Respectable in every way, PDZ is the game you should get after you have finished its classic counterpart.
+ Amazing graphics and realisim makes Half-Life 2 look like a kid's game.
+ Ability to choose your equipment and weapons is a great addition.
+ Numerous explosions and action-packed firefights add to the package.
+ A number of new gameplay mechanics make you rethink your tatics.
+ Its funny and cheesy.
+ Can slap people and civilians.
+ True classic gameplay still intact.
+ Playing as an awesome punk chick with weapons has never been so fun.
- Most of the characters are downright ugly and annoying.
- Its highly noticably that Joanna runs about as fast as a statue...
- Multiplayer, while fun, still feels slabbed on at the last minute.
Remember your N64 system? Remember Rare? Remember that kickass N64 hit that is Perfect Dark? If you were to name one company that knew games well, you'd be slapped not to say Rare. The striving company has been involved in many N64 classics that sky upon perfection, and Perfect Dark is definetly one of those games. So when Rare comes up with the wonderful idea to relive that rare piece of work, it made me quite uneasy. You can't deny that many of these 'ports" in gaming history tend to be bad, and you probably won't be able to get over the feeling that their sense of a noggin has just burned out. But soon enough, Rare's name took a step forward once again and Perfect Dark Zero is no disapointment. In fact, varying from actiony firefights, awesome multiplayer, or simply just a step in the classic title, there will always be something you'll like in Perfect Dark Zero and as a result it may stand as one of the best shooters you can buy on the xbox 360.
If you've somehow managed to stray away from playing the original N64 hit, Perfect Dark Zero rages over a large number of pretty straightforward levels challanging you with standard spy objectives; set the explosives, hack the key codes, defend the helicopter -- stuff like that and pretty much anything that will piss the datadyne off. Reprising your role as Joanna Dark once again, the true goal of the gameplay hasn't changed much. The only true change is by ditching the old, ugly lady from its presequal, Perfect Dark Zero's entire singleplayer plays through the eyes of the 'new' Joanna Dark, switching her personality in favor of a teen poppy rock spunky chick (A fashion style I appluad). I'm not going to pretend I remember any of the story, but then again people didn't play Perfect Dark for the story. All you need to know is that the game has alot of good stuff to keep the fact that the game follows the blueprint of its original way out of your mind.
Perfect Dark Zero adressess many problems that were easily plaguing its presequal. For one, the framerate is no longer a present atrocity. The game, despite its supberb graphics engine, rarely has any framerate slowdown. If you can remember the agonizingly laggy framerate in Perfect Dark N64, you will be greatily relieved to be able to shred through numbers of foes like paper with a superdragon and never manage to freeze the game. A few other fixes include few checkpoints placed in levels as opposed to absoulutly no checkpoints at all before. Besides that, the game does a well job of reliving your old classics. Many of the gun sounds, music, level design, cinimatic events, and weapons all feel like mere recycles of their old forms. It does this well and although not taking any huge liberties, Perfect Dark Zero boasts that it is very well a good thing to take more of the same.
The key to notice is that Perfect Dark Zero uses a brlliantly goregous graphics engine. The levels themselves all feel like a mod to Far Cry with seamingless urban cities to grassy islands all with equal realisim. The game heats up a near-future urban atomesphere with robots and computerized enviorments which does its fair share to enhance the world into what is, or could, be humanity's lifestyle in the future. Expect to see shadows peer through the trees of the jungles, water dynamically reflecting any object thrown at it, and explosions that vicously breathe out fire in realtime before disapearing. Perfect Dark Zero may not be the shiniest bulb on the chanldier, but the game has several parts where it comes out as a real looker.
And now, thinking that the graphics are breathtaking, you'd probably get a small feeling that the inner core of the gameplay isn't that great. From screenshots you might decipher that this isn't the classic Perfect Dark you grew up with and is just another bland, boring modern shooter that just lives up to the hype of its graphics. Well then your way off. Everything you enjoyed about the Perfect Dark running on the N64 can be found in here. Gameplay generally involves completing your objectives while killing enemies and cicumverating any sort of geomety that gets in your way doing so. Quite frankly though, your weapon in hand still bobs up and down to the music, they all retain their kick and punch, and its worth all of it to watch bullets slam into your enemies with the flying of blood has never in any game been more compelling (Its not much blood, but its still blood). The entire game's got rockets, machine guns, screen effects and jolts and being able to take cover and hide behind objects with a single-button cover mechanic offers a heap of help to avoid these threats. The weapons; the Superdragon, the Magsec, the Falcon, the COMP150, the Laptop Gun, the Camspy; They're all here with equal accuracy and punch.
