Perfect Dark
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| Perfect Dark | ||||||||||||||||||||
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 A single woman dares to face the threat. That woman is Joanna Dark! Discover why they call her "Perfect."
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Perfect Dark is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 video game console. It is considered the spiritual successor to Rare's earlier first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 (1997).
Why It's Perfect
- Following the success of GoldenEye, Rare significantly upped the budget and effort for this title and therefore strived to improve on the many mechanics, design, and so on that was set by that game which can be read about below.
- Unlike GoldenEye, this game has voice acting and it's actually pretty good even for its time.
- The AI is greatly improved.
- Where the ally AI in GoldenEye (Natalya) was pretty basic and mostly followed Bond around and occasionally killed enemies, the ally in this game, Elvis, is a particularly good shot and on "Deep Sea" he can take care of the enemies in the first section all by himself if you let him.
- Dark Sims. They move faster than a human player, fire their weapons faster, have frame-perfect reactions (to the point it's not unheard of to take hits before they even visibly round a corner) have full, real-time knowledge of both all players' locations as well as weapon spawns and timers, reload faster than humans and, most damningly of all, can full-on teleport when out of all humans' lines of sight. It's worth noting, the Sim description explicitly describes them as having superhuman capabilities that break the rules of the game, and warns that fighting them is only for the most capable of players.
- There are 33 weapons for the player to use with 8 of them needing to be unlocked first. Every weapon in Perfect Dark (with the exception of the "Classic Weapons") also feature a secondary function that often drastically changes how the weapon is used. Secondary modes vary from simply using pistols as melee weapons in close combat to turning assault rifles into explosive booby-trap devices, as well as many other elaborate functions.
- Normal
- Unarmed - Along with punching, the player can also disarm the enemy of their weapon and take it for themself.
- Combat Knife - A normal combat knife with a secondary mode which allows the player to throw the knife at an enemy. Despite being somewhat inaccurate and unwieldy, thrown knives deal damage on impact and also poisons the enemy it hits.
- Falcon 2 - The most common pistol in the game which can be fitted with a silencer and a 2x magnification scope. The player can pistol whip enemies.
- MagSec 4 - A heavy magazine-fed select-fire pistol which can be switched from a single shot to a 3-burst.
- Mauler - A heavy pistol which can fire a charged-up shot that consumes up to five individual shots and use a sixth to fire.
- Phoenix - A standard pistol similar to a Falcon 2, but can also fire explosive shots.
- DY357 Magnum
- DY357-LX - It is the strongest weapon in the game alongside the Farsight XR-20 since it can kill enemies with one shot. Not that different from the Golden Gun from GoldenEye.
- Tranquilizer - It has two functions: sedate and lethal injection. Sedate acts like a standard weapon and fires sedative darts at the target, causing a little damage and a lot of sluggishness and disorientation. Lethal injection uses four rounds to (usually) kill the opponent, but it can only be used at close range. Though this has to be yet confirmed, it appears more than 3 shots to a target will kill them, due to a single, but slight, change in body orientation when incapacitated after the 3rd hit.
- CMP-150 - An SMG which has a Lock-On feature.
- Cyclone - An SMG that is made inaccurate for long range, but does wonders in close range. Because of this, the gun has magazine discharge.
- Callisto NTG - A rapid fire SMG with a secondary feature that fires more powerful shots that will do more damage and penetrate doors, soft objects and enemies, at the cost of a significantly reduced fire rate and accuracy.
- RC-P120 - A rapid fire SMG with a cloaking device. However, the gun consumes ammunition very quickly from its magazine to power the cloak, and will continually draw from it as long as the cloak is active and the ammunition supply can hold out.
- Laptop Gun - A burst fire assault rifle that appears as a laptop PC until closely examined. The secondary mode allows the user to deploy the weapon onto nearly any surface as a sentry gun, which helps lock down important areas. The gun runs on the remaining rounds in the magazine but it can put down a lot of hurt on those who remain in its sights.
