Perfect Dark (N64)

...chart topper. After much anticipation, Perfect Dark, which was dubbed as the sequel to the Nintendo 64 game, “Goldeneye", was finally released. Both Perfect Dark, and Goldeneye, were created by the British gaming company Rare, which also have created such games as Star Fox Adventures, Banjo Kazooie and the Donkey Kong series.

The first person view shooting game based on the story of 'Goldeneye' (the James Bond film) was and still ...
...the James Bond one, and Perfect Dark needed an equally as catchy sound track. It sure got one! A rocky futuristic theme, everyone that I know has heard the music to it claim that it is one of their favourite tracks from the game.

Each level also has its own atmospheric soundtrack, and when the danger increases, you get a speeded up more intense version of the music to get that adrenalin pumping. The music alone of this game is fantastic ... more

Multiplayer: Yes, up to 4 players can play all together.
Expansion Pak: Required to play the solo missions.

The game is nicely packaged in a rectangular cardboard box with great art work on the face of it. The back side of the box presents a brief summary of the plot and the games features which I will inform you of in the review. There are also a few screen shots present. (I will also include some at the bottom of the review).

The new century brought with it, a game that was to become a chart topper. After much anticipation, Perfect Dark, which was dubbed as the sequel to the Nintendo 64 game, “Goldeneye", was finally released. Both Perfect Dark, and Goldeneye, were created by the British gaming company Rare, which also have created such games as Star Fox Adventures, Banjo Kazooie and the Donkey Kong series.

The first person view shooting game based on the story of 'Goldeneye' (the James Bond film) was and still will remain to be a fantastic game, it is irrelevant as to if you like the movies or not, for both gaming reasons, as well as nostalgic reasons. I heard people stating that 'Perfect Dark' was to be better than 'Goldeneye'. Bah! I didn't believe that! However, a friend of mine acquired this game when it came out, and to my surprise - I warmed to it. The graphics, the plot, the characters the music - everything! All shall be explained in more detail later... I did not get this game myself until a few months later, as me and my friend was constantly on his copy of the game. (There - that implies that the multiplayer feature is great!)

Now, I must warn you, this could be a somewhat lengthy review as there is so much to speak about, so I will try my best to make it as interesting and readable as possible!
However, I do need to do this game justice, so I will do as I must.

First of all, this game is for adults. It is certified a 18 +. So, no little children to be playing this! Well, this actually isn't the most violent of shooting games, in terms of gore. However, there are plenty of weapons that are utilised. Weapons!? Don't let that word put you off. You don't need to know nothing about fire arms to enjoy this game. After all, I didn't (and still don't!) know anything about fire arms. In fact, even if you did know things about fire arms, you will soon discover that not all the weapons are of this Earth...

Now, with that out of the way shall we begin?

~+~+~ THE PLOT ~+~+~

You take on the role of female Special Agent - Joanna Dark under the employment of the Carrington Institute. The year is 2024 (or something close to that!), and you have just passed all of your training. Daniel Carrington presents Joanna with her first mission. The mission is to investigate the strange activities of the rival company, the Datadyne Corporation. You are instructed to rescue Dr. Carroll from the Datadyne HQ. Dr Carroll whom is a former Datadyne employee has vital information for the case. This won't be an easy task and no way will it be the end once he is rescued.

The story continues to unfold as the game continues. You will eventually learn that Datadyne have made contact with aliens, named Skedars, who are rivals with an alien species named Mayans (these are stereotypical looking aliens with big heads and large eyes). Datadyne hope to extract powerful weapons from the Skedars through a deal, to out do their rival institute, the Carrington Institute. However this could have dire consequences - especially as you soon discover that the Skedars are plotting their own plan to destroy the world, as well as Datadyne Co - operation as a result. You and eventually the Mayans team up together, to stop this possible world destruction taking place.

