Released in 2005 as a launch title for the Xbox 360, Perfect Dark Zero is a prequal to one of the best first-person shooters ever made. The hype for this thing was quite large at the time, everyone wanted to see what the follow up to the N64 original would be like on Microsoft’s newest console. It was the second game to be released by Rare since they were taken over by Microsoft and the first big budget game. But many of the staff who worked on Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on the N64 had left before the development of Perfect Dark Zero began, and with the acquisition from the big N to the big M, the 6th console generation passed Rare by somewhat. Can Rare re-discover their form with these new big budget releases, starting with Perfect Dark Zero?
Yes and no, Perfect Dark Zero has been though quite a change since the original, Joanna has had a complete re-design and is no longer a smooth-talking British agent and is now a trash talking American. To go with this, she now dresses in pure mid-2000’s attitude clothing with bright ginger hair. The cyberpunk aesthetic is still here, but its more near future than cyberpunk and certainly loses some of its charm in the transition. The story revolves around Joanna and her dad working independently before being hired by the Carrington Institute to fight the nefarious Dayta-Dyne. The story is awful in all honesty and is completely forgettable, the dialog and voice acting are terrible. Perfect Dark trod the line between campy and serious well, reminded me of No One Lives Forever. Sadly, Perfect Dark Zero misses all that and sticks strictly to the silly and outlandish. That’s not to say the single player campaign is not fun, it is for the most part, the levels are varied, as are the objectives, mixing on foot and vehicle sections nicely. It can also be played in co-op with differing objectives depending on the difficulty, like the original. Some of the levels here do offer various ways to play and alternate routes, and playing on different difficulties opens extra areas of levels which adds to the replay value.
Multiplayer is the other side of Perfect Dark Zero and its where the meat of the game is, only six maps come with the original, but two map packs have since been released. Maps vary in size depending on player count, up to 32 players can play in a variety of game types, DM, TDS, CTF are all here, bots can also be added in to increase numbers which is a nice touch but their A.I. leaves allot to be desired. The level design on the maps is decent with lots of traversal options and ways to get around. Some vehicles are also available and are all fun to drive. In MP is where you can get to grips with the large arsenal of weapons Perfect Dark Zero has to offer and they are all fantastic to use. Returning favourites are here from the original with new additions, all have alternate fire and really are fun to use, none are duds at all and it’s a high point of the game.
What is not a high point however is the gameplay, Joanna feels like a tank on ice, she moves so slowly, and the sensitivity is low, add to that the fact the FOV is too zoomed in, and it can be a struggle at times to get things moving well here. Sensitivity sliders are available and alleviate some of the issues, but you are stuck with that terrible FOV, which makes close quarters combat a struggle. It’s very difficult to know if you have hit someone accurately at all. Joanna also takes a while to get up to speed from still, and her max is a light jog, it makes some MP matches feel quite slow and lethargic, there is no run button here. The game also includes a rather poor cover system in that you have to move to the edge of a wall or window and wait for a button prompt to snap into cover, Joanna will then go into 3rd person for the cover option, but you have to press the prompt again to leave, and there is a slight delay when doing this. This makes the system a handicap in multi-player, its only helpful slightly in single player. Players can also utilise a dodge roll that also uses 3rd person to execute, and it makes it harder for the AI to hit Joanna, this works better and even in MP it’s a handy tool. One thing I did notice is that players tend to have lots of hit points, you can empty an entire clip of an AK into someone, and they still won’t be dead, or even close. Add body Armor to this and players are quite tanky, which is odd for an FPS game.
Now it's not all bad news as graphicly, Perfect Dark Zero is fantastic, it’s clearly been made as a game to show off to your friends. It shows off the power of the Xbox 360, and for 2005 it looks great. Its colourful, textures gleam and are very detailed, lots of bloom effects, shadows are dynamic, it’s a great looking experience. It also runs well, maintains an ok 30fps most of the time with slight dips here and there, only noticeably bad dips when big explosions are happening. Joanna moves so slowly though you’ll hardly notice it anyway!
It sounds like I’ve bashed this game more than praise it and my final score might surprise you but that’s only based off of what’s come before it. Perfect Dark Zero does not live up to the game that came before it, not even close. The gameplay is clunky at times, the story, dialog and voice acting are terrible. It’s completely lost the vibe the first game had for a more generic video game feel. But I still had fun, both in SP and MP, I kept coming back to this game while playing others. The single player levels are still fun, despite the clunky controls, split screen SP and MP is a blast. The MP is fun too with well-designed levels and a fantastically fun arsenal of guns to play with. The AI is lacking but it's nice to have the option of bots. All the achievements still being fully unlockable in 2023 is great as you can unlock them with Bots also.
Perfect Dark Zero is a letdown, only because of what came before it. But on its own it’s a decent time. We have seen better shooters on the last gen and during the 360’s launch window, however.

SCORE: 7/10

I played through this back in the day and remembered it being alright, better than its reputation.

But returning to it today, it's a mess. Even on the tutorial level, I frequently had no clue where to go. The guns all feel awful and arbitrarily useless. You can one shot kill people with headshots, yet using the same weapon anywhere else on their body takes about 8 shots to kill them. Reloading takes an age and a day (with no auto-reload). The weapon swap interface is a mess, leading to continually losing the weapons I wanted for random ones on the floor.

