Perfect Dark Preview

When Perfect Dark, Rare's follow-up to the first-person shooter GoldenEye 007, was pushed out of 1999 and back to April 2000, many people found themselves without a worthwhile N64 game to play. Others became skeptical, thinking that when the game finally does ship, it won't be worth playing anyway. While the game isn't finished yet, and there are still some changes to be implemented, after playing the most recent version of the game, we think it looks like the wait will definitely be worth it. The game engine is not an enhanced version of the GoldenEye engine, says Nintendo's Ken Lobb "Basically, Rare was like, 'Well, we know what we like about the GoldenEye engine, let's throw everything else away.' They didn't like very much."

Perfect Dark's options really make it stand out. Not only is there a complete single-player game, with three difficulty levels (which have been changed a bit over GoldenEye's difficulty, making the easy level a bit easier and the hardest harder), but there is also a two-player cooperative mode that packs more enemies into the levels. The second player plays as Joanna Dark's sister, a blonde girl who hasn't been given a name yet. To go along with the co-op mode is a counter-operative mode. In this mode, the first player goes through the single-player game as normal, while the second player jumps into the body of one of the level's enemies. While you may be a bit smarter than the AI enemies in this mode, you'll still die as easily as the AI enemies. When you die as the enemy player, you can hit start and take over the body of another bad guy. Your mission as the counteroperative is to block Joanna's path by any means necessary. You can push furniture around and block doors, as well as slap the other guards, which causes them to take off in search of Joanna. The game features a lot of cutscenes, and in an interesting twist, you can skip the cutscenes and start the level while the cutscene is still occurring. This gives you a bit of control over things like where enemies are when you start the level. The enemy AI will pull off some interesting tricks. For instance, shooting out the lights in a room caused a room full of bad guys to run from the dark room into a nearby office, where they took cover and waited for us to enter the room. The storyline, told through cutscenes and in-mission radio traffic, starts out as your typical spy thriller, but after a few run-of-the-mill missions you'll find yourself dealing with alien autopsies, presidential clones, and a full-scale invasion of your home base, the Carrington Institute. Your campaign against the evil corporation, dataDyne, will eventually explode into a huge conflict between two alien races, the Maians and the Skedar. Many of the gripes about GoldenEye's multiplayer mode have been worked on, including the ability to walk off ledges and select your own weapon combinations when setting up a level. Of all the great features that PD's multiplayer mode has to offer, the best is the weapons. If people are going to talk PD, you'll most definitely hear them discuss the overwhelming number of weapons at their disposal. From standard Magnum revolvers to megamodded alien weaponry, PD offers more than enough unique weapons. One of the coolest weapons has to be the FarSight, which allows you to look through walls, home in on your enemy's heat signature, and kill him with one railgun-like shot. While this may sound like an incredibly unbalanced weapon, since you can reach out and kill someone no matter where they're hiding, it's been balanced by making the weapon move very slowly, so it's hard to actually get off a clean shot against a moving target. Most of the game's pistols can be doubled up, allowing you to run around with machine pistols akimbo.

Multiplayer has a bevy of options also. You'll start the multiplayer game with only a few levels and weapons to choose from, but you can unlock items via a multiplayer challenge mode, which can be played with any number of players. The difficulty of the challenge scales depending on how many people are playing. By the time you're finished, you'll have unlocked all of the game's weapons (currently 44 weapons total, each with a secondary firing mode or function, but more may be added by the time the game is finished) and loads of maps, including three maps from GoldenEye (complex, facility, and temple). There are lots of different free-for-all and team games to choose from, including standard deathmatch, capture the flag, hold the briefcase, and king of the hill. You can opt to insert anywhere from zero to eight simulants (Nintendo's fancy new term for bots) in any of the modes and team them up in any way you please. The bots have lots of different personalities, which can be configured in all sorts of ways. For starters, there are six difficulties for the bots, ranging from simple settings like MeatSim, EasySim, and NormalSim, up to HardSim, PerfectSim, and the evil, damn-near-unbeatable DarkSim. These difficulties can also be assigned to a collection of personality types. The PacifistSim will run around the level, collecting guns so no one else can use them. The FistSim will attempt to punch you silly. The RevengeSim will stalk the last person to kill it. The KamikazeSim will be sure to take you with him when he blows himself up. The game's frame rate is a bit sketchy at times right now, but the game should be able to handle four players and four bots without too much of a dent in its speed. Drop in eight bots, and you can expect to see some choppy action on some of the larger, more complex maps. Even the little touches in this game are impressive. The game has a 16:9 option for those of you who have dropped several thousand dollars into wide-screen TVs. The game uses MP3 compression for the audio, which is probably what lets most of the game's 45 or so minutes of game-engine cutscenes contain voice, and the game has Dolby Surround support. The game doesn't require the expansion RAM pack, but without it you'll only be able to play 40 to 50 percent of the game, and you'll be limited to one- or two-player games. While early reports stated that you'd be able to hook up your Game Boy Camera and snap photos of yourself to place in the game, this feature has been removed. Rare simply couldn't get the feature working properly. The game will, however, use the GB transfer pack. When you combine the transfer pack with the GB version of Perfect Dark, it's likely that you'll be able to unlock items on both the GB and N64 games.

