Just how dark is Perfect Dark? (Perfect Dark (N64))

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Product:	Perfect Dark (N64)
Date:	02/07/00 (5 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Perfect in every way

Disadvantages: the manual needs alot of improvement

No. It's not perfect. The manual is rubbish: it skilfully manages to convince first time players that the game has far less features than it actually does and then refuses to explain properly those options that it does begrudgingly agree to mention. Other than that though, this is probably the most expansive and complete video game ever created. No feature is left untweaked, no game mode has been left unrealised and no graphic appears unpolished. It is, in short, everything you expected and (considering how long we've been waiting for it) demanded.

For those poor souls not in the know Perfect Dark is the pseudo-sequel to GoldenEye 007: a first person shooter so far ahead of its time some games are only now getting around to stealing its ideas. At first glance GoldenEye appeared to be a fairly bog-standard first person shooter (FPS) but quickly revealed itself to be the most innovative since Doom. Indeed the inclusion of stealth tactics and tight mission-based levels transcended the often shallow FPS genre and went on to inspire everything from Metal Gear Solid to Counter-Strike. It promptly sold by the bucket load and had many running out to buy a N64 purely to play that one game. In their wisdom MGM promptly took away the James Bond license (which ironically led to the creation of Tomorrow Never Dies - one of the worst games ever made), and the geniuses at Rare were forced to come up with their own hero(ine) and setting for the sequel.

Thus Perfect Dark stars Joanna Dark, who works for the Carrington Institute (a sort of cross between MI5 and the Knight Foundation), and is set in a near future, RoboCop-esque world rather than the present day. Other than that though this is GoldenEye writ large with every single element of the original tweaked to perfection and so many new features its almost impossible to think of anything else they could have added. A word of warning though: don't play the game on the easiest difficulty setting. If
you want to just practise moving and shooting try the excellent training mode because, as with GoldenEye, you can quite easily zip through all the levels on easy mode without really having to resort to any stealthly sneaking around and without having to use some of the more esoteric tools and weapons.

To say that Perfect Dark is all that it should be is really all that's necessary. Even now I've not had a chance to really mention the superb training level (complete with it's own challenges and rewards), the huge number of cheats and hidden features (much more than GoldenEye), the awesome sound and music, the unlawfully entertaining cooperative mode (the only time the frame rate ever becomes a problem - but it's worth it for the chance to tackle the single player mode with a friend or trusty simulant), the counter-operative mode (ditto, except here one person gets to be Jo and the other gets to be all the other guards) and the thirty single player challenges against simulants (once again almost a game in itself).

Games this good don't come around every day, so do what ever you can to own this. It's the best thing Rare have ever done and it's the best FPS on any console (and probably the PC as well). Looked at subjectively it's not as genre-staggeringly innovative as GoldenEye, but then you can only reinvent the wheel so many times. This time though Rare have been able to build a Ferrari around it instead.

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