I was a huge fan of Golden Eye on the N64, and my girlfriend was a huge fan of Perfect Dark, so needless to say we will be picking this up some time in the near future. Glad to hear they took the time to do the Port right.
Perfect Dark Review
Game Review | March 18, 2010 8:58 am
By chrisarcade
Ahh yes, the game I've been waiting for is finally here and I have to say this game has met all my expectations. Perfect Dark was the semi-sequel follow-up to one of Nintendo 64's greatest games, James Bond 007 Golden Eye. I have fond memories of me, my brother and my buddies playing many, many hours of this game, from sun up to sunset.
Perfect Dark on Xbox 360 is an exact port of the N64 version, but with sharper and enhanced graphics and animation. Everything from the sounds to the levels are perfect ports. All the weapons are here, and there are a lot of them. Unlike most shooters which only allow you to carry two weapons at a time, Perfect Dark gives you four to five at a time. The game has a ton of different firearms, from practical weapons like pistols and rifles, to more imaginative ones like the Farsight, which lets you snipe players wherever they are on the board; the gun lets you see through walls, kind of like night vision goggles. Proximity mines, Rocket Launchers and more are at your disposal, as well as my personal favorite, The Laptop. Throw this gun on a wall or floor and it deploys into a sentry type gun, shooting any enemy that comes in sight of it. But unlike the N64 version, this Laptop runs out of bullets much faster. After two to three sims are killed, the gun is empty. In the N64 version, my Laptop would kill at least ten or more sims before you had to deploy another one. There's even a cloaking device to be had. With this you can literally walk right up into your enemies face and stand nose to nose without being noticed. This baby got me out of a heated battle many times.
A complaint I had about a lot of shooters was how slow your character seems to move. Halo 3 for instance (though I love Halo 3) upset me at times because when the action got heavy and I try to run for cover, it seemed as if my character was walking instead of running, totally ignoring the fact that I was about to get my butt shot off, which led to deaths that could have been avoided. Perfect Dark on the other hand has your character moving at a very brisk pace and at 60 frames per second, it looks as beautiful as it moves. The updated graphics also serve this game well; no more blurry, blocky graphics that can sometimes barely be made out. Rare has done a great job with this remake.
This game comes with a load of play modes. Some we're all familiar with like King of the Hill, Capture the Case (which is basically capture the flag), to others we're not so familiar with, like Slow Motion where everything is pretty much...in slow motion, and Tranquilizer, which has you running around with a Tranquilizer pistol. When you shoot someone with this, their screen goes hazy. Keep shooting them and they eventually die, but not after being tranked so much you feel as if you're going to throw up. You also have single player campaign and challenges, as well as multi-player co-op and multi-player battles. You can play 4 player locally with split screen or go online and battle opponents from around the globe. The single player campaign is well done and pretty long for a downloaded Xbox Live Arcade game.
This game keeps track of everything from how many headshots you have to how many bullets you've used, kills, deaths, games played, games won and lost, distance traveled and a lot more. Online leaderboards complete this statistics package and gives you another reason to play.
There are 20 achievements in Perfect Dark. All of them are pretty easy to attain. Some examples are "kill an enemy when dual-wielding", "earn all leaderboard crowns" and complete missions on different difficulties. Nothing too hard. Most will attain all 200 points in a day or two.
Perfect Dark on N64 was great and is made even better on 360. It's exactly what I wanted, the N64 version with much improved sharper graphics and stellar 60 frames per sec animation. This is how a remake should be done.
Gameplay-8.5
Graphics-8
Sound-7
Replay Value-8
Overall-8
Perfect Dark on Xbox 360 is an exact port of the N64 version, but with sharper and enhanced graphics and animation. Everything from the sounds to the levels are perfect ports. All the weapons are here, and there are a lot of them. Unlike most shooters which only allow you to carry two weapons at a time, Perfect Dark gives you four to five at a time. The game has a ton of different firearms, from practical weapons like pistols and rifles, to more imaginative ones like the Farsight, which lets you snipe players wherever they are on the board; the gun lets you see through walls, kind of like night vision goggles. Proximity mines, Rocket Launchers and more are at your disposal, as well as my personal favorite, The Laptop. Throw this gun on a wall or floor and it deploys into a sentry type gun, shooting any enemy that comes in sight of it. But unlike the N64 version, this Laptop runs out of bullets much faster. After two to three sims are killed, the gun is empty. In the N64 version, my Laptop would kill at least ten or more sims before you had to deploy another one. There's even a cloaking device to be had. With this you can literally walk right up into your enemies face and stand nose to nose without being noticed. This baby got me out of a heated battle many times.
A complaint I had about a lot of shooters was how slow your character seems to move. Halo 3 for instance (though I love Halo 3) upset me at times because when the action got heavy and I try to run for cover, it seemed as if my character was walking instead of running, totally ignoring the fact that I was about to get my butt shot off, which led to deaths that could have been avoided. Perfect Dark on the other hand has your character moving at a very brisk pace and at 60 frames per second, it looks as beautiful as it moves. The updated graphics also serve this game well; no more blurry, blocky graphics that can sometimes barely be made out. Rare has done a great job with this remake.
This game comes with a load of play modes. Some we're all familiar with like King of the Hill, Capture the Case (which is basically capture the flag), to others we're not so familiar with, like Slow Motion where everything is pretty much...in slow motion, and Tranquilizer, which has you running around with a Tranquilizer pistol. When you shoot someone with this, their screen goes hazy. Keep shooting them and they eventually die, but not after being tranked so much you feel as if you're going to throw up. You also have single player campaign and challenges, as well as multi-player co-op and multi-player battles. You can play 4 player locally with split screen or go online and battle opponents from around the globe. The single player campaign is well done and pretty long for a downloaded Xbox Live Arcade game.
This game keeps track of everything from how many headshots you have to how many bullets you've used, kills, deaths, games played, games won and lost, distance traveled and a lot more. Online leaderboards complete this statistics package and gives you another reason to play.
There are 20 achievements in Perfect Dark. All of them are pretty easy to attain. Some examples are "kill an enemy when dual-wielding", "earn all leaderboard crowns" and complete missions on different difficulties. Nothing too hard. Most will attain all 200 points in a day or two.
Perfect Dark on N64 was great and is made even better on 360. It's exactly what I wanted, the N64 version with much improved sharper graphics and stellar 60 frames per sec animation. This is how a remake should be done.
Gameplay-8.5
Graphics-8
Sound-7
Replay Value-8
Overall-8
Reviewed: Perfect Dark
Keywords: None
