An excellent and involving shooter, but perhaps to taxing on the single player.

User Rating: 9 | Perfect Dark Zero X360
It has to be said that Perfect Dark Zero was one of the big Xbox 360 launch titles, it was the first shooter on the next platform of a series of consoles famed for their FPS's, it also must be said that this is worth the wait, if only a little flawed.

PDZ is a prequel to the excellent game, Perfect Dark, made by Rare, the brain behind the genre defining shooter Goldeneye, but this incarnation in the series has recieved a few notable changes, mostly to the games lead charcter Joanna Dark. Gone is the short hair and terrible voice acting, replaced by a younger and indeed more appealing Jo. One that actually looks like a girl, and not a mismatched confused degenerate you'd see in the red light district of Amsterdam. As the story progresses you see Joanna go from a little teenage girl to a fully fledged super agent...with a vendetta, but the story shall not be spoiled in this review.

The graphics are beautiful for a launch title. Light reflects off the guns in real time, character models are very detailed, if a little cartoonish, and the enviroments are incredibly well designed. But due to a new mapping technique used to make walls and floors look more 3D and not "Painted on" everything looks a little shiny and wet. But sometimes the game uses this to its credit, for example in the night-time stages.

The single player is where PDZs faults are found. But here are a significant number of good things about it. Things such as the "Support Objectives" these are secondary objectives that actually benefit you later on in the mission, such as destroying an armoury to prevent enemies arriving later on. On top of this the action is fast paced and non stop. But unfortunatly the story itself is rather weak and straightforward, but apparently rare were intending on making this game like a traditional spy flick. The main fault is that even on normal this game is HARD, frustratingly so. The action is easy, yet the stealth could make you want to throw a controller through your window. There are some incidents involving guards which seem unavoidable. But this still isn't a good enough reason to put the game away.

The co-op is exellent. It isn't simply tacked on like many FPS's but the secind player has the oppurtunity to play the level from a different perspective, litterally playing a whole new level. Supporting player one from far off, and vice versa. The best example of this would be the rooftop stage, where player two plays at ground level and P1 has to cover him using a sniper rifle. The two players are only united at the end of the stage.

Overall this is a solid launch title, showing off many of the 360s abilities, if you're planning on buying the console, consider getting this game with it. As its graphics alone are an excellent showcase for your new machine.