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Game Title: Perfect Dark
Platform: Game Boy Color
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Shooter
Age Rating: ELSPA: 11+ (Europe), ESRB: T for Teen (North America)
Release Date: 1st August 2000 (Europe), 28th August 2000 (North America)
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Game Score: 4.0/10
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Summery:
Perfect Dark on Game Boy Color just isn't a perfect game to take on the go due to problems with the perspective and atrocious minigames.
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Rare's Perfect Dark for the N64 was indeed a lot similar to Rare's popular Goldeneye game for the system but Joanna Dark was a cool female lead, mission campaign that were full of gadget using segments with futuristic technology and an outstanding Multiplayer component. Eventually what the game designers soon fought afterwards that it was a great idea to release a version of Perfect Dark on the Game Boy Color. The catch is that the game assembles a overhead style shooter instead of an FPS which is fine seeing the limitations of the Game Boy Color hardware but however this is a game that's far less then being perfect for the on-the-go experience.
Like the N64 game you play as Joanna Dark who looks more deformed in the game then the the way I remember the character from the N64 version. She begins her training in the Carrington Institute where you'll learn how to play the game and also discover the issues you'll have playing it. The controls in the game are as follows: D-Pad moves your character at a 360 rotation, A fires your weapon while B reloads your weapon when prompted, you can tap the D-pad twice in any direction you want to run. Interacting with most objects in the game is automatic from security switches to defusing bombs which I'll get back to in later detail.
In the main game you'll go through each level shooting bad guys, rescuing hostages by simply touching them and also you'll get some minigame along the way like the simple on rails stages where you use D-Pad and A buttons to control the crosshair and shoot, a sniping stage and many more. When you take down enemy guards you can search them with the Select Button to see what items he drops, sometimes you will get an item like health a new gun or ammo.
You can bring up the pause menu which you view your weapons, ammo and check your objectives at anytime but not while you at a minigame.
The overhead perspective does become rather cumbersome to get used to, not just the controls but the overall game mechanics. The game encourages stealth to be able survive but the limited visibility can make some enemy encounters unpredictable, sometimes enemies can take you by surprise or even if you are in cover it is possible for an enemy to actually spot you from there which seems to be a glitch or something. You can try and dispatch an enemy by sneaking up to an enemy from behind and then shoot with a pistol but you have to make sure that you are close as possible or it doesn't count alerting the guard instead. When you do get into a fight with a guard it is not possible to shoot down one without taking any damage because there is nothing you can do then just take it. Sometimes when you want to take out the pistol to perform the stealth kill you might come out of the menu only to accidentally start running which also alerts the guard. Stealth is broken down further by having some enemies hidden inside walls which can have enemies come out of nowhere and takes your last remaining health when you weren't expecting it.
Just when you think that the main portions are bad you eventually get to the minigames which play out as boss or endurance challenges and are also poor copycats of other games. First up are the on rail stages which are the target range stages where you need to shoot down a required number of targets to qualify, there is a river crossing shooting stage which share similar controls only that you need to shoot ammo boxes to refill your ammo like in Operation Wolf. You get door control where you have to press the right combination of flashing buttons that show up. You get a Jungle chase stage which is a poor man's Spyhunter where you need to avoid enemy vehicles and there is a sniping stage where you need to take down enemies without getting noticed. There are attack cyborg boss fights where you need to use the lasers to destroy them and then there is a boss fight where it takes form of a discus game which is kind of dumb. What is also dumb are hind boss fights, this time you need to strafe around the enemy hind to avoid it's bullets and rockets and to move the cursor to where you need to shoot at you have to hold down the B buttton. Not only does the controls feel awkward but it leaves you vulnerable against enemy fire especially against one boss where there is nothing to take cover in making the fight much more difficult. By the way that boss is named Octopus Prime which is almost trying to sound like Optimus Prime from the Transformers but done so bad.
One thing for sure it is difficult to get used to the combat in the main game and the controls, not utilizing stealth mechanics effectively could lead taking severe damage which is bound to leave you wounded for next portions, most importantly you are not going to expect health recovery every single time you take out an enemy. The game does autosave after each level completion but some levels do take longer then what they should be so if you die it is back to beginning of the level, that is except for the Carrington Institute stage where you complete one section you are allowed to restart at a checkpoint. Why at that I have no idea, plus when you complete one area in a mission with low health you can restart at about 50% health to try and help make it easy for you.
One positive thing to say about the gameplay is that the game uses Rumble capabilities as the game vibrates when shooting or taking damage or during cutscenes when explosions go off. The cartridge requires 1 AAA battery to activate Rumble support.
One of the best things about the game is the presentation, the sprites are well animated and each look really good besides that they don't have faces. The cutscenes do look rather nice although they cannot be skipped so if restarting after dying so many times they begin to lose novelty. The music in the game are remixes of some of the tunes on the N64 version like the Carrington Institute theme, Pelagic 2 and the Airbase. There isn't any music during the gameplay what-so-ever but there are some good sound effects and there is also some voice bytes which although distorted it is good for what the platform can handle.
One of the best reasons to buy this game is that you can slot the game into a Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak and that allows you to unlock some of the game's cheats which is very helpful to started on cheat collecting. The gameplay in Perfect Dark for the Game Boy Color is unimpressive with a cumbersome perspective, stealth that is either broken or just bad and boss fights that take form of minigames that are mediocre clones of other games. It takes roughly 4+ hours to complete the game and you can unlock the minigames as you play through the game. There is a multiplayer mode where you can link up with another Game Boy Color that has a copy to play competitively and also photos that can be printed with a Game Boy Printer. Perfect Dark falls deeply in the dark for its execution on the handheld, if you want to unlock some cheats for the N64 game it is perhaps worth it only for that but otherwise Perfect Dark is a complete disappointing release on the handheld and it is best left in the dark.
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The Good Points:
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The Presentation is impressive for the Gameboy Color
Can be used with the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak to unlock cheats in the Nintendo 64 version
The Bad Points:
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Terrible stealth mechanics and cumbersome controls
Minigame boss fights that are just dumb versions of other games
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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