Some of the new mechanics and controls may feel downright awkward at first, but after playing the game for a while, you'll get used to them and come to think the game's controls actually pretty sharp. Using a trick from Rainbow Six, Perfect Dark Zero lets you customize Joanna's weapons, grenades, and some gadgets before the start of each mission with a fully customizable equipment window. You can decide whether you want to kill everything using close combat weapons, a load of rockets and grenades, or have a combination of your own taste for firepower. You need to plan your arsenal carefully since Joanna can only carry so many 'light' and 'heavy' weapons at once. That brings up the fact that heavy weapons will decrease your running speed, which adds a bit of flavor to the rather basic action and, as a farcry to halo's weapons system, gives you a reason to swap to a different selection of weapons throughout the game. The health bar goes in favor of halo's recharge after damage, but with every hit the maximum for health decreases, making it something to occasionally watch over. Although some of the game's harsh difficultly and death penetly gives me pause (aka. not being able to save in-mission), the non-erratic framerate and overall smooth flow of the levels make it a considerably less fusterating. Holographic arrows on the ground will guide you whenever your lost and if you want to be a big shot about it, you can toggle them on or off as well. Breifings and objectives always tell you what to do and if you need to know exactly why, you can shred through messages to clue in on numerous types of hints.
Despite some rather impressive graphical performance, Perfect Dark Zero's audio is probably one of the most questionable aspects of the game, specifically. Not surprisingly, Joanna herself sounds appropeiatly cute with her small, spunky teen voice and datadyne troops still hurl sexist insults at you before you run up to shoot them in the face, but apart from that the most of the voice acting pretty much flonders. Many of your enemies have very few voice samples that are shouted and repeated to a painful extent, and the whole of the game's voice acting, which tries a bit too hard to be funny, is actrocious. Nevertheless, gun sounds are all recycled from the original and never go out of tune. The COMPISO sounds the same, for instance. I love that sound...still do. Metal music accompanies any sequance of heated combat in the game, and although most of the music is pretty forgettable, some of it stands out pretty strong (ie. the most rememberable Nightclub tunes).
The singleplayer portion of Perfect Dark Zero is fairly fun, but consisting of 13 missions, it soon dies. You can get some of the 50 game acheivements by playing through it on different difficulties, but with the frustration of the missions themselves, that's probably not on your best interest. Fortunetly, Perfect Dark Zero lets you duke it out on xbox live with a competitive multiplayer. Generally the community is mostly dead, but you can still occasionally find players online. While the multiplayer is missing the challanges and full character customization that was featured long before, here it still boils down to a favorable instance; Customize your weapons, throw in a load of players in a map and you have an even more explosive experiance that the singleplayer, whether your specifically trying to unlock acheivments or just having fun. Speaking of which, the game has about 50 achievements, generrally involving playing through the singleplayer in different difficulties or playing a number of matches in the multiplayer. The achievments arn't too hard -- Win 20 matches in multiplayer, finish the game under Special Agent difficulty -- that sort of thing. But what makes a 360 game is the mere reason to keep playing, and when your on the level of replay value, this game hits the money hard.
In conclusion, Perfect Dark Zero ships in two forms: The original and the limited collector's editon. The limited collectors editon ships with a bonus DVD and a comic strip, so it will be up to you to decide how you want your meat served. Whichever you choose, you won't miss out on any of the action. Perfect Dark Zero is easily one of the best, if not the best, shooter you can find on the 360. The game's graphics are not entirely top notch and many of the controls are hard to get used to, but it was pleasing that Rare respected their fans enough and the game enough to score 8.5 gold points for the 360 with a truly amazing game to behold.
Totally buy this awesome piece of art.