Perfect Dark (Xbox 360)

Developer:

Rare

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

N64, Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the spiritual successor to Rare's legendary N64 FPS GoldenEye 007: the slightly less legendary Perfect Darkﾞ!

It came out three years later for the same console, runs on the same engine, and was developed by a lot of the same people, so it's basically GoldenEye 2 (or GoldenEye 008?) There were proper sequels to GoldenEye, but Rare had been outbid by EA and decided they'd rather do their own thing anyway, so Black Ops gave us third person shooter Tomorrow Never Dies on the PlayStation and Eurocom got to make the next first person N64 Bond shooter, The World is Not Enough. Both considerably less legendary.

Perfect Dark was was released late in the N64's life and was so ambitious that it required the Expansion Pak installed in order to access 65% of its content. Though even with double the RAM under the hood, the game still suffers from framerate issues. Fortunately I'm mostly going to be playing the remastered Xbox 360 version on the Xbox One, which has about 2000 times the RAM. I would've played the PC version and used a mouse but to this day the game still hasn't got a PC port.

If you're wondering why there's an N behind the title despite the letter not appearing in either word, that's so that the Nintendo logo can spin around and morph into the logo! It's a little different in the Xbox Live Arcade version, as 4J Studio's logo takes Nintendo's place. Not a lot of Nintendo logos on Microsoft games I've noticed. If you're wondering why there's a dakuten (ﾞ) after the K... I've got no idea. They thought it'd look cool I guess. Like how Street Fighter II′ has a dash.

Alright I'll put this on and give it an hour or two then. I used to love the game but I can't remember if there's anything notable I should be playing up to (mostly because it's the multiplayer I was obsessed with), so I'm just going to play the first few levels and document my findings.

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The first big difference to GoldenEye 007 (and most other first person shooters) is the character starts off standing in a level, with the main menu projected into her eye by a weird extendable holographic Google Glass. I suppose it's more convenient than staring at the tiny screen on a watch. I could close the menu and go for a walk, but I've got to stuff to do.

It's still got the multiplayer (and it's even got an online mode on Xbox 360), but they've extended it with new co-operative and counter-operative modes. Counter-op is like co-op, except the other player controls the enemies, and I'm having to explain this here because basically nothing else does anything like it! I guess Left 4 Dead lets you play as the Infected, but I'm struggling to think of other examples.

Huh, I don't remember being able to read the plot in the N64 game. I think you had to check the manual to get all this fairly important backstory... which is why this is all new to me.

It's the distant future year of 2023. There are two organisations on Earth that are aware of aliens: the heroic Carrington Institute and the evil dataDyne corporation, and we're working for the good guys. Unfortunately the bad guys are working with the bad aliens and that means Daniel Carrington is going to have to step in to save the world. Well, he's going to have to send elite agent Joanna Dark to save the world anyway.

Joanna Dark is such an obvious Jeanne D'Arc/Joan of Arc reference that I'm surprised that it only occurred to me recently, and even more surprised that it was apparently just a coincidence. Naming the game took some work, with the developers picking words and putting them together to see which combinations appealed to them, and 'Dark' was one of the words that stuck. When they settled on Perfect Dark they named the character Dark as well.

LEVEL 1 - DATADYNE CENTRAL

The game starts with a (skippable) cutscene, which is something GoldenEye didn't really do. A quick flyby or a shot of people running was the best you could hope for. Well okay this is technically a flyby too, as Joanna's jumpship swoops between futuristic skyscrapers, but it's considerably more elaborate. Plus it has voiced dialogue!

The voices were performed by talented professionals. Unfortunately they weren't professional voice actors, and the results range from 'okay' to 'bad', with the lead character in the 'not ideal' column. It's so weird to me that they they've got this slick expensive game, the successor to bloody GoldenEye, but they didn't get actual voice actors.

N64

Here's the original N64 version for a comparison. The Xbox 360 games textures are definitely higher resolution but they didn't mess with the style much.

