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.

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There it is, the original Xbox 360 startup animation. Actually I think this is a later version, from after they dropped the Blades interface (Xbox's first mistake...) I have covered pitifully few Xbox 360 titles over the years, for a number of reasons:

1. It's easier to record the PC versions instead. 

Actually that's pretty much the only reason. But Perfect Dark Zero remains stubbornly exclusive to Xbox to this day, even though the first game was a Nintendo 64 exclusive.

There's a good chance that this was the first gameplay someone saw after turning on their brand new Xbox 360 console. This is Jetpac on the ZX Spectrum and it has the colour clash to prove it.

Rare made this way back when they were still called Ultimate Play the Game, but they apparently hadn't forgotten their roots. (Also it would've been a bit awkward legally to show something more famous like Donkey Kong Country or Diddy Kong Racing at the start of a Microsoft exclusive.)

Jetpac actually got an Xbox release 10 years later as part of 2015's Rare Replay compilation... and Perfect Dark Zero tagged along as well.

Damn, that was almost a jump scare, cutting straight to an eye like that. This looks like live action footage to me, not CGI. Well, except for all the reflected computer code. 

It's the beginning of a James Bond-style title sequence, which Perfect Dark definitely didn't have. GoldenEye 007 neither.

The video is all very stylish with how it's zooming around inside computer screens and it has the mandatory silhouettes of girls with guns, but as an opening credits sequence it feels like it's missing something. Like credits.

It's like a DVD menu video that drags on for a minute and a half before you get any buttons to press. In fact it would've worked great as the background to a menu. Unfortunately what the game actually has is a bit less impressive.

Perfect Dark (N64)

The menu in the original Perfect Dark is projected into Joanna Dark's eye over her view of the room she's in. It's like how Rare gave James Bond a fancy watch menu he could bring up in GoldenEye 007, except this time there isn't even a separate main menu screen, you're always inside a map.

If you exit the main menu you can walk around your Carrington Institute base, maybe go to the firing range, or chat to the other characters. It was a real flex, showing off how their game was a top tier product.

Two console generations later, Perfect Dark Zero starts off with this. It's just so ordinary and unambitious by comparison. Plus somehow I get the feeling it's not going to let me log off and walk around my base this time.

Though to be fair, most video game menu screens don't have a Samsung logo in the corner, so that's unusual. And the four controller icons in the other corner make me think that the local multiplayer's still in there. Fun fact: I actually had an official mouse mat with that picture on it. I mean I'm sure I still have the thing somewhere, but the picture didn't survive regular mouse operations.

That's Joanna Dark herself by the way, looking less like Winona Ryder and more like your sidekick in Sin Episodes: Emergence. 

You remember Sin Episodes: Emergence, right? No? Oh, okay then.

Hah, Perfect Dark Zero starts on mission 0.

The layout of this screen makes me think I may be able to change my starting weapons in later missions, though right now I've only got a pistol.

It's offering me the three difficulty modes featured in the first game (and GoldenEye), but I'm going to leave it on the middle option, Secret Agent. It says that it's the standard setting for moderately experienced agents, and I've played a shooter or two.

(I'm totally leaving the auto-aim on though.)

MISSION 0 - DATACORE DEMOLITION

Damn, you can tell right away that this was a very early Xbox 360 game.

Joanna's wearing a black catsuit but you can spot her sneaking in by her bright red Sydney Bristow hair (Alias was still airing at this point). It's like she wants me to fail this stealth mission.

I'm going to guess that this is a dataDyne undersea complex, because that's what the holographic text says. Well it doesn't say the dataDyne bit, but I recognise that logo. They're the villains from the first game.

Joanna takes a lift down and we get the big reveal of the game's protagonist! Well, actually it's a pretty small reveal. I'm honestly not sure why the camera's keeping so much distance. It's like the designers never played Metal Gear Solid.

Well okay maybe they had, but MGS used cinematic close ups and Codec portraits to give the hero a proper introduction, as much as it could do with this resolution, and Perfect Dark Zero's not taking advantage of its tech.