Now, I hope I have not lost you! If need be read through that section again. Perhaps take a drink of water or something. Or hold on to your seats as I continue with this roller coaster ride of a review!

~~~ THE GAME PLAY (and controls) ~~~

There is so much to say about the game play that it isn't funny! Basically the game is split in to a few sections; Solo Missions and Combat Simulator. Both of these modes are open for either one or two players.

---Solo Missions---
Let's start with Solo Missions. (An Expansion Pak is REQUIRED to be able to play this mode!).

Solo missions can obviously be played alone, or a friend can join you as you blast the enemies in over 20 fun packed missions. If you choose team missions, then the 2nd player plays as Velvet Dark, Joanna's blonde haired sister. Strangely, both resemble the 80's American female cops from the T.V series 'Cagney and Lacey' - same hair styles and everything! Having a friend help you on missions can be great fun. You can have your friend guarding you from enemy attack while you defuse a bomb, and other such scenarios. However, it can also be a bit of a problem at times - especially if the other player is not too skilled and wastes value ammo which can get quite tight on two player missions. Other possible problems that could occur is that your friend is clumsy and decides to alert guards and such, which could ultimately result in mission failure. Even so, it is all part of the fun, and nothing practice won't solve.

As for one player Solo missions:

The game runs like ‘Goldeneye', but this game has improvements. No longer do you need to be shot at by enemies as you scroll through weapons. There is now a easy method to select weapons, were you can hold down the A button, and then move the control stick to select what weapon you want from a list that appears on the screen.

Speaking of weapons, there are at least 40 different weapons available in this game, plus each has a secondary function! All of these weapons and their secondary functions hold some sort of important purpose in the game at certain stages, as well as having detailed background information and statistics. A lot of thought has obviously gone in to each weapon as well as their use. Holding B allows you to select the guns secondary function. Some of the stranger weapons may require some practice. Luckily there is a practice area within the compounds of Carrington Institute, the get that practice in before you take on the missions.

Anyway, weapons, here is a few and their functions:

The Falcon 2 Pistol is Carrington Institutes standard issue pistol. It has a basic 8 round fire as the primary function. Holding B allows you use the pistol to pistol whip people. There are also the sub machine guns, such as the Lap Top gun, which can be thrown and uses as a sentry gun. One of my favourites is the Dragon which is a sub machine gun which can be thrown and used as a mine that explodes when anything approaches it. Weapons later become more bizarre. The Pheonix is a blue alien created space aged looking hand held gun which shoots out explosive shells. The Slayer , is a rocket launcher which gives you control of the missile, which is always fun to use. The list goes on and on, but I won't list them all.

There are plenty of missions, taking you from the DataDyne building to a tranquil looking, but deadly holiday villa. From a dirty sleazy American back alley to a sunken alien mother ship which has crashed, and has since been resting at the bottom of the sea bed for millions of years. Each mission is packed with objectives. On an easier setting you are only required to do 3 objectives per mission, however, as you play on harder difficulties, you are required to do about 5/6 objectives per mission. Objectives can range from killing a guard captain to defusing a bomb Another one that deserves a special mention is one particular objective in which you must blast an armed helicopter out of the air with a rocket launcher. (Very movie - esque!)

Completing each mission not only opens up the next part of the game, but it also unlocks cheats (if you do missions on certain modes in certain time limits), and also opens up more scenarios, character skins and such.

Along side the weapons there are numerous pieces of equipment to help you on missions, such as scanners, cam spys(which you can control to spy on guards and avoid being shot at yourself) , night vision goggles, and bomb defuses.

The games hard mode is really is hard, and only for experts! It took me absolutely ages to complete all of the game on the hard setting. My friend who had the game before me never even managed to complete the game on the hard setting. It's all down to practice. Practice makes..perfect!

Each mission is filled with various 'movie' sequences and each contributes to the storyline and moves the game along nicely and in a clear manner.

-- COMBAT SIMULATOR --

This mode can be played with no expansion pack, although I never have done so. It is probably plausible to say that with the expansion pak that the combat simulator will run better. As mentioned briefly before, from completing missions on solo mode you can unlock character skins, arenas to battle on and guns to use in this mode. What is also a nice touch is that you can select what music from the game plays.

So, what is combat simulator? Well, you and up to four friends can create your own custom matches. You can select what arenas you wish to battle in, what guns, and also where they appear. You can also select from a vast catalogue of characters to be and select what bodies you want with which head! (A women's body with an aliens head can be amusing). You can also create a character and name it what you want. Once used, you can save this character along with its stats and such, and continue to do so to keep track of how you are doing in combat simulator. It's fun and adds a new flavour to it as you can personalise your character to your liking.

Also, you can select up to 8 computer characters to participate in the battles (and if you have 4 friends playing also - it is great fun!). The computer characters are called "simulants" and you can select their artificial intelligence, which ranges from 'meat' to 'dark'. Meat sims are supposed to be easy, however they still put up a big challenge.

You can have all for one matches or you can have team matches. You can have any human player sided with you, or them sided with a simulant, or you with a simulant, the combinations are endless.

My niece who was admiringly under aged, (She was 14 at the time, but nothing she had never seen from over at her friends houses) enjoyed playing this, and it is something she would not normally touch. I think the fact that you can/have to work as a team is what she really enjoys about this. Also, she mastered the controls. So what is my point? My point is that the controls are easy to pick up, especially easy if you have played Goldeneye before. In any case, the Combat Simulator acts as practice in some respects.

Apart from just head on combat matches, you can also have scenarios such as "one hit kills", or "king of the hill" , in which you or your team must get to a certain highlighted room and stay in it for 30 seconds to win a point. Of course, the other team will also be after it and it can lead to some full on gun battles! Other scenarios include a kind of "tag" game, where one character becomes a target and the team mates must do their best to prevent their team mate from being killed. One other scenario I can recall from the top of my head is "Carry the Case" or something like that, and you/your team mates need to try and grab a brief case, and hold it as long as you can without being shot to death by the other team - who also want it. After 30 seconds of holding it you get a point.

There are also challenges that can be participated in, up to 30 in fact. They begin at an easy level, and increasingly get harder. I mean HARD as well. There were a couple I never managed to complete.

So over all what are the modes and settings like? No word can describe it! Perfect? Yes! The game play on this is top notch, and beats Golden Eyes multi player mode hands down, however, that is not to say Golden Eye should be thrown out with the trash, it will always provide me with fond memories, as will this game 'Perfect Dark'.

