An instant classic you can't hurt to have as a shooter fan.
Perfect Dark functions in many ways as you would expect, like the original, it has a single player, full offline skirmish with full bots, but now you can CO OP the single player online or off, making it a great game to play with a friend. Its bot infested multiplayers can now be done online, so Zero makes up for everything the N64 version couldn't accomplish in that time period. In some ways, it's basically a remake instead of a new game, but there are new gameplay modes and a new single player to keep you busy.
You'll find there are plenty of guns to use in this game, leaving you with tough times choosing between them. Do you want to use the Fac with a bigger bullet chip, but a shorter range scope and only being able to fire 1 grenade at a time before reloading? Or do you want the Superdragon, the smaller bullet clip gun with a longer range scope and firing up to 6 grenades before needing to reload?(Machine Guns) Do you want to use hard hitting revolvers, or not bother with the slow rate of fire and take your chances with the faster pistols? Do you want to carry a Laptop to throw out a Sentry gun? The choices are there, and you are limited how much you can carry, a balanced system any great shooter has. You have 4 slots, Pistols are 1 slot, most other guns are 2 slots, heavy guns like a sniper rifle or M60 are 3; leaving only room for a pistol sidearm.
Multiplayer modes aren't more than you'd expect, but if you want some action, its there. Classic Deathmatch or TeamDeathmatch, Capture the Flag, Capture the bases, Attack/Defend a base, Infection. Infection is especially fun, if you don't know what that is, it has 25% of the players start the game as a skeleton. When a skeleton kills a human, the human respawns as a skeleton, but skeletons stay skeletons. If you are a human, your goal is to survive the time limit, if you are a skeleton, your goal is to kill all the humans. But interesting still, Humans can buy weapons with credits earned from score/kills, Skeletons all spawn with the same low level gun and can't upgrade, unless they loot a dead player. You still get credits as a skeleton to spend the next time you are a human though. Do your teams job for the best score. Attack/Defend is similar, the Defenders can buy better weapons while the attackers can't, but you still get credits to spend the next time you Defend and the Attackers keep repawning. Multiplayer modes/matches can be heavily customized just like the original, choosing what guns can be used for most modes, the difficulty of the bots, how big the maps are(of the same areas), and so on. Its nothing special, its just there and you'd want it to be. Just like the original, you can choose which weapons are in a game, or if the game is using the shop method, you can't choose which weapons are on and off the shopping list. If you want the entire match to feature only pistols or only something else, you can.(Fill the game with only Swords and Shields and have a brawl)
So how does Perfect Dark Zero live up to 2008 Standards? Well, I've played Gears of war online and Call of Duty 4(I own all 3), so I would say, rather well. Gears does have a better single player but really lacks any decent multi player, 8 player cap with no bots is just depressing. Perfect Dark lets you get up to 16 bots or players at the same time, with a huge list of guns Gears doesn't have either. Call of Duty 4 has the guns and numbers but lacks the game modes and bots too. As far as single player goes, this one isn't as good but I found it to be amusing, its especially fun with co op when one player can get a sniper rifle while the other packs a super dragon. Keep in mind that you can revive each other in CO OP, so you can crank up the difficulty and really take some beatings as long as you both don't die at the same time.
Its outdated standards is offset by its reduced price, bringing you the same great bargain the day it was new, a worthwhile investment for anyone's collection shelf.
Single player:
(Experience) B (Acceptable)
Presentation:
(Video/Audio) A (Good)
Performance: A (Good)
Multiplayer: A (Good)