Hints and Tips

General Tips

Holster That Sidearm!

Bringing up your fists will let you move much more quickly than you normally would.

One of the commands that you might not consider very useful at first is bound to the up direction on your d-pad. When you press this button, you'll put away any weapons that you're carrying, leaving only your mighty fists of fury to take on your enemies. Obviously enough, this isn't going to help you defeat enemies at long range, but the purpose here isn't really to become more powerful (although it is fun to hit people). Instead, what makes this useful is that you move much more rapidly when you put up your dukes than you do when you're lugging around a plasma rifle or sniper rifle. If you have to cover ground quickly and you know there aren't any enemies around, just holster your weapons and you should be able to get where you're going faster than you would otherwise. If you're shot while you're not holding any weapons, though, you'll be slowed for a few moments.

Another little-used mechanic in the game allows you to run up to enemies and press the right bumper button to strip them of their weapon, assuming that you have nothing in your hands. If you have room in your inventory, you'll steal their weapon and use it yourself; if you don't have room for it, it'll clatter to the floor. Most enemies that wield SMGs or better will have a pistol for backup if their weapon gets stolen, though, and you obviously have to be pretty close for this to work, so it's usually more flash than substance.

Armor and Headshots

Heavily armored enemies like this will take more damage before they die, so don't get their attention unless you have a full clip to fire at them.

The bulk of the enemies in Perfect Dark Zero possess some degree of body armor, which will protect them from most of your fire, at least until you shoot the armor off of them and can attack them directly. Most of the time, this isn't anything more than an inconvenience; armor comes off relatively quickly when you're firing an automatic weapon at your target, letting you swiftly attack the meat inside the shell.

As per usual, though, shooting someone in the head will usually bypass the armor problem, allowing you to do more damage in general, and extra damage if you manage to land a shot directly on the head. Most enemies possess only body armor, meaning that their heads are unprotected, so, if possible, try to aim for the head as often as possible, especially when enemies are unaware of your presence. Some enemies, however, do have helmets, and thus will be resistant to headshots. Helmets are usually pretty difficult to shoot off, so you'll just have to deal as much damage as you can to these foes to make them drop.

Multiplayer Tips

All we can say about Perfect Dark Zero multiplayer is that it's terrifically fun. There's a wide variety of gametypes to explore here, so even if you're not a fan of traditional deathmatch, you should find something to whet your appetite. This section is going to go too in-depth on each gametype; we're just going to give you a few pointers to get you started.

Explosivo!

Explosive weapons, such as frag grenades, the FAC, and the Superdragon, are especially valuable in multiplayer games, since they'll often kill people straight off if you place your shot correctly. They're actually decent in any gametype, but since most of the other gametypes are team-based, free-for-all killcount is one of the few gametypes where you can safely launch grenades at anyone you see or hear, safe in the knowledge that they're hostile to you. Whatever the gametype is, though, be very wary of areas that have an FAC or Superdragon spawn point, as unscrupulous players will often camp these areas and continually run over the weapons as they spawn to hog all of the grenade ammo.

Killcount

The objective of Killcount, whether it's free for all or team-based, is to kill as many of your opponents as possible. Success here is generally a mixture of pure skill and knowledge of the game; even if you're somewhat better than another player is, he or she will likely consistently beat you if they know where all of the best weapons are on the map. So, you shouldn't expect to hop online and become king of the hill right away; you'll need to play around with each of the maps and learn all the little caveats before you start winning matches.

Capture the Flag

The main thing to note here is that the player that grabs the enemy flag and attempts to run with it will be incapable of attacking while he or she moves. They can still perform a melee attack, but won't be able to defend themselves against a gang of enemies. Thus, as with any decent capture the flag game, you're going to need to attack the enemy base en masse in order to get the flag out of there and safely home. You don't necessarily need to have a huge number of people defending your own flag, if the defenders are able to set themselves up with explosive weapons, or defend the entrances with Laptop turrets or Multimine proximity mines.

Territorial Gains

This gametype is essentially a Day of Defeat clone, where you have to capture various flags on the map by standing near them and holding them. When you do so, your team will periodically get points, and the team with the most points at the end of a round wins.

There's not much to say here, save for the fact that the more aggressive team will usually win. This is really a gametype where personal sacrifice becomes the name of the game; you aren't really going to help your team win if you aren't in the thick of things, going for flags, and laying your life on the line to capture the next hotspot on the map. If you're more of a solo player, then you can feel free to go lone wolf and try to avoid the action to get to one of your opponent's rear flags and capture it. If you're not going for a flag or defending one of your own, though, you're only going to have a marginal impact on the game, so you might as well stick to killcount if racking up kills is your goal.