Longtime GoldenEye players may have finally found the one game that can replace their well-worn Bond cartridge.

Ankarino's Perfect Dark Impressions

The anticipation over games like this is always more detrimental to first impressions than any actual flaw. Even a fantastic game can easily be tainted following an unnecessary amount of hype and holler. Needless to say, Perfect dark has gathered more than its fair share of press. Tack on a few delays, the assorted push-back, and you have people primed for disappointment.

That said, to my delight and surprise, Rare has successfully deviated from the normal pattern and delivered with command and quality. Perfect dark is all the company said it would be, and, in my opinion, more. From game-structure additions to attention to detail, Rare has indeed exploited the N64 to full yield. The depth of gameplay and user customization features are unparalleled in the gaming industry. Suffice it to say, Perfect Dark surpasses its CD-based adversaries on this front as well.

Good:The innovations on the GoldenEye platform are endless, so here are some highlighted favorites that I found added significantly to the PD experience. First, the two-player setting has three gameplay options: the deathmatch mode, co-op mode, and counter-op mode. We've heard a lot about these features, but in practice they are very impressive. The cartridge remembers even the most miniscule detail as you sweep through levels. For example, you leave a body in an elevator, and it rides between floors indefinitely. Also, the "friendly fire" option can be disabled, thus allowing you and a buddy to get caught in your own crossfire. The realism is heavy.

Also, the smaller aspects of the game are of particular import, as they enhance the gameplay experience to no end. Here is my laundry list of favorite features: The reloading process has been lengthened slightly to preserve realism - the animation actually depicts Joanna discharging the spent magazine and slapping the new one in. If Joanna is shot, she drips a trail of blood as she maneuvers through the hallways. There are numerous voice-overs that play throughout the single and multiplayer games, including agents crying out "Oh God! I'm dying!" as they collapse to the concrete, clutching their throats (GoldenEye style). You can shoot out light sources as you see fit, increasingly dimming the room as each bulb shatters to the floor. The night-vision goggles work amazingly well, providing heat signatures for every humanoid in view. The weapons are numerous and diverse; for example, the combat boost generates a "Matrix"-like effect, moving everyone into a slow-motion combat sequence. You see bullets passing by you; rockets look as though they could be caught; and agents die slow deaths with gruesome realism. Each of the weapons has a secondary function; for example, one of the rocket-launching devices has a rocket-cam feature wherein, after a rocket is fired, your screen changes to the rocket's viewpoint, and you can steer the missile through corridors, around corners, wherever. This feature is particularly effective against campers with the far-sight rail gun (the weapon with an X-ray infrared scope and an ability to fire through walls). Lastly, there is much more gore in PD than in GoldenEye. When shot, agents will bleed all over the ground, and if a body is riddled with bullets, the wall behind and below it will be saturated with copious amounts of blood.

Finally, the customizable menus provide a consummate interactive experience unmatched by any existing title. From adding simulants to modifying weapon placement, the multiplayer games have an even higher replayability than that of GoldenEye. There are numerous multiplayer levels, ranging from the wide-open area 51 to the claustrophobic confines of narrow corridors. After you place up to eight simulants in the mix, the rivers will surely run red with the taint of battle. However, this is but a select few elements of the game - in the interest of space, commendations must be curtailed accordingly.

