Perfect Dark — A Little Less Perfect, A Little Less Dark
We have long said we wanted to see a new Perfect Dark game. Being one of the iconic shoters of the N64 era, Perfect Dark deserves more than its whimpers of death that the recent Xbox 360 iteration provided. Well, our prayers haven’t been answered just yet, but to hold us over, a new and improved version of the original Perfect Dark has made its way to the Xbox Live Arcade. It fills us with nostalgia to play the game again, but it also slightly depresses us to see what we counted as “good” back in the day. despite its flaws, this new Perfect Dark remake feels timeless, and kept us more than occupied through its wealth of single and multi-player options.
To start, we need to make one thing clear. This remake is not a re-envisioning. There are no new levels, no new story elements, nothing really aside from the previous game with a major face lift … literally. The flat faced models of the N64 era are gone, and are now replaced with new high definition textures and models that actually have facial features. The A.I. is about as stupid as ever, and you won’t find any maps, waypoints, cover system, or other modern conveniences that you have come to expect from current day first person shooters. The map design is crappy, textures repeat, it’s horrendously easy to get lost, and multi-player is not anywhere close to balanced.
However, this is all stuff that was true back in the day too, and if you can accept that, you’ll see that there is a lot under the hood of this face-lift. There are new achievements to unlock, plenty of multi-player options, cheats out the wazoo, and even some new game modes. A particularly fun addition, is the ability to spawn as an enemy in someones single-player run through, which greatly increases enjoyment of the campaign. There are just too many options in this game. Between challenges, different degrees of difficulty, co-op, versus, weapons and location tweaking, behavior tweaking, bots, random shit like one hit pistol kill mode, online and split screen gameplay, and much much more. There are even online rankings, just in case you want to compare against Perfect Dark players all around the world.
I don’t really have a lot to say about the Perfect Dark remake, because in all actuality, like I said before, there isn’t much new. It’s Perfect Dark again, and it is much prettier, and it has more options. So, there is not much left to do but have fun. A second analog stick is better than C-buttons, an Xbox is better than an N64, and Perfect Dark on Xbox Live Arcade is better than the original. Honestly, at a 10 dollar price tag, there are certainly worse things you could get. If you want to take a stroll down memory lane once more, then Perfect Dark is a great buy. However, if you don’t have fond memories of N64 shooters, I wouldn’t necessarily say that Perfect Dark is a game you can pick up just because.
(25 votes, average: 2.80 out of 4)
Post a Comment to Perfect Dark — A Little Less Perfect, A Little Less Dark