Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing a little more about Perfect Dark Zero.

If you want to read part one, click HERE.

I mentioned last time that Perfect Dark Zero had a bit of a troubled development, but that seems to be true for all the Perfect Dark games to an extent. Even the first game had its problems, as half the team left Rare to start Free Radical Design and make TimeSplitters.

Somehow Perfect Dark  and TimeSplitters both released in 2000, and both continued the spirit of Rare's legendary GoldenEye 007. But Perfect Dark came out late in the Nintendo 64's life and was made by N64 veterans who'd had years to learn the system inside and out, while TimeSplitters was basically a janky stripped-down PlayStation 2 launch title.

Five years later, both games got sequels but this time the situations were reversed. Free Radical's TimeSplitters: Future Perfect showed off what the venerable PS2-era consoles were capable of in the hands of experts, while Perfect Dark Zero was reworked in a hurry to become a launch title for the shiny new and unfamiliar Xbox 360.

And none of these first-person shooters ever got a release on PC, what the hell guys?

Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360) - Part 1

Developer:

Rare

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Release Date:

2005

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Systems:

Xbox 360

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the last of Rare's Perfect Dark games, Perfect Dark Zero! All that great Perfect Dark taste, zero sugar.

The title's actually indicating that this is a prequel, like Resident Evil Zero and Street Fighter Zero (but not Mega Man Zero). Funny thing is, the series already had a prequel, on the Game Boy Colour, so the plot's been moving in reverse. There was a fourth game in development by The Initiative, announced in 2020, but five years later they made another announcement saying that it had been cancelled. And that The Initiative had been cancelled too. (To be fair it seems like the developer barely existed to begin with, as it was shedding staff like crazy.)

Perfect Dark Zero was also in development for five years, which was pretty long for a game back in the early 2000s. It was originally going to be on GameCube, but then Microsoft bought Rare so they had to switch to Xbox. Then it needed a quick next gen upgrade to become an Xbox 360 launch title!

There were 18 games available for the Xbox 360 at launch, including Call of Duty 2, Quake 4, and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, so not a bad list. Though the most successful game by a Microsoft-owned studio... was this! I always assumed the game bombed, but nope it did fine. It sold over a million copies and made four times its money back.

Okay I'm going to be playing the game with Xbox One backwards compatibility, which promises higher resolutions, faster frame rates and improved texture clarity, so hopefully this will be a more pleasant experience for me than people had back in 2005.

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (Xbox) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a little more TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. I've only played two levels so far and I haven't even tried the multiplayer yet so I need to give it a little more time.

If you want to read part one you can CLICK HERE.

The 'future perfect' part of the title is probably a Perfect Dark reference, as the same people worked on both games... but it also refers to a verb tense that's used for actions that will be carried out before something else in the future. At least, that's the definition I just read. So "Free Radical will have released TimeSplitters 4 before Hell freezes over," would be an example.

Free Radical Design doesn't actually exist at the moment, the latest incarnation fell victim to Embracer Group in 2023, so the chances don't seem good. The new Perfect Dark sequel got the same treatment, as developer The Initiative were closed in 2025. At least James Bond is doing well lately, with First Light being the best received entry since GoldenEye 007. Turns out it helps when developers are allowed to finish what they're working on!

Alright, here's a bit more TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. 

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (Xbox) - Part 1

Developer:

Free Radical

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Release Date:

2005

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, GameCube

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the third and (to this date) final entry in the TimeSplitters franchise, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. They could've called it TimeSplitters 3 and kept things simple, but they didn't.

Future Perfect was released in 2005, but it was firmly PlayStation 2 generation like its predecessors. In fact the TimeSplitters series spanned the entire era, with TimeSplitters 1 arriving the same time the PS2 made it over to the west, and Future Perfect coming out just before Perfect Dark Zero helped launch the Xbox 360. Wait... Future Perfect, Perfect Dark... that can't be a coincidence.

This was a multiplatform release, so PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox owners all got to play it (though not against each other). But there was one system that didn't get a port: Windows PC! Call of Duty 2, F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 all launched on PC first, all in 2005, so it wouldn't have been an absurd idea, even at a time when consoles were king and ridiculous anti-piracy schemes were driving PC gamers to piracy. We could've had a bit of mouse aiming, maybe even some quicksaves, but no.

Alright, I'm going to load up the Xbox version on an Xbox One and I'll keep playing through the single player until either I have enough screenshots or my enthusiasm runs out. And I suppose there'd be no harm in me playing a few rounds of the multiplayer afterwards.

TimeSplitters 2 (Xbox) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a little more of TimeSplitters 2! Just a little bit more, not much.

TimeSplitters 2 came out in October 2002, around the same time as games like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Metroid Prime and 007: Nightfire. Also No One Lives Forever 2, Red Faction II, Unreal II and Star Wars: Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast. It was a great time for fans of single-player first-person shooter sequels, and the multiplayer was pretty decent as well.

In fact many would argue that the best first-person console multiplayer was right here in TimeSplitters 2, especially if you didn't have an Xbox for Halo. But right now I'm more interested in the game's single-player and I've only made it up to level two so far so I need to pick up the pace.

If you want to read what I said about level 1 you should CLICK HERE. Otherwise, I'm just going to jump straight into the next level.

TimeSplitters 2 (Xbox) - Part 1

Developer:

Free Radical

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, GameCube

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the second TimeSplitters game! Which, by pure coincidence, is also the second TimeSplitters game to never get a PC port. 