Joanna's got Daniel Carrington's voice in her ear giving her support, starting with a briefing on what she'll be doing tonight. There's a scientist at dataDyne called Dr Caroll who's been complaining to his bosses about the moral implications of the project he's been working on. Now he's convinced they're going to fix his conscience with a bit of brainwashing, and he needs a speedy rescue.

The first few levels in GoldenEye were about breaking into a place, meeting Dr Doak, doing a thing and getting out. This time I'm breaking in, meeting a Dr Caroll and I have to bring him out with me!

And now I finally get a good look at Joanna Dark for a moment, before the camera does a GoldenEye twirl and zooms into the back of her head.

For some reason the higher res Xbox 360 version has actually gotten rid of a lot of the detail on her strange covert-ops outfit and I'm not sure what the thinking was there. Also Joanna was originally meant to look like Winona Ryder and she looks more like Victoria Beckham now. And neither version of her moves her lips when she talks.

Speaking of celebrity faces, I always thought that the US president who shows up later looks the spitting image of Babylon 5 actor Richard Biggs, and it turns out that it is his face! He was apparently a friend of the 3D artist, so they gave them a cameo. It's definitely not his voice though, that'd mean hiring someone!

There are a few other celebrity cameos but I believe that most of the game's faces are from the development team. Like everything else. Though they actually hired someone to do Joanna's motion capture so the movement looks good.

I like this gun. It's like a cross between the two GoldenEye pistols: the PP7 and the DD44 Dostovei. Speaking of double Ds, that's the back of the dataDyne logo I'm looking at, as I'm currently standing on the helipad on the top of their skyscraper.

There are three difficulty options and I chose the middle one, Special Agent, which means I have the following objectives to complete:

1: Disable internal security hub
2: Obtain keycode necklace
3: Disable external comms hub
4: Gain entrance to laboratory

The objectives get more complicated as the difficulty goes up, giving you more to do on the same level.

I've done it, I've finally found my way off the helipad and into the building! It took me way too long to find the ramp leading down and I couldn't just leap off, as like GoldenEye there's no jump button.

The game basically plays like GoldenEye, with one significant exception: I've got a crosshair now! It's a bit hard to see (it's above the guy's ear) but it's there! Okay to be fair GoldenEye does have a crosshair as well, but it only activates when you're using the game's distinctive aim mode.

Modern FPSs zoom in a bit or look down the sights when you aim, letting you turn the camera with less speed and more precision, but GoldenEye and Perfect Dark feature a floating crosshair which can be steered around without moving the camera, and snaps back when you let go. It's awkward though, and analogue sticks aren't ideal for aiming at the best of times, so I'll be leaving the auto-aim on.

I walked inside, shot a dude, and I got a message in my ear from Carrington telling me the internal comms hub is nearby. Oh, it must be this computer screen on the wall behind me.

Hey this weapon select, uh, wheel is new. It's handy, I like it.

Alright I've found the internal security comms hub, so now I need to switch to my ECM Mine and lob it over at it. It's actually possible to miss the shot, throw it in the wrong place, and lose, so I'll try not to do that.

This is one of those additional objectives that isn't in Agent difficulty. GoldenEye did extra objectives as well, but in this game I've got a voice in my ear telling me when I'm close to one of them, which makes a big difference. I mean how would I have known this thing was the hub otherwise? You can also check your briefing text again during the level, and there's a lot less guesswork in general about what you're supposed to be doing.

With objective 1 complete I entered a stairwell and headed down deeper into the dataDyne skyscraper.

So blue! That's the bluest blue carpet I've ever seen.

I've also come across a few more enemies. I don't know what people actually do in this building, but so far it mostly seems to be guarding things. Every office I break into has armed guards instead of office workers.

Fortunately these guys are right out of GoldenEye. They react to being hit, they have locational damage, they hesitate for a moment and do a pose before firing, and they pause in between bursts to let you fire back. They're just fun dudes to shoot. Plus they're not hitscan, which means they fire actual projectiles which can miss. Sometimes I'll see a bullet flying over my head from behind, giving me a big hint it's time to turn around. Also a big hint that tracer rounds are really common in the distant future of 2023.

