Perfect Dark Zero's single player may be lacking, but the game is quickly saved by its awesome multiplayer
Now when you begin the game you're treated to a sight of a younger version of Joanna Dark (about four years younger) sneaking through an area that is property of Datadyne, your mission is to blow up the core thats located deep inside the base. Remember, this is a prequel, so don't expect any Maians or Skedars to show up. Now, here's where the mission starts. Ok, the first thing you have to notice are the fantastic visuals. If you're viewing this on an HDTV, be prepared for a suprise. Everything looks fantastic and is definately able to have that next-gen look. Though, the problem with these visuals is the fact that there's too much shine going on.
Really, everywhere you turn you'll notice several spots of shine on the walls, on your gun, and other NPCs and enemies alike. But it's only a minor graphical flaw so don't worry about it. So, back to the gameplay. Now the controls manage to work smoothly. You can move, duck, aim, and melee enemies with ease. But here's the thing, the sensitivity on the analog stick starts out kind of hard to work with. You'll be constantly trying to find the right sensitivity to put it on. It's hard to get a sensitivity that's not too slow and not too fast. Plus, this gets annoying when facing a bunch of enemies and a clunky aim system.
Now, combat. A new feature to the first person shooter genre is the somersault and covering. Somersault (which is activated by the left bumper) allows you to roll around at will. This definately helps trying to avoid enemy fire and it'll even make it hard for enemies to lock on to you. Covering, is a good way to add stealth into the game. If you come near a corner or a box, you'll get a notification allowing you to press the A button to cover. This comes in handy when trying to get through an area without being seen and works well in a gunfight by hiding behind the walls and peeking out to shoot at anyone who passes by.
Though there are some gameplay flaws. Take for example, the mediocre A.I. You'll notice that the enemies don't do much rather than stand still and shoot, cover and never come out of his hiding spot, or blindly charge at you just to get a close range shot. There ways of strategy also seem to be pitiful. They don't use teamwork to take you out, and instead they'd rather run behind a wall and run back out over and over again. So, this could make gameplay kind of boring and too easy. What's even worse is that they're so hard to kill. Everytime you shoot in the chest multiple times, they'll just put their hand on their chest acting like it hurts and go back to shooting. But if you play it on Perfect Agent or Dark Agent. Try to take some asprin, because while the enemies are still stupid, they are harder too kill and every bullet you get hit with will take off half your health. What's an even harder about these modes is that there are no checkpoints.
Also, there's a bug with the ragdoll physics. You'll notice that if you kill someone, they'll either float off the ground, bounce around the area, or take ahile to actually fall off the ground it's supposed to fall on after he gets shot. Another thing, is that the missions don't feel fun as the original. While the original Perfect Dark had missions like infiltrating a Skedar base and killing the Skedar leader. This game just has you doing missions like infiltrating a night club with the most boring stealth tactics. All you have to do is scan some data from some enforcers and get inside the club, shoot everyone, then go find your dad.
Story really isn't that great either, you and you're dad are just bounty hunters hunting down criminals, then later finding out the CEO of Datadyne, Zhang Li, is going activate a very devistating mechanism, knowned as the Graal. Yeah, it's really not as good as the orginal Perfect Dark's story and the music isn't as good as the original. It's just more and more rock music through out many parts of the game.
But just because the single player campaign is a bit mediocre, that doesn't mean that the multiplayer isn't great. You get eight modes seperated into two categories. Deathmatch contains Killcount, Team Killcount, Capture the Flag and Territorial Gains. Now DarkOps, is where you can get some real strategy.Modes like Eradication require careful planning and teamwork to eliminate the opposite team. Infecton, basically requires you to stay away from infected players. If they kill you, you're automatically put on their team. Sabotage, puts you in a team of either attackers or defenders. The attackers must blow up several base points located around the map while the defenders must....defend the base points. However, Onslaught, which basically just makes you have to either defend a point for a certain time limit or kill all defenders, it really isn't that great.
All of this supports up to 32 players, customizable size of the maps, customizable weapons, option to put bots in online multiplayer modes while also customizing their A.I and even the time limit of the match.
Plus, there is very little to no lag at all. Yep, so even though the game offers a mediocre single player with a boring story, lame music, and dumb A.I. The multiplayer makes Perfect Dark Zero one of the best console multiplayer games out there. See you on Live.