Perfect Dark is Rare's spiritual successor to Goldeneye, and while pretty much better in every way, despite being almost perfect, there are a few shortcomings that could have been ironed out.
Coming off playing No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, my brain was craving another taste of objective based espionage action. Having liked Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark being in my backlog, it was a perfect time to finally play this.
Overall, everything is an improvement from goldeneye. The story and world are more refined, the graphics are so much better. Gunplay feels a lot better too, and the gadgets and objectives you need to solve in each stage really make you feel like a secret agent.
Perfect Dark's first half takes a similar spy route to 007, but halfway though turns into something more like Alien, which separates Perfect Dark from other espionage type games and gives it it's own alien identity. It also gives the game some interesting alien locations, rather than just facilities and offices.
I really enjoyed my time with Perfect Dark, however there are some frustrations preventing me from giving this a perfect 10. First thing is the fact that there are no checkpoints, I wanted to play this on Perfect Agent difficulty due to the fact that easier difficulties don't give you the full level, and I wanted to see every level in it's fullest. In this difficulty, you can die or fail objectives really easy, which is no problem, it is the hardest difficulty after all, however on a first playthrough you can spend hours trial and erroring levels because each time you progress, something blinesides you and you fail your next objective. On an emulator with saves states, this softens the blow a bit, but playing this on real hardware such as the N64, 360 or PC port, quicksaving is not an option. The 2nd frustration I have is the final boss, not a very well designed boss and kinda soured my taste at the end. Again, doesn't help that you need to start the final level from the beginning if you die.
Because of that, I really recommend emulating this to have that quicksave option, which is also hard to say because that PC port is beautiful.
Despite these issues, Perfect Dark is one the best espionage type games, and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of these.
Coming off playing No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, my brain was craving another taste of objective based espionage action. Having liked Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark being in my backlog, it was a perfect time to finally play this.
Overall, everything is an improvement from goldeneye. The story and world are more refined, the graphics are so much better. Gunplay feels a lot better too, and the gadgets and objectives you need to solve in each stage really make you feel like a secret agent.
Perfect Dark's first half takes a similar spy route to 007, but halfway though turns into something more like Alien, which separates Perfect Dark from other espionage type games and gives it it's own alien identity. It also gives the game some interesting alien locations, rather than just facilities and offices.
I really enjoyed my time with Perfect Dark, however there are some frustrations preventing me from giving this a perfect 10. First thing is the fact that there are no checkpoints, I wanted to play this on Perfect Agent difficulty due to the fact that easier difficulties don't give you the full level, and I wanted to see every level in it's fullest. In this difficulty, you can die or fail objectives really easy, which is no problem, it is the hardest difficulty after all, however on a first playthrough you can spend hours trial and erroring levels because each time you progress, something blinesides you and you fail your next objective. On an emulator with saves states, this softens the blow a bit, but playing this on real hardware such as the N64, 360 or PC port, quicksaving is not an option. The 2nd frustration I have is the final boss, not a very well designed boss and kinda soured my taste at the end. Again, doesn't help that you need to start the final level from the beginning if you die.
Because of that, I really recommend emulating this to have that quicksave option, which is also hard to say because that PC port is beautiful.
Despite these issues, Perfect Dark is one the best espionage type games, and I highly recommend it if you are a fan of these.