~~~ GRAPHICS~~~

Like Donkey Kong 64, this game required an expansion pack in order to be played to its maximum. It is easy to see why, as the stages are packed with detail and the areas are huge and full of surprises.

The game looks a lot smoother thanks to the Expansion pack and only slows down sometimes on Combat simulator mode when there are too many things going off at once. The smoothness however has induced headaches on a couple of people I know. The smoothness of the scrolling and such was just too much for them.

It is impressive to think that such a detailed large game can avoid so many potential slow downs. Golden Eye had less detailed areas and slowed down frequently. Now we have a detailed game which doesn't slow down.

The game is packed with explosions which look realistic, and each explosion leaves behind a murky smoke effect. Oh! How could I forget? One of the things that really made me warm to this game was the fact that if you take heavy damage, your character's vision become slightly blurry, adding a touch of realism to the game. The blurry effect fades away after a short period of time however.

Although, now the N64 is a console that is slightly dated, the graphics are also dated. However, these graphics come as good as they came for the Nintendo 64. Although graphics for the newer 128 bit consoles are a lot smoother and realistic looking.

~~~ Music & Sounds ~~~

The Goldeneye game had its own theme - the James Bond one, and Perfect Dark needed an equally as catchy sound track. It sure got one! A rocky futuristic theme, everyone that I know has heard the music to it claim that it is one of their favourite tracks from the game.

Each level also has its own atmospheric soundtrack, and when the danger increases, you get a speeded up more intense version of the music to get that adrenalin pumping. The music alone of this game is fantastic and very well written.

I can inform you that there is a section of the game which requires you to escape from a sunken alien mother ship on the sea bed, and as you do so the music is very eerie, fast and intense. It is by far one of my favourite parts of the game, and the music in that particular area heightens the excitement by a large degree.

The sound effects in the game are brilliant also. Each weapon has a unique clicking sound as they fire off rounds, as well as their own unique noises as they are re - loaded.

Each of the characters have their own unique voices also. The voice acting is spot on and creates a very movie like atmosphere to the entire game. Joanna Dark has a very young female voice, which often sounds rather curious, as this is her first real mission. The head of Datadyne on the other hand, the money grabbing Cassandra De Vries, has a posh, professional sounding voice. You also meet an alien that goes by the name of Elvis, which has a strange whiney alien accent! Meanwhile, on the field, the guards you shoot yelp, and some even beg of you not to kill them!

--- Over All ---

Perfect Dark is worthy of an 100% grade in my books. The plot is interesting and doesn't get boring. The locations are detailed and refreshing and so are the characters that all have their own personal traits to make them memorable.

With plenty of features on offer and the ability to have 4 players playing at the same time on various scenarios is enough reason to have possession of this game alone. The game is of a high standard in all aspects, and full of music and sound effects (it utilises Dolby Surround Sound), to make the whole experience seem like that of an action packed movie.

Sure the graphics may be a tad dated now with the new generations of consoles at hand, but nevertheless, this game has top quality graphics for a game of it's time.

The game can be purchased from online auction sites from varying prices, ranging from £10 - £25. If you are interested hunt around for it online, I doubt you will see this in the shops much now, unless it is a used games shop. Remember expansion packs are required and they can also be picked up cheap - my , even the actual N64 console can. The game will be worth it in the end as it provides on going fun. You can also smile knowing you own a classic piece of gaming history.

I have included some screen shots also with this review. However, they do not by any means do the game justice, as the images are rather poor quality, nor do they show off the most exciting parts of the game.

Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope I managed to keep your interest - I must have done if you have read this far!

Ben

 

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