic. The addition of the Goldeneye
levels made me grin like a Cheshire cat, especially when I saw how the
Rareware team updated them.
I
only have a few complaints about the game: the requirements to get some
of the weapons on multiplayer and the single player storyline. Almost
all of the weapons for multiplayer are earned by beating cooperative
missions – a great idea I thought initially, but having owned the game
for 2 months already (with renting raising that total closer to 4) I
could only earn 18 of the 30 challenges and that is playing
with friends who are of equal skill level, which is absolutely
ridiculous considering how frequently I play 1st person
shooters. Don’t even get me started on the shooting range requirements
to get the classic weapons– I’ll just start crying…
The
storyline for this game is sort of bi-polar for most people – they
love the early missions and the vaporous storyline, but are annoyed and
couldn’t care less by the end of the game. I couldn’t agree more.
The early missions are similar to the Goldeneye style – infiltrate
some base… blow stuff up… maybe save someone… great gaming
fun! The whole alien storyline was just infuriating – give me realism
or give me death! If I want to fight aliens I’ll play Star Trek:
Elite Force (PC). I wanted spy action dammit!
Despite
my personal pet peeves, Perfect Dark is an excellent game and its
designers should be very proud of the numerous options they thought up.
It is a must have for any serious action gamer or multiplayer frag-artist.