It may not live up to her 1st adventure, but behind that you can still get a solid piece of action from her.
You play as Joanna Dark, who is noticeably younger(and sexier) than her previous game since this game takes place 3 years before Perfect Dark, so she's 20 years old(and single). The plot tells how she joined Carrington Institute to take on Datadyne, but the main problem is that the story is poorly made and developed. As you play the game, you'll be wondering why your here, what's going on and how this and that happen. Not to mention it's silly, hard to follow and nonsensical at times. Characters are poorly developed as well and we wish we know more about Joanna since this is a prequel and is supposed to tell her story of joining that organization. Add that with bad dialog and you have a mess of the story.
But thankfully the gameplay saves the game because it's good for the most part. You play through 14 missions(counting Mission 0) and complete various objectives, and putting it on harder difficulties unlocks more objectives. You can unlock weapons are you play and they all have a secondary function and even a tertiary(3) function. There are around 26 weapons, but only a few of them are very unique. The pacing is slower than the original, which means you can't always rush through many spots, definitely on the harder difficulties, jut take your time since this is also a stealth action game as well. It should take a little while to beat, but it certainly isn't a long game. You will drive 2 vehicles in the game: a hovercraft and jetpack. This game uses regenerating health and a shield system. There's a way point system if you get lost, but that's for Agent and Secret Agent. Every mission except 0, 5 and 13 has a path or more for you to explore to give you reasons to do missions again to complete them in different ways along with harder difficulties, and speaking of difficulties, lets talk about the enemies and their A.I.
In short, enemies are inconsistent, both health and a.i. On Agent, enemies take less bullets to put down and their a.i. is not that good of course. But when you put it on Secret(normal), Perfect(hard) and Dark(very hard) Agent, enemies take more shots to put down. Say it takes 4 shots to kill someone, it would take 8 due to increased enemy health. On Secret-Dark Agent, the amount of damage done to you and their accuracy increases, and they can put up a fight at times, but sometimes they'll just stand there and do nothing and don't use cover a lot. They're not terrible but compared to shooters like Halo, it's lacking.
Even with inconsistent enemy a.i., this game is still difficult on Dark Agent due to 3 times: more objectives, no checkpoints and no health regeneration. That means you have to survive each mission without taking a lot of hits since you can't get health back(unless someone melees you or taken fall damage), and see how some missions are over 20 minutes long, it's harder than you think. It also doesn't help that in half the missions, you have a teammate(s) who has worse a.i. than your enemies. The biggest problem is that Jack Dark(her father), Jonathan Steinberg and his crew can't shoot and run at the same time and don't use cover a lot, and since your allies can only take less hits on Dark Agent, you must take out most enemies to save them, not to mention if Jack or Jonathan goes down once, the mission is over.
Even with it's flaws, there are great and not that great missions. The bosses range from great to so-so as well. Being able to choose your own weapons before starting each mission is a neat feature, which makes you play certain missions stealthy or or go in guns blazing, though not every mission is designed like that. Even after beating the campaign with it's forgettable story and ending, you'll want to play it again not just on Dark Agent to give you a serious challenge, but playing the campaign in co-op which is only 2 players is one amazing experience. If you play it in co-op, you'll notice some changes in objectives and enemies meaning it's not the same playing it alone. It forces you to use teamwork 100% and even has you going places that you couldn't access solo due to the level design and mission objectives. You'll have more fun playing co-op than going solo, playing solo is good, but co-op is much better(and nothing beats having 2 Jos in Mission 7).
Graphically, the game looks great for a launch title but has it's flaws. While it looks like an Xbox game, it does have some next gen looking graphical effects, like the explosions for example. This game ditches the previous game's realistic art direction for stylized realism, albeit cartoony. While a lot of the environments look great and has details, some are too shiny and doesn't really fit either. The character models needed some work, mainly in the faces of nearly all of them, but not all of them are terrible, some are decent. Joanna Dark of course is really the best looking character in the game(looking sexy in the clothes, face and body), the others don't really come close. As for the animation, the death animation is weird and not done well as characters move unnatural and seems unfinished. Some of the weirdest physics I've seen in a game. Oh well, at least you get to see Jo after dying.
The sound in this game is ok, but it's far from perfect. The weapon sound effects do sound excellent and some of the music ranges from amazing to not really that memorable or great, but man, the voice acting is some of the worst in gaming. To start, everyone sounds awful, even Jo. What was amazing about Perfect Dark on the N64 was the great voice acting it had for a N64 game as most characters sounded great. Jo sounds whiny, Chandra sounds annoying, Jack sounds crazy, Jonathan sounds wimpy and the list goes on. The bad dialog doesn't help either. While the enemies do sound bad, some of their quotes sound funny and even from the original, like when a guy says "Yeah baby" to Jo. Enemies not only have bad voice acting and quotes, their death screams are really, really bad as well. Simply put, the voice acting is bad and that's a shame too.
When you are completely done with the campaign, there's always the multiplayer and it's just very good. It's for up to 32 players, has 6 maps, 8 modes and bot support for around 15-16 of them. There are 2 modes that contains 4 modes each: Deathmatch and Dark Ops. Deathmatch contains Killcount, Team Kill Count, Territorial Gains, and Capture the Flag. And Dark Ops contains Eradication, Onslaught, Infection and Sabotage. Dark Ops is similar to Counter Strike as you buy weapons before playing. You can change the size of the maps for the various numerous of players. The awesome selection of modes and decent amount of options makes the multiplayer very good for the most part. Bots have the same difficulties as the campaign, though bots on Dark Agent loves to aim for the head, so watch out. You can download more maps and even a update for bots in Dark Ops, except Sabotage. You'll be playing this for a while.
There are some decent options to choose from, but compared to the original, it falls short. It has way less options, and some of the coolest ones like switch heads and bodies is missing. There are only 6 characters to play as and you can't unlock more either, but in every mode except Killcount allows you to play as certain characters from the campaign, but you can't choose them, the game chooses randomly for you. There are around 30 characters in the campaign, and not being to even get them is disappointing since it would make up for the lack of heads and bodies switching feature. There's more options it lacks, and prevents it from outdoing the original, but it's still good.
Overall, this game is decent, but it lacks some great things that the original had while creating new flaws. It makes up for it with solid gameplay, amazing co-op and great multiplayer. The graphics and sound could had been a lot better, but it really isn't that bad(except voice acting and death animation). It may not live up to the original, but it's far from a terrible game. If you put up with what's wrong with the game, you'll expect a good game from it and playing with yourself around Joanna Dark is not a bad idea at all.