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I remember a few years ago playing Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 like it was the only game available for the system. I remember playing Perfect Dark, a game also from Rareware Ltd as well as a shooter in 2000 with equal addiction. The game had a huge amount of replay, with a hard as nails single player story, a well-done multiplayer aspect, and a presentation of technology that the Nintendo 64 has never seen. Since then, Perfect Dark Zero was announced to be in development about a year later for the Nintendo GameCube, and from there, when Rareware began developing for Microsoft, to Xbox. About a year ago, the game began its journey over to the Xbox 360, taking a nearly complete game on Xbox. On it’s way it had some good upgrades to show how next gen the game is, but is it as good as it could have been? Probably not, as many of you might expect something a little different. The ultimate test is, how does the best name in console FPS before Halo, stack up against Halo now? Well, they are on two different levels, but ultimately, while Perfect Dark Zero isn’t the killer-app Halo was when it was released on Xbox in 2001, it has a lot of replay value, depth, and plenty to do for all gamers.
First, it is just amazing to have the game out, before this point a lot of people, including myself doubted that Rareware could create the title in time, or at all. Just to give you an overview of the game, PDZ takes place a few years before heroine Joanna Dark becomes a full-fledged agent of the Carrington Institute, describing how she become part of it, and revealing the origins of the rivaling and villainous company, dataDyne. In the start of the game, she is training with her father to become a sort of super-agent bounty hunter. Along the way, the campaign in the game explains the uses of each weapon, gadget, gets you used to the games mechanics, and so on. You play the single player portion under Solo Agent, and there three difficulties to start off with: Agent (novices), Secret Agent (standard), and Perfect Agent (hard). Experienced shooter fans will find a lot of difficulty, even in the Perfect Agent setting, and I personally struggled with the mode more than I did with Heroic difficulty on Halo 2. There are thirteen levels in all, each varying in size, but most of them are quite long, with plenty of enemies and obstacles to overcome, so the game the first time through should take you at least twelve-fourteen hours to complete, depending on how many times you get stuck. There are various mission objectives for each, some of them you may fail, and others you cannot.
The gun is as big as Joanna!
Throughout the campaign, you will of course play as Joanna Dark, the sexy and sultry super-spy woman of the future. You will be given various mission objectives, such as escort people, disarm satellite communications, infiltrate bases and find out information, or go on rescue missions. These various objectives are what help keep the gameplay fresh, especially with a story that most of us might not really find that interesting. It probably doesn’t help the fact that the story feels disconnected with short load screen between missions, that also brief you on your missions, and in many cases let you select a weapon. When selecting weapons, if the level gives the option, you usually select weapons you have picked up and used while going through the game.
When you start out, you are given a simple pistol. Throughout the solo missions, and multiplayer you will encounter many innovative weapons that definitely add on to the depth of the overall game. There are 25 weapons to use in all, but you can’t use all of them at once. The game gives you four slots to fill for your weapons, and so because of this, different combinations will help you in different situations. An example of this is, the rocket launch, since it is a heavy weapon, will take up all four slots. There are a large variety of pistols, all of which can be dual-wielded and controlled in a similar fashion to Halo 2. Many of them you can scope and zoom in with, which helps since headshots count for a lot in the game, especially when it is extremely hard to kill an opponent otherwise. Amazingly, you can even dual-wield magnums, which is basically like wielding two mini shotguns at once. The pychoisis gun is an interesting gun in that it will distort your opponent’s vision, allowing you to perhaps pull out another powerful weapon, and take them down. Each weapon in the game also has a secondary function, which can be used by pressing the right bumper, and some have better ones than others. The Falcon handgun for example has the option of throwing a round out on the ground, and the rounds in the clip blow-up shooting whoever is near by like firecrackers. As for the neavy weapons, you have a variety of plasma rifles, M60, and of course the rocket launcher. The rocket launcher’s secondary fire is particularly interesting, allowing you to actually control the missile, seeing what the missile sees.
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