Here's the same area in the original N64 game, to show you how massively the same they are:

N64

Also, see that window behind the enemy? That's actually an elevator door. There's no buttons anywhere on it, but if you press 'activate' while facing the glass it summons the lift. I imagine it takes most players a bit to figure that one out. But objective two is to go get Cassandra De Vries' necklace key, so I'm going to have to enter that wooden door on the left first.

I stepped into Cassandra's office, switched to my Falcon 2's 'pistol whip' secondary mode, and rendered her unconscious. Necklace got, objective 2 complete. It's okay, she's the bad guy, she deserved it. Now I need to use that lift to go down to the ground floor and sort out this external security comms hub with another ECM Mine.

There's actually a bunch of (near identical) floors up here I can visit, all without a single loading screen in between. It's enough to make Half-Life fans jealous!

Alright the lift skipped the rest of the floors so now I'm down at the Security Room. I just need to get in there, lob the mine at the second hub, and get out. But I'm also going to shoot everyone because it'll be better for my health. My extremely finite, non-regenerating health that I can never get back. Levels don't have health kits in them! Though fortunately I picked up a shield off one of the many many dudes I've been shooting, which acts like the armour in GoldenEye. Instead of mitigating damage, it's like a second life bar.

I'm using the aim mode right now, which looks very RoboCop. It theoretically means I can move the crosshair precisely and get a headshot, but I'm in a hurry so I'm not doing that. It also means that my movement stick becomes more of a 'lean over a bit' stick, allowing me to pop out around walls and spring back again when their shooting resumes. I'm not doing that either, because I'm an idiot.

I threw another ECM Mine at the security thing and completed objective 3! Now all that's left is for me to find the secret lift to the lab in the basement.

The voice in my ear told me that I'm close, but it's a dead end. Fortunately I already know that the wall on the left is a secret door that'll slide open automatically when I walk over to it, and the Basement Laboratory lift is located behind it. Objective 4 complete.

Walking to the lift gave me a little bit of a cutscene of Joanna going inside and posing with her pistol, and that was the end of level 1.

This is basically the same end of level stats screen that GoldenEye gives you, just laid out slightly differently. Not the best stats to be honest, I barely managed 50% accuracy even with auto aim on, and I was 4 minutes over the target time, but it's done.

Though if I'd raced through in 1m 30s I would've unlocked another cheat. Level 2 has to be beaten on hard mode to get the cheat, level 3 needs to be beaten on easy mode, then it's back to normal mode for level 4 and so on. Though you can't actually switch to a higher difficulty without first beating the previous level on that difficulty, so Special Agent is the highest it'll go for me from now on.

Alright now I'm on level two, which gives me four new goals:

1: Holograph radioactive isotope.
2: Start security maintenance cycle.
3: Shut down experiments.
4: Locate Dr Caroll.

LEVEL 2 - DATADYNE INVESTIGATION

The art design in this game is so unusual.

Well it didn't let me keep my gear from the last level, but I've got my pistol so I'm fine. What I could really do right now though is a map. The previous level was a bunch of identical floors filled with identical doors leading to identical rooms, but it was a skyscraper so at least I knew the general shape of the place. I'm completely failing to build a mental picture of how this underground lab is laid out. And of course there are no quest markers or radar or anything to point me in the right direction.

I decided to try the door marked "CAUTION" and learned that the warning's there because there's a radioactive isotope inside. Hey, photographing that is my first objective! Fortunately Carrington gave me the heads-up before I'd absorbed enough rads to glow, and I remembered that I'd brought a camera with me.

Well, it's more of a CamSpy actually. It's a hovering drone with an awkward distorted view that I can fly into places to do spy work. So I just flew it over to the other side of the room and pulled the trigger to take a photo. Objective 1 done. And I didn't even have to upload the photo to anyone afterwards.

Alright, now I need to shut down the experiments. They're apparently interfering with the communications uplink, which is preventing our hackers from getting the security lock code. It's not interfering with my communications with Carrington though...

I guess I'll go back and try the "SECTOR TWO" door then.