- Dragon - An assault rifle with a Proximity Mine feature to set a booby trap, causing the rifle to explode and damage its user and teammates too.
- K7 Avenger - A powerful assault rifle with a Threat Detector attached to it.
- AR34 - A burst fire assault rifle with a 3x scope.
- SuperDragon - A powerful assault rifle with a grenade launcher.
- Shotgun - A standard shotgun with a secondary function fires two shells in quick succession, which is very effective if both rounds hit, but can be overkill in most situations, and will burn through ammo faster which, when combined with the slow reload, can cause problems.
- Reaper - A gatling gun-like weapon with a secondary mode, Grinder, which causes the gun's barrels to spin up as if they were firing normally, with the attached barrel blades dealing significant damage to targets within melee range.
- Sniper Rifle
- FarSight XR-20 - A railgun that can go through almost any wall and kill enemies in one shot. The secondary mode actively seeks out and tracks targets while aiming, even if the target is behind a wall or in another part of the map. The FarSight can still see through and shoot through walls in this mode, and the shots will still kill targets instantly. However the tracking is somewhat slow and when a target is located, only the camera locks onto them and not the aiming reticle, meaning that shots will still have to be aimed manually.
- Devastator - A grenade launcher with a secondary mode that makes the grenades stick to anything they hit, including enemies. After a couple seconds they then drop off the object and explode upon another impact.
- Rocket Launcher - A standard rocket launcher with a secondary lock-on feature.
- Slayer - A rare rocket launcher with a secondary mode that activates Fly-By-Wire, allowing the user to remotely direct the missile through the air.
- Crossbow - The primary mode sedates the enemy, and in single player will knock out any human with a single hit. The secondary mode has a lower rate of fire, but will usually kill an enemy in one shot.
- Laser - The primary mode accurately fires a single pulse at the enemy. Although it doesn't use ammo, it is an unreliable weapon for intense firefights due to its low rate of fire which is inferior to many of the game's weapons. The secondary mode fires a continuous short range beam that does very little damage per "hit" but "hits" about 33 times a second which can do significant damage if the enemy is kept within reach.
- Grenade - A standard grenade with a secondary function that causes it to bounce uncontrollably off surfaces until it comes close enough to a player, and then explodes.
- Timed Mine - The primary fire throws the mine, which will then stick to just about anything it touches, and detonate after four seconds. Like the other mines, it can be attached to an enemy, which will inevitably kill them. The mines can also be shot to detonate them early. The secondary mode is the Threat Detector, much like the K7 Avenger. Mines cannot be thrown in this mode.
- Proximity Mine - A normal mine with a Threat Detector as a secondary feature.
- Remote Mine
- N-Bomb - A grenade that, once thrown, a large black sphere emerges with a recoiling noise. Anyone caught in the blast radius will take damage (albeit very slowly), drop all of their weapons and become extremely dizzy. The N-Bomb also ignores shields. The secondary function has the N-Bomb detonating when someone gets too close like the Proximity Mine but causing the effects above. In single-player, the N-Bomb causes non-lethal damage to enemies and friendly NPCs.
- Classic: If the player complete the Shooting Range on Gold difficulty, they will unlock the classic weapons. These are weapons from GoldenEye 007.
- PP9i
- CC13
- KL01313
- KF7 Special
- ZZT (9mm)
- DMC
- AR53
- RC-P45
- Normal
- There are much more gadgets that can be used while fighting as opposed to only using them to complete objectives.
- Data Uplink - It is a remote control-like device that is used to wirelessly hack into various machines such as computer terminals and enemy dropships.
- CamSpy - Its main purpose is to record audio and video evidence. It can also be used to distract and lure enemies, though they will shoot at it after a while.
- Night Vision
- IR Scanner - An infrared optical device used to help users to see in the dark and to locate secret passages and cloaked enemies.
- X-Ray Scanner - It can be used to spot enemies through walls and other obstacles, and also to attack them from through doors or boxes with penetrating weapons such as the DY357 Magnum.