Bad:This section is pleasantly light, as the Perfect Dark team has incessantly delayed the release of the game. The time was well spent (for the obvious aforementioned reasons) for the most part, though I was let down in two regards. First, I had hoped for more GoldenEye multiplayer-level crossover. PD only features the beginner GoldenEye trio: the complex, the temple, and the facility. I was really pulling for the archive and the subterranean caverns, as I have so many fond memories of those massacres. Secondly, the counter-operative mode is very unbalanced in Joanna's favor. Each agent player has "agent" health, meaning they are killed with one or two shots. True, they shouldn't have full health, but perhaps some of them should have slightly more than others. Personally, I think Rare should have an option where each enemy agent always has exactly half the health Joanna does when she encounters them. This way the second player has a better chance of thwarting Joanna's relentless onslaught.

In any case, these are but minor gripes in the grand scheme of things. The bottom line: Perfect Dark will prove to be another timeless classic, as GoldenEye did. Reviewers will constantly reference it, gamers will log hours of play, and the N64 will breathe with new vigor for months to come. Accolades to Rare for delivering what we have craved for so very long. Joe's Perfect Dark impressions

It took a while for Perfect Dark to grow on me. It's not a game that wows you immediately, but the more you play it, the more you start to notice all its impressive little touches. My experience spending time with the single-player missions was pretty good, but the point where I became totally sold on it was during a multiplayer match. We had four people lined up to play and decided to add on a simulant. I hadn't seen any of the really tough ones, so I asked the Nintendo rep to set it to the Dark Sim setting. He asked me if I was sure. Sounds like some drama, right? Nope. It really tore into us. I believe it got at least three of us before we managed to put it down once. After a while, we started dreading running into it, which gave a real haunted-house feel to the level.

Then something happened that I can only describe as one of those fantastic moments in gaming that define a game to you. I came around a corner and ran into the Dark Sim on an incline. After a few shots, I ran out of ammo, and my weapon marking showed me as unarmed. One of the really nice things about Perfect Dark though is that every weapon has two settings; even when you're unarmed, you can either punch or try to disarm someone. I change my setting to disarm, barreled into the Dark Sim, snagged both of his guns, and capped him in the corner. After having been popped a few times by this bot earlier in the round, this was incredibly satisfying. I'm very excited about this game again. I think I've told this story about ten times now.

Ben's Perfect Dark Impressions:

Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm not really as into Perfect Dark as you might imagine. Sure, it's a cool game, but for some reason I like GoldenEye better. Perfect Dark's single-player mode seems really cool. There's a ton of stuff to do, there are totally different objectives between difficulty settings, and the detail is just astounding. For a game on a cartridge, it has a remarkable amount of stuff to do - tons of weapons, tons of supercool spy devices, and tons of deviations from the standard shoot-it-and-move-on formula.

But that's the single-player mode.

Unfortunately, I didn't much like the multiplayer mode. Or at least the four-player mode. All the levels now have this odd high-tech color scheme that colors walls blue or grayish-silver. For some reason, this made it really hard for me to figure out exactly what was going on. I simply couldn't see characters against the backdrop of the new levels, and it just didn't seem as though the multiplayer levels were as well designed as they had been in GoldenEye. Additionally, there are just too many weapons. Sure, having a lot of weapons in the game is cool, but almost every time we played everyone would simply get one gun and forget about the rest of them. I constantly found myself wondering if one machine gun was better than another, only to find out too late.

The counter-agent mode is cool, if you don't mind dying every few moments if you're the counter-agent. It's an odd way to play, because on the first two difficulty levels each guard dies with only one or two shots from Miss Dark. It would be cool if Perfect Dark handled counter-agent mode similarly to Unreal Tournament's assault mode - with each respawn starting in an area where you can collect your weapon of choice and then move on to an appropriate defensive position and wait for the infiltration to happen. Just imagine how fun it would be to snipe your friend from a guard tower.

The cooperative mode is nice. You and a friend play through the game and help each other. This opens up endless possibilities, as you can now provide gunfire support or even split up for multiple points of entry in an infiltration scenario. Way cool. I didn't like how you simply kept respawning after you died. I would have rather you were simply eliminated from the scenario if you died, leaving the other player to play solo. Perhaps at that point it could have switched back to a full-screen game? That'd be fresh.

We'll just have to wait and see how I feel about the game after I've played through more of the single-player scenarios.