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RATING: (weak) 1 2 3 4 5 (awesome)
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IN BRIEF
Pros: Great weapons, great lighting, and numerous play options, including a new "counter-operative" mode. Cons: Perfect Dark has a Mature rating, meaning the Entertainment Software Rating Board found it too gory for kids. In a nutshell: Really ups the ante when it comes to guns, gadgets, and gore. Multiplayer: Up to 4 players *ESRB rating: Mature |
FACTS
Game Title: Perfect Dark Platform: Nintendo Developer: Rare Ltd. Publisher: Nintendo |
THE REVIEW by Steven Kent for Gamers Today
Perfect Dark, Nintendo's sort of sequel to the smash hit first-person
shooter Goldeneye 007, really ups the ante when it comes to guns,
gadgets, and gore. In fact, the only missing element is James Bond,
the hero of Goldeneye 007. Opting not to make a sequel, Rare Ltd.
created a new shooting star, Joanna Dark, and set her in the
reasonably near future. Rather than waste time explaining the game's
story, lets go to the options that set Perfect Dark apart.
You never have to be alone in Perfect Dark. Believe it or not, this
is a game that lets you play multi-player by yourself-you simply
program drone players called "Sims" to work for or against you in
multi-player missions. Amazingly, Rare has designed 18 different
varieties of Sims that range from idiots that don't think or shoot
straight called "MeatSims" to ultra dangerous ones called "DarkSims."
Some Sims even have special personalities such as "RevengeSims" which
concentrate all of their running-and-gunning on the player who shot
them last, and "CowardSims" who run-and-gun-and-run-and-run.
The importance of these Sims becomes obvious when you consider the
many play options included in this game. Along with the typical
single-player missions, Perfect Dark features Combat Simulator
(multi-player), Cooperative, and Counter-Operative modes. If you have
never heard of a "counter-operative" mode, don't feel bad. It's
something new that Nintendo dreamed up, and it's very cool.
The idea is that one person tries to accomplish a mission while
another player tries to mess it up by any fashion imaginable. Sure,
you can try and shoot the first player, but you can also obstruct
your opponent's mission by placing furniture in front of doors,
attracting guards, shooting out the lights so opponents get lost.
Perfect Dark also builds on Goldeneye 007 by improving its arsenal of weapons. There are 40 weapons in Perfect Dark and every weapon has two uses.
The Laptop Gun, for instance, makes a great automatic weapon and
doubles as a sentry turret. You simply switch it to secondary mode,
toss it into a strategic location, and it automatically shoots
enemies as they come into range.
My personal favorite, however, is the Farsight, a sniper gun that allows you to see and shoot enemies through walls!
Perfect Dark has a Mature rating, meaning the Entertainment Software
Rating Board found it too gory for kids. Shooting bad guys leaves
bloodstains on walls in this game; and believe me, there are lots of
bad guys to shoot. Finally, Perfect Dark has some of the nicest
lighting effects ever seen on Nintendo 64. In fact, between the
lighting and an amazing library of textures, this is one of the
sharper looking games to find its way onto this platform.
A question for Ken Lobb, the head of Nintendo's Treehouse (2nd party licensing division (If the name Ken Lobb sounds familiar, it may be because the KLOBB machine gun in Goldeneye 007 was named after him))
GT: How does Perfect Dark differ from Goldeneye 007?
KL: Goldeneye was a great multi-player game. I think a lot of people bought it to play against friends and didn't know what to do with it when they were alone.
With Perfect Dark, we made it more even-it's even better in multi-player, but its also got all kinds of options that make it great for a single player.
I would say that the one-player experience is 50 percent better than it was in Goldeneye-and it was good in Goldeneye; but there's never been anything like the counter-operative mode and the multi-player mode in Perfect Dark.
*For a complete explanation of ESRB ratings, check out the official ESRB Web site.