- Cloaking Device - It can turn the user invisible for a limited amount of time. It can be toggled on and off as needed. While in use, if the user fires a weapon, it will deactivate temporarily.
- The player is free to roam around Carrington Institute. Occasionally when starting a new save file, Daniel Carrington may also appear and give you a tour of the building. Located throughout are a range of different training rooms, most of which have challenges for you to complete. While it's not necessary to do so, it is recommended that you get to know the various parts of the building intimately, as the information will greatly benefit you in a later campaign mission.
- Shooting Range - In a room resembling a target range, the player is presented with an index of every weapon used by the player in Solo Missions, with each weapon having three different challenges to complete. Completing them all on Bronze difficulty rewards the player with the bonus mission The Duel, while completing them all on Gold difficulty nets the player the reward of the classic weapons.
- Combat Training - In a large black room, the player can practice basic combat training, which ranges from simply looking around to hand-to-hand combat.
- Gadget Lab - In a small room on the second floor Here the player can train with each of the gadgets in the lab.
- Hacker Central - In the room next door to the Gadget Lab, the player can access information on character's backgrounds and stories. Cheats can also be activated from this room.
- Hangar - Located on the ground floor, players can access information on locations and vehicles. They can also practice pushing around a HoverCrate and riding a HoverBike in the area.
- Combat Simulator - This is the Multiplayer mode of Perfect Dark, although it can be played Solo.
- The multiplayer, while similar to GoldenEye, can be played with 8 Simulants (AI Bots) and if a player creates a profile, they can track their statistics, rank, and create a custom character by matching heads and bodies.
- The game improves on the objective-based mission structure by giving the player a hint that they're near an objective by having Joanna mention that she's nearby a specific room.
- The game pushes the limits of the N64 with the polygon count being the highest it's ever been allowing for some amazing visuals and some of the most realistic character models on the N64. Not only that, the game has actual physics since you're able to push things around and they move accordingly, and while by today this is as basic as physics in games get, back then this was really impressive since the only other game to have this was Half-Life. The fact that these physics work on an N64 is especially impressive.
- An incredible female protagonist: the game clearly rode the wave of feminism in the wake of Tomb Raider, Xena, Buffy, etc. in portraying a feminist fantasy without coming across as preachy.
- If you use the Transfer Pak with the Game Boy Color version of the game, you unlock additional cheats.
- Lots of replay value. Each difficulty mode actually increases the amount of objectives required to complete each mission making it so that you experience more of each mission. Perfect Agent is the ultimate difficulty to use if you want to really be tested and really want a serious challenge.
- The game was eventually ported to the Xbox Live Arcade which featured a consistently-smooth framerates, support for HD resolutions, a modernized, twin-stick control scheme, and online multiplayer.
Bad Qualities
- A Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak is required to access the game's campaign and most of the multiplayer. If you don't have one you can't play most of the game.
- Inconsistent framerate for N64 version. The Xbox Live Arcade version fixed that.
- 'The game was very expensive on release. It came out the same year as PlayStation 2 and despite being a last-gen game, it was more expensive than a PS2 game due to the Nintendo 64's cartridge format. Couple that with the mandatory requirement of an Expansion Pak if you didn't already have one.
- 'The XBLA version has all the info on characters and locations unlocked from the start, potentially spoiling the game for newcomers.
- Some weapons are poorly balanced which makes sense since there are far too many of them.
- The FarSight XR-20. An infamous one-hit kill weapon that shoots through walls and has an alt-fire that slowly auto-tracks other players in multiplayer.
- The K7 Avenger. It has a reduced magazine capacity compared to the AR34 or the Dragon and its heavier variant, is less accurate, and dispenses ammunition much quicker than most auto-weapons. BUT it has a devastating damage-per-bullet and lightning-fast RPM, especially in comparison to the other assault rifles.
- The SuperDragon. With six grenades in a mag, forty in reserve, this leads to Grenade Spam.
- The MagSec 4. Despite the decent burst mode, it is the worst pistol in the game.
- The Magnum fires too slowly and its damage output is weaker than it should since a magnum is FPS games is usually the most powerful pistol.
