The perfect game!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great multi-player fun!

Cons: Some mediocre graphics.

The Bottom Line: 
Go play Perfect Dark now, it is awesome!

Author's Review
The hype for Perfect Dark has died down over the past few months, but when this game first came out it was a huge hit. Made by the same company that brought you Goldeneye, 007, James Bond whatever you want to call it. Since Rareware, which is the name of the company, had such great success with Bond, they decided to make a similar game, but juice it up a bit. Rareware already had the base for a great game with Bond, and they decided to make it perfect with Perfect Dark. Before I played Perfect Dark I was a little bit skeptical because I already thought that Bond was a great game and I had no idea how they would make it better. I kept hearing more and more about Perfect Dark and I finally decided to rent it. I went to the video store and got my hands on the last copy of Perfect Dark, paid the rental fee, then went home and popped it in my Nintendo 64.

Graphics-7

In comparison to Bond, Perfect Dark has pretty much the same graphics. Which can be a good and bad thing. The good reason is Bond had decent graphics to begin with, so if there is no change then I guess that it is an all right thing, but on the flip side of the coin I would have liked the graphics in Perfect Dark to be something new and groundbreaking. Unfortunately they were not. If you have ever played Bond then you know that the graphics are satisfactory, but the images sometimes run into each other, and the screen isn’t as clear as you would like it to be. If you have never played Bond, the graphics are clear, but in some parts of the game they run together. Also the colors are not very bright, making it sometimes hard to decipher where things are. (I know this isn't a review of Bond, but for the previous statement what I said goes for both Bond and Perfect Dark.) The graphics in Perfect Dark aren’t really that bad, and they shouldn’t bother you too much throughout your play of the game.

Sound-9

Overall the sound in Perfect Dark is incredible. Rareware really did a great job improving the sound of Perfect Dark over Bond. There is different background music for each different level, and each one is really great at setting the mood that is supposed to be set. Not only is the background music exceptional, but the voice acting is great too. There may be very little voice acting in the game, but when its there it is done to perfection. I only wish that there could have been more voice acting in the game. Of course you get the occasional yell, or a form of a scream from the bad guys just before you blow them away, but I don’t really consider that voice acting. (Even the yells sound great!) The game even captures the little details, such as a bullet shell hitting the ground. The sound really is a strongpoint to Perfect Dark.

Gameplay-10

Great gameplay. You will be playing Perfect Dark for days upon days. The replay value is incredible on this game. Not only is the one-player mode a lot of fun to play, but the multi-player mode is even better! In the one-player mode you play as Joanna Dark, the most fearless woman in the world! The main game has a lot of different missions that you can play on three different levels: agent, special agent, or perfect agent. The missions are a lot like the missions in Bond, but in perfect dark you get a lot more guns, and the guns are a lot better. The storyline in Perfect Dark is completely different from the storyline in Bond. In Perfect Dark the story gets complicated at times, but in the end it all comes together. So basically, in the one-player mode, you try to complete certain missions until you get to the end and defeat the end boss. A really neat feature about the one-player mode is that it doesn’t have to be one player at all! That’s right you and a friend can play two players working together trying to complete the missions!

Personally I like the multi-player mode in Perfect Dark better. There are so many options to choose from in the multi-player mode that it would take me 50 epinions to list all of them! Some of my favorite ones are: You can keep track of your own statistics. All that you have to do is make a user name and then load that player every time that you play, and it will keep track of the awards that you have won, how many kills you have etc. Another one of my favorite features about the multi-player mode is that you can pick teams to fight against each other. You can make a lot of different teams because you can have 4 people playing, and you can have up to 8 computer simulates too. The last thing that I want to mention about the multi-player mode is that you can customize the weapons that you want to use. If you have unlocked a particular gun in the one-player mode then you can use it in the multi-player mode. There are a ton more options that you can do, but I don’t want to spoil all of your fun!

There are also hidden side quests that you can do in Perfect Dark. You can go to a shooting range, which is on the bottom floor of the building that you start in, or you can do different mini-missions to improve your overall skills. The gameplay for Perfect Dark has so many options that it will take a while before you get tired of playing it.

Presentation-8

The menus in Perfect Dark are great. They are very interactive, and sometimes you might think as if you are actually inside the game, well maybe not that great, but they are good. Perfect Dark is an overall excellent game. It incorporates great gameplay with incredible sound, making it better then Bond. I never thought I would say that there is a Nintendo 64 game better then Bond, but it is true Perfect Dark is just one step ahead of Bond.