A voice in Joanna's ear explains that she's been hired to break into this dataDyne base undetected. It's not Daniel Carrington this time though, it's someone called Chandra who's played by the woman who voiced female Hawke in the Dragon Age games and Ciri in The Witcher 3. Except here I think she's trying to put on an Asian accent and it's not her best performance.

Alright my first challenge is to shoot these spider bots with my gun. They're repairing the door so I need to blast all of them before it'll open. I'm sure that makes perfect sense to people who live in this world.

This music's very different to Perfect Dark by the way. It definitely sounds like they've got new composers. The sluggish frame rate is familiar though. Even on the Xbox One it's noticeably slower than something like TimeSplitters 2, which was last generation at this point.

I did a few more tutorial challenges, like crouching under a red laser and melee attacking some boxes, then I reached some blue lasers blocking my path. These are the kind that set off the turrets if you cross the beam.

Hey, why are the sentry turrets shooting at me? I did exactly what Chandra told me to. "Only way in's through that sensor field. Dive through it, you'll be okay," is what she said, but I'm not okay at all!

Fortunately I only needed to put two rounds into each turret to shut them down, so they're a bit less of a threat than the ones in the first game. Chandra seems impressed, saying "Hmm, you make it look easy," so I'm going to assume she totally missed my screw up.

Or maybe she was just impressed with how smoothly Jo switched from first-person to third-person and back. It reminds me a bit of how Escape from Butcher Bay would switch perspective when appropriate.

 

Next is cover training. I've been pressing the button against the other walls to try it out, but it didn't work, so it seems like I can only enter cover in certain specific places. Fortunately they led me where I needed to be with an X on the floor this time.

I had no idea this game had a cover system and I'm a little surprised. This kind of thing didn't really catch on for first-person shooters, with a few exceptions (like Deus Ex: Human Revolution)

 

Oh no, the guards saw me! They didn't set off an alarm or anything but I did take a hit. Fortunately it seems like my health regenerates in this, which is a big upgrade from Perfect Dark not even having health kits to find.

Enemies are a bit more natural with their animations than they were in the N64 days, but it's obvious they have to move into position and then take a moment to aim before they're allowed to shoot. Plus their accuracy is less than superhuman. All of this is good, for me at least. Though best of all, they go down in a single headshot... if I can get the crosshair there.

Right now I need to stand by the locked door and press left on the d-pad to select the datathief.

The game's got a hacking minigame! No need for me to explain how it works, it's written on the screen. Grey cursor goes spinning around, I press the button when it overlaps a blue block. Simple enough.

I got a bit of cutscene afterwards with Joanna running around some more as Chandra talks in her ear. The weird thing is that Joanna hasn't said a word in response yet. She was a lot more chatty in the first game.

This time the game's introducing my camspy drone, which I'm supposed to use on the base's CPU. It's got an EMP that will take out electronics, along with explosives to take out everything else. So it's not a 'leave no trace you were even there' kind of stealth mission then.

Oh damn, that overlay is a bit distracting. Though I think it may actually be a little easier to see what I'm doing here than it was with the camspy 1.2 in the first game.

Okay I need to go float over to the computer core. Trouble is I don't actually know where that is, so I'm just driving around wherever it'll let me. This bit is making me feel weirdly anxious, maybe because this view is horrible and I'm scared I might go the wrong way and get lost.

Aha, I know I'm on the right track now. 

That's a forcefield blocking my little camspy's path, but it comes with a little EMP weapon for this kind of problem. I just need to follow the cables running along the top of the tunnel to a box, and then blast it.

1 MINUTE 40 SECONDS OF CAMSPYING LATER

Oops, sorry man! 

I'm trying to shoot the spider bots, but this scientist keeps running around and I accidentally got him in the knee. They can fix that in the future, right?