 

TWO EXPERIMENTS LATER

The first two experiments were easy, but it took me forever to find the final one. Then the cocky git of a scientist set off the alarm at his computer! Fortunately I'd already killed everyone so no one turned up. I haven't been screenshotting the violence, because you already get the idea, but I've been doing a lot of shooting down here.

It didn't take me long to find the right terminal to terminate the experiment myself. Plus I also found some night vision goggles inside a glass cylinder, so I shot the glass and grabbed them. So that's objective 3 done! Wait, what happened to objective 2?

Oh right, I need to go sort out this maintenance robot and start the security maintenance cycle.

I think I've found the right room, but I don't even know what it wants me to do in here. I've worked out that this big monitor screen full of code is a switch, and there's a second screen over there, but pressing them is not leading to the desired results.

Okay it took me a bit to work it out, but all I had to do was deactivate the roomba first, then reprogram it. With the little mouse bot set to do my bidding I followed it to a corridor blocked by security laser gates and watched as they switched off to let it through.

Hang on, there's clearly enough room for the thing to make it through without shutting the lasers down! Just drive under them, mate. Also I'm sure in real life I could climb through the gap on the left no trouble and I'm not even a super spy.

I'm sure I've done this trick to bypass lasers in another game. Maybe it was Fade to Black? Anyway, I stayed behind the robot, stepping through each set of lasers as it drove forward, and got through the security corridor. I hope there wasn't anything back on the other side I needed as I'm not sure I'm getting back through.

After the lasers I shot some dudes in a room, then I shot some dudes in another room, and shot some dudes in another room. I'm thinking dataDyne is going to be hiring after today.

Oh damn, I wasn't expecting surprise gun turrets! They're attached to the beams up near the ceiling; hard to spot, easy to get shot by. I still haven't found any security cameras or alarms or other things that annoyed the crap out of me in GoldenEye, but I can cross drone guns off the list.

I just about got through the two guns with a tiny sliver of health left thanks to my awesome new dragon assault rifle. It looks a bit weird with that red strip at the top, but it's good for sending bullets right back at drone turrets. Then at the end of the corridor I finally found Dr Caroll.

Turns out that Dr Caroll is a floating laptop with the screen on backwards. Joanna's as confused by this as anyone. Also the game needs to tone down the lens flares already. This isn't even the worst it's gotten. In fact it's far from the worst it's gotten. Anyway, now I need to backtrack all the way through the level to get this guy out of the labs...

...except not really as the game skipped right over the trip back. It just gave me a cutscene of Joanna returning to the lift and exiting the basement. So that was nice.

LEVEL 3 - DATADYNE EXTRACTION

Hey level 3 is the first level all over again, only backwards. And in the dark. It's lucky I picked up the night vision goggles on that last level. Not that it makes a difference in game, nothing carries over to the next stage and each mission is its own self-contained thing, so I would've started with them anyway. It's just nice to have an explanation for why I have them.

I'm making more use of the aim feature now, popping out of cover to grab a quick headshot then leaning back again before the guard's friend is ready to shoot back. It's a bit of a struggle for me to get the crosshair on target with this awkward aiming system, but hey at least there's some novelty to it.

This is right next to those lifts with the glass doors now, so I just have to ride them up to the top floors and then I can make my way up to the helipad using the stairwell. 

Oh come on! That dumbass laptop flew in the way of the hovercopter gunship and got shredded by its machine gun! This is why I hate escorting people. I'm glad escort missions eventually went the same way as surprise stealth missions and forced QTEs... which are two things I have not encountered in this game. So far.

I also haven't encountered any bloody checkpoints though, and there are no autosaves. So it was even more frustrating when I played through the level a second time and the hovercopter chewed up my laptop again.

This time I'm leaving the laptop behind! I deliberately stood too close to the glass door for him to get on the lift with me, so I was able to continue up to the hovercopter without a floating liability trailing behind. 

I blew up the hovercopter, using most of my health and ammo, then I turned around to see Caroll there. He'd either used the lift himself or teleported up behind me. Either way he didn't get blown up this time and I don't have to go down to get him, so I'm calling this a good thing.