I spent three hours with the single player and they all feel wasted, frankly.

Infection mode on multiplayer still rocks though.

Ao contrário do primeiro game que apresenta uma história envolvente, a história de Perfect Dark Zero é simplesmente um enredo irrelevante: basta que o jogador se preocupe em matar os adversários e cumprir os objetivos para que as missões sejam bem sucedidas (literalmente é só sair matando todo mundo de qualquer jeito que você passa, diferentemente do primeiro jogo que você tinha que pensar em algumas estratégias em determinados momentos).
A mira foi melhorada mas a qualidade gráfica e sonora é literalmente o que se espera de um dos primeiros títulos do Xbox 360. Ainda assim, é um título que faz justiça ao original Perfect Dark, por manter muitas características do antecessor, além de oferecer uma jogabilidade fluida e uma boa IA.

A thoroughly-middling FPS that feels like it's eternally caught between the generation of shooters that came before it and those that came after. It has very little of an identity of its own and certainly a far cry from the vibe of its predecessor. Its mechanics are clunky, its levels are uninteresting, and its overall pace is far more sluggish than it should be. There's nothing I particularly hated about it but I almost wish there had been, if only to have something I could hang my hat on as being memorable about my time with it.

One thing I can say about myself is that I'm someone who is pretty susceptible to hype...in a negative way. If you tell me something is amazing, the best thing of all time, a must-play/watch/listen, I'll probably walk away from it disappointed. Contrariwise, tell me to avoid something like the plague because it's bad, I'll probably walk away from it feeling pretty happy, having had a good time.

Unfortunately for this game, that wasn't the case this time.

Where do I even begin? Perfect Dark Zero is the prequel to Perfect Dark, a N64 game. This immediately creates a somewhat puzzling paradox, as a lot of Perfect Dark Zero actually feels more advanced than Perfect Dark (the locales maybe being the sole exception) yet the gameplay feels more dated than the original's. Joanna in this game is treated more like an actual secret agent; the game wants you to be somewhat stealthy, take out cameras, and gives you objectives that follow in this trend, like killing a guard to take his radio to signal the enemies to turn off their communication.

While this sounds like a neat enough idea, there are zero gameplay systems that support stealth. Like in the previous example, if you kill said enemy, once his corpse is spotted by another enemy, they omnisciently target you, even if you are nowhere in sight. Hide the body you say? That's just not possible. You essentially need to know exactly what you're doing to get anything done. There's also no help from the HUD either; in the first mission you're supposed to not engage any of the enemies and just take pictures of two specific guards; these guards are not marked on a map or in-game, and the second of these guards in a different area from where you find the first one, but it makes that you aren't exactly sure if you can or should go that way because of enemy placements and the lack of direction given. In the original Perfect Dark, all the weapons also had a pretty clear indication of having a secondary-fire feature, and swapping to it generally gave the name and thus an indication of what it actually did. No such thing exists in PDZ; if you remember weapons having two modes of fire, enjoy some trial-and-error to figure it out.

This makes the gameplay in general very frustrating, because aside from 'stealth' missions, there's also some escort and timed missions sprinkled in to really annoy you. And the worst part? There's two missions in the game where you are unshackled and allowed to play it like an actual FPS, and they're far and away the most fun you'll have in this game. That's actually saying a lot, considering some of the gun controls are less than ideal (honestly, zooming into the scope is generally more of a nightmare than anything else).

On a technical level, the game is a mixed bag; the graphics are pretty good for a 2005 game, but they're marred by some shocking character design; Joanna and Mai Hem especially are your typical early noughties sexpots. I wasn't too impressed by the soundtrack, but the main (menu) theme did get stuck in my head easily, and not in annoying way.

The less said about the story, the better. Honestly, it jumps all over the places and characters take decisions to drive the plot forward, rather than things happening because it fits the characters and the world.

I’m only a couple missions in at this point, so rating is subject to change. My initial feelings after an hour or two of playing: surprisingly decent, yes it does operate like a launch title BUT Rare knew the formula to make a good FPS for the system. I like the setting, and the practice mission to start it all off. I am invested in where it keeps going. There are some missing mechanics that I’m used to like jumping, and the next checkpoint can be unclear at times. And I think the developer knew this because if you get lost enough the game gives you a form of guiding arrows to get to the next part. It’s hard to believe this game is 18 years old already but it has been holding up quite well in the early stages so fsr.

I can't imagine what it must have been like to have played PD on N64, and heard there was a new one coming on a brand new HD console as a launch title, and playing this.

Rare fell hard and fast, because as much as the gap seems bigger, there's only 5 years between this and the actual PD.

Perfect Dark Zero has less details than its n64 counter part, enemies dont limp when you shoot their kneecaps, blood effects are worse, there's no weight behind the guns.

And comparing it to the original shouldnt even be the standards used. Microsoft made its name by having the FPS king on the market, Halo, which had 2 very solid games by that point, and they dare release this.

Fuck this game.