I found the computer core in the end, but shutting down the base's CPU made the little repair spiders go rogue and now there's a bit of a disaster going on. Killing them's not a problem, they're slow and fragile, but there seems to be a lot of them so I'm going to keep moving.

Hey, that's a less claustrophobic view. I'm just run going to run through the mayhem and hope for the best, as I don't think anyone here is actually shooting at me. Not deliberately anyway

In fact I'm going to lead the scientists to an escape elevator so they can avoid becoming a victim of my chaos. The ones I haven't accidentally shot I mean.

Well the good news is I've picked up a laptop gun. 

The bad news is that it's filled up half my weapon inventory, because carrying more than a rifle and a couple of pistols is forbidden. I don't even know what this game's problem is, as Perfect Dark let people carry everything and everyone was fine with that! Bloody mid-2000s FPS design trends. I blame Halo.

I didn't notice any instructions to deploy the gun as a turret but I tried it to see what'd happen and it said 'objective complete' again, so I feel like I've achieved something here.

In fact with this thing shooting the spiders off the walls for me I don't really see a need in hanging around anymore, so I'm going to join the scientists on the lift.

My next primary goal is to escape Trinity Platform, which is apparently where I am now.

I don't know who this guy in the doorway is, but he keeps getting shot in the ass by the guards outside with a semi-comical 'I just got shot in the ass' animation, so I should probably give him a hand.

Fortunately there's a super handy super dragon assault rifle dispenser next to the door and this thing has a scope on it.

Now I can snipe the enemies blocking my heroic escape! No, hang on, I've got a better idea. I'm seeing a lot of red barrels around and it would be irresponsible of me to leave them lying around intact. Did Perfect Dark ever had any red barrels? I'm not sure that it did.

Alright, I think I sniped them all, so I'm free to zoom back out and go for a walk.

Whoa, there's a bloody space rocket parked out here! It must have been hiding just out of my sights this whole time. I'm totally going over there to check that out, I don't care that I'm supposed to be escaping right now.

It kind of looks like the gun is glitching out, but that's actually the next-generation rendering technology using specular and bump maps to give it more of a realistic gleam. 

   Perfect Dark  |  TimeSplitters 2

It's more realistic than the guns you'd see in an N64 or PS2 game at least, which often had their lighting painted on. Though it's early days for the Xbox 360.

You know, I'm starting to get the impression that we're going to escape in the rocket. So that's pretty awesome. 

I found a lift to use, but now I'm stuck here while these enemies in flying suits harass me and they're a bit of a bastard to hit. Plus you'd think this weapon would do more damage, considering that its muzzle flash is more blinding than the sun. 

Maybe I need to play around with the brightness settings, because the sky probably shouldn't be that dark this time of day.

Seems like the guy who got shot in the ass is coming with us, whoever he is. Maybe he's here to get revenge on these scientists for what they did to his face.

I'm still trying to remember how good Xbox 360 games generally look, as the game seems closer to Xbox graphics at times. In fact I think Metal Gear Solid 2 on the PS2 may have looked better than this in cutscenes.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PS2)

Well okay, maybe not.

Anyway, one of those annoying jetpack dudes flew out of control and crashed into us, and...
 

...it was all a simulation!

Turns out that we were using a dataDyne simulator to simulate breaking into a dataDyne base and wrecking it, I guess for practice.

The game's a prequel to Perfect Dark taking place when Joanna's still a rookie, so I suppose she needs the training. And basic tutorial guidance.

There's an unloading screen too? Man, these Xbox 360s must have a ton of RAM!

Wait, "Your DNA may be used for training purposes"? That's not something you want to read! What are they up to, training geneticists? Cloning the folks who get high scores in order to make a squad of super soldiers?

Anyway, I'm going to come back to this later. Hope you come back to read about Mission 1!

TO BE CONTINUED

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Thanks for reading.

If you can recall anything about Perfect Dark Zero and want to share your own opinions, there's a comment box below. You can leave a comment even if you can't remember anything. I can barely remember the game myself.