I hadn't come across any funny conversations between guards up to this point, but I just overheard these three chatting about some device they planned to ambush me with. Unfortunately for them it doesn't seem like anyone brought the manual, so they were still struggling to set it up when I caught them.

I'm pretty sure office workers working on a trap still count as innocent civilians so I left them alone and emptied my shotgun into their friend instead. That'll teach him to impede my egress. What were these guys setting up anyway? Oh damn it's a rocket launcher with a single shot!

Alright, I'm right next to the end now. Just one more set of stairs leading up to the room with the comms hub, then I'm out of the building and onto the roof.

Uh, what? This cutscene just dragged me out of my nice safe stairwell into a firing squad of bodyguards armed with shotguns. I don't have enough health for this crap!

Maybe I can make a run for the stairwell again and take the enemies out from in there.

 

Okay what the hell? The lights went out, the door to the stairwell is locked, my health is just a bar of red, and now I'm going to have to replay the whole bloody level again. The level's only seven minutes long, but it's seven minutes that I've already done. And I'll have to wait for that lift to arrive again.

Alright this time I'm going to just run past the hovercopter and grab the rocket launcher from the trap. Then I'm going to carefully shoot out all the glass before firing a rocket at it; this isn't my first rodeo. 

The rocket somehow hit the arm of one of the office workers who'd been conspiring to set up the ambush! So he's dead now and I just lost a bunch of health, along with my only rocket.

I still had just about enough health left to survive a fight with the hovercopter and then I went back to the stairwell of fate to face the ambush. This time though I'll be ready for them. I'm going to have my night vision goggles on before I trigger the cutscene!

Well I managed to kill one of them. Unfortunately I came up here with next to no health again and there's not whole lot of cover to hide behind. There's probably a trick to this room, but it'll take me seven minutes to get back up here to have another go and that just kills my interest in continuing. I like that I have the option to replay levels, but I don't like it when it's a requirement.

Maybe I'll turn the game off and come back to it tomorrow. Yeah I'll probably do that.

A FEW TRIES LATER

It was satisfying sniping these guys down in the lobby at first, but I don't have the patience to stop and aim carefully anymore. I'm becoming careless and rushing it, like I always do when I'm forced to repeat a level over and over with no checkpoints. This isn't ideal; Joanna can take a few hits but regular enemies are very capable of messing her up. In fact I managed to last just twenty seconds on one run before my recklessness left me with too many bullet wounds to continue. 

But I did finally make it up to the top again, with Dr Caroll alive and the hovercopter dead.

Then I used the rocket launcher on Cassandra's bodyguards! I took out at least two of them with that shot... and got Joanna killed almost instantly right afterwards. I just never make it this far with enough health left to survive the room. It's only Special Agent difficulty!

Okay I'm quitting back to the menu. Back to the Carrington Institute.

Here's that office I was mentioning before. For some reason Joanna has to do a bit of typing on her computer before her holographic eye projector comes out and gives her the menu screen.

But I'm not using the menu right now, I'm going off for a walk around the Institute. It's like UNATCO in Deus Ex, I can just wander around my HQ and chat to people. Maybe learn a bit about my gadgets, maybe have a go at the firing range. If I can find them. All the rooms are unmarked!

Okay Carrington dropped by the office and offered me a tour, so was able to make it down to the target range in the end. It seems that every gun in the game comes with three challenges, which involve hitting moving targets and scoring enough points without running out of time or ammo. It's pretty easy until it's not.

There's a ton of guns in this game so I could be stuck here all night (especially as the challenges start getting cruel) so I'm going to move on.

LATER

Damn, where the hell am I now? I've ended up lost in my own basement, this place is endless. There's no actual point to exploring the depths as far as I can tell, but you can if you want. Okay I'm bringing the menu up here because I can't be bothered trying to find my way back to my office.

I could give dataDyne level 3 another try... but I'd rather check out the Combat Simulator. It's like GoldenEye's multiplayer mode, except with more of everything.

Man, there are so many options here. I can choose the weapons I want in the map, change player handicaps... add bots, there's an option that GoldenEye didn't have. I can even customise their look, personality and difficulty, and set up teams. The options just keep going, I'm scared to go in too deep in case I never find my way back out. Also there's no descriptions so they're a bit cryptic at times.

