Perfect Dark was a kind of sequel to GoldenEye. Not officially, of course, but it was made by Rare who made GoldenEye and is often seen as the spiritual successor to that much-revered multiplayer classic. Let’s be perfectly honest, everyone wants an HD remake of GoldenEye but it’s not going to happen any time soon. Nintendo own the rights to the game, Rare were the developers – now heavily invested with Microsoft and Sony owns the general rights to the James Bond franchise thanks to their movie studio. So Perfect Dark is the closest we’re going to get.
Let’s not be too disparaging though, Perfect Dark was an extremely accomplished game in its own right. Some even saw it as superior to Rare’s previous first person shooter. It is as much-loved by most critics as the Bond-based game and free of any licensing entanglements.
I can confidently tell you that if you played the original N64 version you will love this. I watched a couple of people playing and my murky memory was gently prodding me. I remembered bits of it. It looked totally different, sure, but everything was in the right place.
Having a chat with the guy demoing it, I learned that it was exactly the same game. They ported the code over to play on the 360 and then they completely re-skinned it with HD textures for walls, character models and sky boxes. It looks good, perhaps a bit cleaner than we’re used to and certainly not up to the graphical standards of modern FPS powerhouses but crisp and bright.
The game-play is the same fast and unforgiving mix of shooting and searching with human enemies supported by automatic turrets in the level I played. Those turrets were a nightmare, just as they had been in the original and, after a gentle reminder, I found my “peek-and-shoot” abilities restored.
Newcomers may find the visual presentation to be slightly bland or sparse but those who loved the original will be expecting that and the multiplayer aspect should be enough to appease both camps.
Fancy playing a first person shooter with three other friends lined up along the sofa on a split screen? Perfect Dark will do that. Fancy playing with others via Live in an eight-player deathmatch? Perfect Dark does that. How about four people in your living room playing on a split screen against four people in another living room, playing on another split screen on the other side of the globe via Xbox Live? Perfect Dark does that.
Eight player competitive multi-player is eight players, no matter what the configuration. That is certainly something that other developers should be looking at and hoping to emulate in their own titles and it’s certainly something that Rare have gotten right with Perfect Dark.
It would be a little bit rash of me to claim that Perfect Dark is going to appeal to everyone. I found it a joy to play but I can see that there has to be some reservation of judgement based on how much the landscape of gaming has changed since 2000 when this game was so popular on the N64. It is, however, something that everyone who ever wanted a four-player local multiplayer experience should be very interested in.
Perfect Dark will launch in March as a part of Xbox’s Block Party event which also includes Toy Soldiers, Game Room and Scrap Metal.
