Perfect Dark

I've heard that this week's XBLA offering will be the Nintendo 64 classic, Perfect Dark. Believe it or not, I've actually never played the game. It's been on my list of "classics" to experience as part of my general critic education for several years, but my N64's been packed away in storage for a while, and I've definitely had my hands full with more current releases. However, now that it's going to be available in a souped-up version, I'm thinking that maybe the time is right.

I've always felt that Perfect Dark was superior to the original Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007 in just about every way. However, a recent poll from this site concluded that most of our readers favor the James Bond-inspired shooter over its spiritual successor. I fully acknowledge that GoldenEye was a landmark title in several ways, mainly in breaking the Doom mold of "just kill everything on the map" and beginning the trend of more tactical shooters we see today, such as Half-Life 2. However, Perfect Dark built on those early achievements in such a fashion as to eclipse its ancestor in more ways than one.

Perfect Dark Zero is really a tale of two games on one disc—a single player offline mode so boring and banal that slogging through it is barely worth the effort and an online mode that is really fun. Unfortunately, I'm one of those guys who would rather play an offline game than an online one (particularly when it comes to a first person shooter), so I'm more disappointed than anything with this title.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Blood, Language, Violence

Despite being motivated poorly by the storyline and being occasionally convoluted, the multiple objective-based missions are wonderfully well thought out with a nice mix of timed, patterned, and random events that makes playing through them different and refreshing each time.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Blood, Animated Violence

Game Description: Joanna Dark must fight power, greed and an intergalactic conspiracy in this spectacular first-person shooter. Perfect Dark shines in solo mode and improves upon the awesome multi-player mode that made predecessor GoldenEye a smash hit.

Now that the game is finally here, I am happy to say that Perfect Dark has met most of my expectations and provided one of the most solid multiplayer games on the market to date.