Perfect Dark (N64) (2000)
Developer: Rare

Review by Faididi and Co.


"Goldeneye 2"


Story: Below Average

Sometimes, covert organizations don't seem to be trying very hard anymore. In the case of the secret agent called Joanna Dark, the best codename they can find for her is Perfect Dark, and she gets assigned the same old kind of missions. We can take the cliched alien-infiltration conspiracy junk. We can take the cheesy dialogue. We can even take the lame joke on the historical French figure. But, throwing in 1950s-era UFO space aliens and having them jump around with guns blazing? This game would've done better as a cartoon comedy.


Gameplay: Below Average

Rare's Perfect Dark is the follow-up to the developer's movie-based FPS, Goldeneye. Treating this like a direct sequel isn't that far of a stretch; it plays essentially the same under its sci-fi redressing. Trudging through some 16 missions in the single-Player story mode, if Joanna isn't taking out waves of cloned henchmen, she's putting up with an irritating slew of objectives, like hunting for keys and switches or making sure useless allies don't get mowed down because they're too stupid to duck for cover.

Like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark lags far behind the best FPSs of its time, and just because it's made for a console instead of a PC is no reason to lower the standards. Things don't look good when only now does the game's world simulate true 3D space slightly better than the retarded level physics in Goldeneye, as simple ledges are no longer bizarre invisible walls that treat open walkways like tunnels. That's playing a sad catch-up to the basics set half a decade earlier by Id's original Quake.

The AI is still idiotic as hell, and the same can be said for the computer-controlled characters' awkward behaviors. Joanna's allies don't follow her smartly, sometimes becoming stuck at corners or wandering off to get slaughtered, while the enemies who are shot dead during a roll will need to finish standing back up before crumpling to the floor. Speaking of bad guys, the enemy design remains mostly limited to the same gun-toting goons over and over again, and when the alien dudes show up, they're little more than super-deformed humanoids equipped with mundane firearms.

The weapons themselves go overboard in copying the two-function system from Valve's Half-Life, because the dual functions are forced across every single weapon here, leading to incredibly arbitrary, nonsensical designs. For example, Joanna can perform gun butt attacks with certain pistols but not with others. The game has one good idea in the special rifle that can turn into a sentry gun, but even that isn't fun when it keeps moronically wasting its ammo on blank walls. The spy gadgets like the remote drone aren't much better, as their availability extends past one scene if they're lucky, to serve whatever strictly prescribed roles are assigned to them.

Perfect Dark may dump forth more multiplayer options than its predecessor, but one stupid, amateurish problem after another keeps ruining the fun. Unbelievably, the characters continue to respawn unarmed in the versus mode, leading to the same post-spawn imbalance found in Goldeneye. To further piss you off, the new dizziness effects from certain attacks aren't reset upon respawning. The cooperative 2-Player story mode is a joke, because it becomes available only after the missions are completed in the single-Player mode, frustrating those who wish to play through the story with a friend from the beginning.

Then, there's the cooperative 4-Player challenge mode, where you and your friends team up against computer-controlled opponents in various deathmatch scenarios, but this is rendered unplayable by the severe framerate problems. Throw in more than two Players or any tight cluster of characters or explosions, and Perfect Dark succumbs to an atrocious framerate that rivals the one in Iguana's Turok 2, except that game at least has the excuse of featuring destructible body parts.


Controls: Below Average

The low framerate bites hard into the responsiveness of the controls, and switching between the weapons' primary and secondary functions isn't as quick as it should be.


Graphics: Below Average

High-resolution graphics or not, Perfect Dark isn't very playable with such a lousy framerate. Maybe if it had cut out all its special visual effects bullshit and also used the simpler reloading animations from Goldeneye, its multiplayer sessions wouldn't have sucked half as much.


Audio: Average

Perfect Dark offers full voice acting (not counting the repetitive, overused Tallarico garbage). Then again, this uncommon distinction among N64 games is offset by the obvious compression issues and by the incredibly fucking annoying acting for some supporting characters. The tunes are generally more palatable, even if some of them are overly loud and brash while some others are so quiet as to barely qualify as music.


Overall: Below Average

In a day when far, far superior FPSs like Half-Life and Counter Strike are available, why should anyone bother with Perfect Dark? It suffers from a shitty framerate. Its awful AI and enemy designs see virtually no improvement. Its multiplayer action keeps stumbling over balancing flaws that no truly serious FPS dares to make. Goldeneye may have had its excuses, for whatever they're worth; Perfect Dark doesn't.


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