Okay I'm going to add four bots and set them so they're all on the same team against me. I'm sure it'll all be fine as long as I can find a gun before they find me. And I'll be playing on 'Felicity', which is the game's version of the classic 'Facility' map from GoldenEye.

01 / 04

Perfect Dark (Xbox 360)

02 / 04

Perfect Dark (N64)

03 / 04

GoldenEye 007 (N64)

04 / 04

Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360)

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Here you go, four different versions of the same iconic level in four different games (click the arrows to switch between them). Sorry about the GoldenEye shot, the game doesn't have bots so it's split-screen or nothing. Well, I suppose I could've cheated and used a shot from the single player version of the map, but then it wouldn't have had the radar.

There was no cheating involved in taking that Perfect Dark N64 shot either, just... work. Lots and lots of work. I really wish I'd remembered before I started that you have to play 12 bloody combat simulator challenges to unlock Felicity. I'm tired now.

Here's another classic level, Complex, viewed through the scope of the incredibly overpowered FarSight XR-20 rifle. The thing can see through walls and shoot through them! The only thing in the way of your total domination with this technology is the fact that you have to work out the opponent's distance, as you can only see a slice of the level as you zoom in and out. Well that and the fact that they won't stop moving around. It's like they don't even want to be shot. Sometimes they'll even run away from you if they don't like their odds.

The FarSight's not the only gimmick gun, as there's also things like the laptop gun, which can be deployed as a sentry. In fact most of the weapons seem to have a secondary mode, even your fists. There aren't many shooters that can come close to matching Perfect Dark's arsenal even today. And when you kill an enemy all their guns spray out of them as a reward! It also tells you on screen that they're dead, meaning you can move onto the next target without hesitation.

Finding your opponents in multiplayer isn't an issue as there's a handy (and optional) radar in the top right! And it's easy to spot enemies in the open due to the handy (and optional) player highlighting feature.

Alright, I'm finally trying level 3 again, putting all my Combat Simulator practice into action and... I did it! I beat all the bodyguards in the trap. I very nearly didn't, it cost me all my health, but I got them. Then I ran up to the helipad on the roof and realised that when the mission objective said 'Defeat Cassandra's bodyguards' it meant all of them. On the entire level.

So here I am going back down to the other floors, killing all the enemies I missed, and really really hoping that I don't take a single hit, because I'm not sure Jo will survive it.

THREE PAINFULLY TENSE MINUTES OF HUNTING LATER

Oh look, more bodyguards show up in the end cutscene! So it's actually impossible to kill all of them and the game made me waste my time for no reason.

Actually never mind, Joanna shot them both as she was running for the jumpship to escape. The awkwardly directed cutscene continues with Cassandra being threatened by a mysterious man in a white trench coat who I already know about because I read the files in the menu screen earlier.

Anyway that's done, and the final run only took 9 minutes.

Oh cool Carrington Villa is the next area! I thought this came later.

This place is a nice change of pace, as I'm sniping people and storming through a house. No one's hiding behind cover, there's no hovercopter, just some good old-fashion first person shooting. Well, after I saved the negotiator at the start anyway. The cool thing about the level is that if you play on Perfect Agent difficulty you're the one dressed as a negotiator down on the dock, and you have to get out of the situation without sniper support.

Okay I've finished the level and the bad news is that they've recaptured Dr Caroll and reprogrammed him, so everything I did in those first three levels was pointless. Well, mostly pointless. He was able to tell us what we need to know to recover and restore him and it requires immediately heading to Chicago.

Okay this place is a definite step up from the streets in GoldenEye. I mean this came out a year before Grand Theft Auto 3 (and two years after Shenmue) so it's hard to be too impressed, but this tiny slice of Chicago looks as good as anything you'll see on the N64.

For this level I need to get my gear from a storm drain, reprogram a taxi to create a diversion, prepare an escape route by planting a remote mine, and then get inside the G5 building. First step: finding the storm drain. I'm sure it's got to be around here somewhere.