- The only shotgun in the game is terrible. Its spread is too tight to serve as crowd control, too wide to serve as a precision weapon, deals less damage than it feels like it should, and both fires and reloads painfully slowly.
- The Reaper is the worst weapon in the game. It takes a second after pulling the trigger for the weapon to start firing bullets, most of which will not hit their intended target, and the damage is pathetic. The secondary function is a melee attack that only leaves you vulnerable to enemy gunfire.
- While good, the voice acting sometimes slips, due to the developers hiring British actors when all of the characters are supposed to be American.
- Trent Easton's American accent is horrid. It's extremely clear every time he opens his mouth that his voice actor was not American, but was trying to force it anyway.
- While it is better, the AI can still be pretty dumb sometimes.
- Meat Sims are the easiest AI enemies you can play against in multiplayer. They wander around drunkenly, ignoring weapons (and oftentimes you), and can barely hit the room they're standing in.
- Try putting a Meat Sim adversary in a match with automatic weapons...and watch them trace a perfect outline of you on the wall behind you in bullet holes.
- None of the AI can detonate Remote Mines. They can throw a Dragon in secondary, but only if it's empty; amusingly, they treat the Laptop Gun the same way, meaning you might sometimes encounter sentry guns that don't fire. They also can't see any form of trap and will walk straight into a proximity mine left in the middle of a corridor.
- Generally your 1-player buddies (Jonathan and Elvis) are very handy shots, but they will occasionally wander right into your line of fire or otherwise act like idiots just so you can fail the mission. The bot ally in single-player coop behaves the same way.
- Dr. Caroll in dataDyne Central: Extraction. Not only will he randomly hover right in the line of fire, but he also lacks the combat support given to you by Elvis or Jonathan. The President also has a tendency to run into areas where he is vulnerable in Air Force One: Antiterrorism.
- The inability to avoid explosions has carried over from GoldenEye.
- None of the Sims know how to use Timed Mines or Proximity Mines, and will resort to their fists if these are the only weapons on the map. Because they will merrily blow themselves up on mines you set, even Dark Sims become pathetically easy in this case.
- Meat Sims are the easiest AI enemies you can play against in multiplayer. They wander around drunkenly, ignoring weapons (and oftentimes you), and can barely hit the room they're standing in.
- The Skedar Ruins level is terribly designed. You have to place a tracker on 3 pillars, and because it's random, you're guaranteed to get the wrong pillars, thus failing the mission in the process, and whenever you do successfully place trackers on all of the pillars, the whole place explodes for no reason, rendering the level impossible to beat.
- One of the main criticisms of the game nowadays. It can be very confusing to find out what the level objectives are when there are no hints besides a few paragraphs of briefing. (Ironically, whenever Joanna's in close proximity to an objective, someone will speak up and bring it to her attention.)
Reception
Perfect Dark received critical acclaim from video game publications. The most praised aspects of the game were its graphics, artificial intelligence, and number of multiplayer options. Criticism was mainly levied to the game's inconsistent frame rate.
GameSpot claimed that, as a console first-person shooter, Perfect Dark is "unparalleled", while IGN journalist Matt Casamassina remarked that its extensive features set the game apart from its peers.
N64 Magazine described Perfect Dark as "dauntingly huge", stating that it "takes everything that made its predecessor such an enduring favourite and does it bigger, better and more often".
Edge concluded that, although the game fails to be as revolutionary as its predecessor, it refines its "phenomenal gameplay while massively developing its multiplayer components".
Nintendo Power editors called the game "undeniably a work of art", suspenseful, "more compelling than most action movies and much deeper than any video game of its type".
Accolades
At their Best and Worst of 2000 awards, GameSpot editors awarded Perfect Dark Best Nintendo 64 Game and Best Shooting Game, and nominated it in the Best Multiplayer Game category. Rare was recognized for its work on the game and received the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Moving Images Award for 2000, and the Golden Satellite Award for Best Interactive Product in 2001.
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