Perfect Dark is a game that will forever be linked to the classic GoldenEye, and for good reason- both were FPSes made by Rare that were basically the only game in town if you were trying to play on a console. They even had a few of the same levels in multi-player. I had never played any of its main campaign before, so when the sequel (prequel?) Perfect Dark Zero was given to me by Trev in his big stack of games I knew I'd have to download a port and play the original first. Overall, it was pretty decent. It's hard to ask for much from a first person shooter that's like 15 years old; unlike platformers, puzzle games, or RPGs, they usually show their age horribly. The good news is that like the previously-logged Doom, Perfect Dark felt less like a test of shooting accuracy and more like a first-person adventure with some shooting thrown in to keep things interesting. Compare it to the FPS games of today like Halo and Call of Duty that basically boil down to nothin' but headshots, and it's hard not to feel a certain nostalgia for these types of games. Why did shooter/puzzle/adventure hybrids not take off? We had the Metroid Prime and Portal series, but surely even more can be done there. Anyway, I'm rambling. Perfect Dark is nowhere near as good as any game in either of those series. You run around and shoot things, you act stealthy, you ride a hoverbike briefly. Think GoldenEye plus aliens and you've got the right idea. Hopefully Perfect Dark Zero makes more of an impression on me.
I've never played much Perfect Dark. In fact, I think I played a grand total of one multiplayer level one time, with no idea what to do. And since I was a heavy "PlayStation > N64" drum beater in the late '90s, I never really appreciated either this or Goldeneye very much. At present, hindsight doesn't prove otherwise. But, hey, all the more credit to the first Halo game for completely redefining where we set the bar on FPS games.
ReplyDeleteFirst-person shooters are one of those genres that really couldn't be fully realized on tech like psx and n64. However, I assure you that this was the best game there was at the time for that genre. It was Goldeneye but with better guns and a lot more customization. With that being said, I can't imagine revisiting this game could ever be worth it. Zero is a pretty standard FPS that doesn't do a lot different from any other FPS from 2005 or 2006.
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