LATER

Alright I've got my gear and I'm reprogramming the hovercab. Everything's going well! Much better than it did on my first attempt anyway. I got into a shoot out with dataDyne guards, and the patrolling security bot came around the corner and saw it. Getting into a fight with an indestructible robot isn't recommended... and taking cover behind the extremely-destructible mission-critical taxi is an even worse idea. I really don't need games telling me that mission-critical vehicles have been destroyed, it gives me TIE Fighter flashbacks.

Okay the taxi has been reprogrammed. Time to send this thing off around the corner to lure the remaining dataDyne guards away from the G5 building entrance... and into my crosshairs.

Oh come on!

I was doing everything right on my second try (mostly by accident) until I shot at the enemies coming around the corner to investigate the exploding taxi and hit a civilian. I'm just going to have to take the game's word for that though, because I never saw them.

This is the point where I turned the game off. But then I turned it back on again and gave it another try. Turns out that my CMP-150 has a target lock secondary fire that identifies enemies in red and civilians in blue! So that helped. Okay I really am turning it off now.


CONCLUSION

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I put so many hours into Perfect Dark back in the day, playing multiplayer against my friends, multiplayer against bots, and sometimes even the single player game! The N64 had a few issues as a console, but for local multiplayer it was god-tier and this became my favourite of all of its multiplayer games. I liked it more than Quake, Lylat Wars, Mario Kart 64, whichever Turok had deathmatch, GoldenEye 007, Super Smash Bros... okay maybe not more than Super Smash Bros. But when it comes to competitive first person shooter multiplayer, this game may have brought me more hours of joy than any other. I don't care if it holds up or not, it wins all of my prizes.

Does it hold up though? Well I can't really judge the multiplayer because I didn't really play it. I did 15 challenges and a few bot matches and I enjoyed them well enough, but it's not the same as sitting next to the other players and trying not to cheat by looking at their corner of the screen. I didn't get that genuine 'watching four friends play, waiting for one of them to get tired of losing and hand me their controller for a bit' experience. I will say that it's definitely better than GoldenEye's multiplayer though, because it is GoldenEye's multiplayer, just improved and expanded. The bots alone make a huge difference, as four players was always a bit too low. And it has co-op the story levels, which always earns a game a huge amount of bonus points.

The biggest problem with the game back in its time was the frame rate and the remake I was playing does not have that issue. So that's cool. The second biggest problem was that it never got a PC port with mouse control and quick saves and unfortunately that's still the case (well, officially...). The lack of checkpoints or saves in single player is a real momentum killer, especially with the lack of health kits and rarity of armour making it easy to screw up a run halfway through. I don't find it fun to scrape through a level by the skin of my teeth only to hit a challenge at the end I just don't have the health to survive. I'm not into that kind of game design. Saves help make frustrations less frustrating and this don't got them.
 
On the plus side, it does bring back GoldenEye's level select, which was always a good idea. In fact the game's packed full of ideas. Sometimes they're ideas like a Grey alien in a stars and stripes waistcoat, or a wedge of cheese hidden in every level, or having the development team voice all the characters. Sometimes they're ideas like a sniper rifle that can see through walls, or a million multiplayer modes and options. Perfect Dark's not timeless like Doom, it's definitely of its era, but it does so many weird things and has such a distinctive style to it that it's archaic without being obsolete. Oh, plus it has a fantastic soundtrack from the composers of GoldenEye and TimeSplitters which is just as good now as it ever was.

My final verdict: Perfect Dark is the N64's greatest first person shooter, it just is. Sure there are versions of Doom and Quake on the console, but this game is the N64's. It takes everything the system's most iconic FPS does and brings it to the next level. It's probably not the greatest FPS on the Xbox 360, but the port cleans it up and makes it presentable without messing with its style and I think it's still worth a play on any Xbox that'll run it. Even if it can be a real bastard at times.

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Alright I'm done with Perfect Dark now, though you can share you own thoughts about it below if you want.

I'll have another game for you next month, maybe even sooner! I can't tell you what it'll be though, because I don't want to. There is a clue on the left however if you want to take a guess.