The GREATEST First Person Shooter of all time? Yes...yes it is.
There are plenty of singleplayer levels, there are TONS AND TONS of weapons to choose from, and multiplayer is still the best I've ever seen. The story is fun and interesting and the levels are all fun to play through and keep the action paced well throughout.
The multiplayer options I would say are still unequaled even in modern games today. When Halo: Combat Evolved came out I played it and was disappointed by the multiplayer options in comparison to Perfect Dark's. You can create your own character (take a head and a body and put them together). This character has stats that are recorded as you play. Which is actually a system that most shooters have just started using now, two console generations later. The game allows you to set up sims (bots) of any difficulty up to 8 in a level with personality modifications for each. There are 15 multiplayer levels (including the 3 unlockable ones from Goldeneye). There are no limits to the amount of players in any multiplayer level unlike most games now. Every level can support 4 human combatants and 8 sims. Which leads me to my next topic...
The framerate. This is literally my ONLY problem with this game. If you play it on N64 with 4 human players the framerate will drop very low. Add in the 8 sims at the same time and get ready for single digits in some cases. This is literally my ONLY complaint with this game.
I however have been playing this game through emulation on my laptop lately. I use my Xbox360 controller in the game which allows for a more modern style control than using the analog stick with the C-Buttons to move and look. And despite my laptop being about 5 or 6 years old, with quite low specs, this game plays quite well. I can only imagine how well it'd play if I were using a newer and significantly more powerful system.
Playing PD on my laptop (and like I said I DO own the actual game) greatly reduces the frame rate problems. The game overall tends to run incredibly smoothly, with few exceptions (tons of N-Bombs, mines, grenades, rocket explosions gallore will drop it some).
If you are wanting the greatest first person shooter, then look no further. This game has it all. Wonderful and lengthy story mode with an extremely robust multiplayer mode as well.
If you play it on a computer, there are certain emulators which allow you to play those games online, including this one. However since this game was made on N64 the game will be played in splitscreen...even online. Although if you have a 360 and Gold Live, then get ready, as Microsoft has announced they're putting the original Perfect Dark on Xbox Live. It will have improved textures in the game as well as online multiplayer. So on 360 if you play online you won't see everyone else on your screen too.
Finally, Perfect Dark is a perfect game (with the framerate exception). If you ever wanted a good FPS, or just a good multiplayer game in general, this is the place to look. Perfect Dark is, and still remains one of, excuse me, THE greatest First Person Shooter of all time. The shooting action is incredibly fun and there's so much content here that you just might still come back to the game 9 years later...I still do.