The PlayStation 2 release was joined by Xbox and GameCube versions this time, but it still never made it to mice and keyboards. There should be some kind of law against releasing a first-person shooter on everything but PC, because that just doesn't make any sense. Plus it's cruel, to me personally.

I'm going to be playing the Xbox version on an Xbox One through the miracle of backwards compatibility, as they started selling it again a few years back. Perhaps they saw all the people buying Homefront: The Revolution after we learned that the game is hidden inside as a bonus feature, and realised they were leaving money on the table.

The original TimeSplitters game was a bit of a unknown to me when I wrote about it a couple of years back, but this one I'm already familiar with. I played a lot of TimeSplitters 2 back in the day, mostly the deathmatch actually. See, I do play multiplayer sometimes! But this time around my plan is to try the first few single-player levels, about an hour of gameplay. Then I'll show a picture of the multiplayer menu, say I'm very impressed by all the modes it has, and then skip to the part where I wrap things up.

TimeSplitters (PS2)

Developer:

Free Radical

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

PS2

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out a game I haven't really played before: the original TimeSplitters for the PlayStation 2! Not Time Stalkers for the Dreamcast, that's something very different. (Just to make it more confusing, in the EU the two games came out less than two weeks apart.)

TimeSplitters was created by Free Radical Design, a company that has had a bit of a rough time of things over the years, as it's been killed off at least twice. The first time was in 2014, after they'd spent some time in disguise as Crytek UK, the second was last year after the Embracer group decided it would be better for their shareholders if we didn't get a fourth TimeSplitters game made by the original founders.

Free Radical was originally formed in early 1999 by staff that left Rare during the production of N64 FPS Perfect Dark. So it's pretty impressive that they got this out in late 2000, just a few months after Perfect Dark came out, especially as it was for a brand-new system. Rare had been focused on N64 and Game Boy games during the latter half of the 90s, but this was a launch title for the PlayStation 2. So I guess I'm going to see what Dr Doak and the GoldenEye team could do in 16 months on unfamiliar hardware.

I won't be seeing it on any other machines though, as to this day the game remains a PlayStation 2 exclusive. It's a product of that horrifying period of history where first-person shooters sometimes never got a version with mouse controls, and unlike its sequels it never made it to a system supported by backwards compatibility like the Xbox.

Alright, I'm going to check out the single-player for a bit and see if it's still fun in 2024. Assuming it was ever fun. And assuming it even has a single-player mode. It's going to really screw up my plans if it doesn't!

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.

Black (Xbox)

Developer:

Criterion

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Release Date:

2006

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Systems:

Xbox, PS2

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a first person shooter from the dark times of PC gaming, where first person shooters had migrated to consoles and didn't always get ported back (I'm still waiting on The Darkness and the TimeSplitters games to suddenly appear on Steam). 

Black is exclusive to the Xbox and PlayStation 2, which means it never got a release that featured mouse controls and quicksaves. The game did make it onto Microsoft's backward compatibility list though, meaning that I can play it on the Xbox One with an increased resolution and presumably a more stable framerate! So that's what I'm going to do.

The game was developed by Criterion, who are more famous for racing games like Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012). They decided to use their own engine for it, RenderWare, which was practically the Unreal Engine of the PS2-era, allowing developers to make cross-platform games without knowing all the dark arcane secrets of the hardware. In fact it was used in almost 300 games before EA decided they wanted out of the engine licensing business. It turned up in some pretty big name titles as well, like Grand Theft Auto 3, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, Suikoden 3, Broken Sword 3 and Max Payne 2.

I'm sure I've played Black before, many years ago, but I only got about halfway through and my memories are really fuzzy. I remember that it had a forest level, a church level and a factory level, but that's about it. I feel like I was impressed by it somehow though. Hopefully there'll be something special about it that'll make it worth showing off, otherwise this is going to be a bit of a disappointment.

007 Games Part 9: The World is Not Enough

Super AiG's Guide to Every (old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 9

Two more Bond games today, one for the PlayStation, one for the Nintendo 64, and both based on the film The World is Not Enough, which came out the year before. Again computers have been completely left out, as the PC version of the game was cancelled.

Game 20 - The World is Not Enough (2000)
Formats: PlayStation.

This one's by Black Ops Entertainment, the same folks who made the less than amazing Tomorrow Never Dies, but I'm hoping they've learned from that game's mistakes. Hey it's got a better title screen at least. Still no multiplayer though.

007 Games Part 7: GoldenEye 007, James Bond 007

Super AiG's Guide to Every (old) James Bond Game Ever, Volume 7

It's another Super Adventures James Bond special event! I've already played through the first 10 years of 007 games (click the Game Series button then scroll down a bit to find them), and this week I'll be playing through the second decade after James Bond: The Duel brought the 16-bit era to an end, from GoldenEye to Nightfire. Well, to be honest it's more like 6 years actually (there was a bit of a gap).

Game 16 - GoldenEye 007 (1997)
Formats: Nintendo 64.

It was four long years after The Duel before James Bond finally made a return to video games with an adaptation of the seventeenth Bond film, GoldenEye. Though the game actually came out the same year as the next Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies.

I've actually already played this one, and I have no idea what else I can say about it. But I suppose I should give it another look anyway, to save leaving the most important Bond game off the Bond game list.

GoldenEye 007 (N64)

GOOD RETRO GAME WEEK, day 5.

I can't play Duke Nukem 3D and Quake without playing GoldenEye too. It just wouldn't be right.