The year is 2020. Corporations control Everything. A secret war has begun between rival corporations, each hell bent on world domination. Bounty hunters Jack Dark and his young daughter, Joanna, wind up as part of a global conspiracy that will change the fate of Joanna, the corporations and the world forever.
Perfect Dark, naturally, hands you control of Joanna Dark, Rareware’s female substitute for James Bond 007 after they lost the Bond License to buy-everything-going EA. Five years on, and needless to say, Jo’s picked up an edge. From short-haired brunette super-spy to drop-dead gorgeous redhead bounty hunter, those who remember the N64 game might not even recognise young Jo.
Joanna Lines up her shot...
All this from a prequel – all the action in this game takes place around three years before the original Perfect Dark, thus the Zero. Think of it as “Joanna Begins” – the story of how that girl came to be a secret agent at the Carrington Institute fighting dataDyne. With Microsoft’s Asset Development department working hard at trying to turn the popular series into a franchise (ala Halo), with a novel already out of the blocks before the game even is.
But all this will be wasted if the game it’s all based on isn’t any good. So, how does Perfect Dark Zero play?
Upon booting up the game, you’ll be greeted with menus and FMVs showing off the features of the game. Stuff we’re all used to by now. The game’s menus, as in the original Perfect Dark, are all relevant to the game world. Unlike, say, an EA-made James Bond title, where the menus are clearly that of a game, Rare has done the utmost to make the menus relate to the game world – something Joanna could well be looking at on a computer screen. As such, logos of companies that are prominent in Perfect Dark, such as dataDyne and the Carrington Institute pop up often, coupled with the technology of licensee Samsung.
In the (fairly complete) build I played, two levels were available for play – the same two that were also available at the X05 this year – a Subway Mission, and the “Rooftop Escape” mission. Both were very fun to play. One level was at daytime (well, evening, by the look of the sky) and outdoors, whilst the other was at night and a good mixture of outdoors and indoors, so it gave a very good indication of what the environments, weapons and characters of the game look like in various situations.
There is a very strange thing about this new Perfect Dark title, which is that in many situations, it doesn’t lend itself to screenshots. However, in motion it looks absolutely beautiful and I suggest you do go and check it out. While the graphics are not excellent, and certainly not as beautiful nor as chock-a-block with eye candy as, for example, Rare’s other title, Kameo: Elements of Power, PDZ does look good. The art style fits together nicely, even if on paper, single elements of it look strange.
That Gun is also the weapon of choice of a very famous MI6 agent...
In particular, the lighting in this game struck me as impressive. Light bounces off anything remotely reflective (most notably, the weapons in Jo’s hands) in such an amazingly realistic way that several times in my play-throughs of the level, I stopped moving just to turn myself and watch the light bounce off my weapon. Bump-mapping, too, seems to be used unsparingly in this game, practically every single texture in the game at least looking like it has been bump-mapped for realism. If this is a result of the extremely high quality textures or actual bump-mapping I couldn’t quite determine but who cares?! It looks downright bloody fantastic. It’s not often in a game you look down at the floor, exclaim at how real the floor looks and call your friend over to show them the floor. And that’s what I did, and Rob called me a sad act.
Perfect Dark Zero does look damn good. In places, unfortunately, it has this horrible habit of looking extremely mediocre – mostly down to the art direction, which, while fitting on the most part, sometimes still feels out of place. Occasionally, surfaces can get a bit jaggy in spots – usually the environments from a distance, but I’m willing to sacrifice the occasional jaggy surface if it means the game will run at a nice solid frame rate, something the original Perfect Dark lacked.
Double the guns, double the deaths... Not to mention the grenades.
As members of the Rare development team have stated, they decided to go for a more “Halo-like” control scheme in PDZ. However, don’t let this fool you into thinking this title is anything like Halo, as it is another beast entirely. When playing, it almost feels like the controller has been designed around the game, and not the other way around – a feeling that I’ve not felt in a game of this type since Metroid Prime on the GameCube. Like Halo, the Left Trigger (LB) is your Left hand while the Right Trigger (RB) is your right hand. Meanwhile, the two shoulder buttons above the triggers act as Secondary Fire (LT) and the Evasive Roll move (RT), which replaces the jump. Incidentally, I fully support the lack of a jump in Perfect Dark Zero, as I’m pretty sick of people jumping towards me with the sword in Halo. Generally, PDZ seems more grounded in reality than Halo, and the lack of a jump should bring the fighting only further back down to earth.
Meanwhile, on the face buttons, the Halo similarities continue – X to reload weapons, Y to pick up and cycle through your weapons, and B to perform a Melee attack. The controls fit the game perfectly, and the only single button I would change is that of the Evasive Roll move – which feels a little bit unnatural on RT. This may be due to the fact jumping is on A in Halo, and I feel its equivalent should be there in PDZ. I’m well informed that several different control schemes will be available upon release of the game, and I only hope that minor change is one of them. I do know for a fact, however, that the N64 control scheme will be making a return as a “classic” mode.
The controls are consistently tight and responsive – proving functional throughout the levels, Slower and more precise than Halo’s controls, but still smooth. The A button acts as a context sensitive button, changing depending on the situation, usually allowing you to switch to a third person view as you use something as cover from enemy fire. This is another interesting feature of PDZ that is new to the FPS genre.
Perfect Dark is set to boast a robust single player story mode, which will also include full compatibility for co-operative play on and offline. Knowing Rare, this story mode will most likely have a lot of substance to it, both in plot and gameplay. Co-operative play offers a whole new experience, as the extra player will often take an entirely different route through the level to Joanna’s character, helping her from afar. For example, on the Rooftops level, Joanna is up on the Hong Kong Rooftops, while her father is down on the streets. In single player, they help each other through by sniping enemies in each other’s path. In co-operative, the second player plays Jack, her father, and will play an entirely new section of the level. They will also have to help the first player through the level for them to both make it through alive.
2 Players enjoying the Robust Co-Op Mode in Place
Of course, when you get bored of all that, there’s a backup option; you can then jump onto Xbox Live for some online action against some real people.
Rare are renowned for revolutionising First Person Shooter multiplayer games. Can they do it again with PDZ, but this time online?
To me, it certainly won’t be a revolution of the standards of what Goldeneye did for shooter games, but I think it will certainly make us all rethink the way we play on Xbox Live. Perfect Dark Zero offers a whopping 32 players online in a single game – the most ever in a shooter on Xbox Live, and Rare has said they will consider bumping this number up with a patch after release. A number of modes will be available on Live, from your simple “Deathmatch” mode – every man for himself – to other traditional game modes we’ve all played on Xbox Live with Halo 2, such as Team Battle, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, and so on and so forth. A “Counter-Strike Style” mode is also to be included – giving each player one life for a round, with basic objectives, like one team attacking and the other defending a single point.
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As with Halo, vehicles are to be available in the single player and multiplayer modes to add some spice into the mix. The game also includes bots, something that has been sorely missing from Live-Enabled shooters thus far – allowing you to fill up your multiplayer game with computer-controlled bots of various intelligence, adding an extra challenge to those more private multiplayer games where there are only four people playing. I played several multiplayer games, and all proved to be highly enjoyable – PDZ has a much slower pace than Halo, and so in multiplayer often feels more tactical than Halo’s “squeeze the triggers ‘til they bleed” attitude. An interesting addition is the radar which only picks up fire from loud weapons. A grenade or large assault rifle will produce a huge red blip on the radar, while a silenced pistol does not appear on the radar at all. Some players may prefer to stay hidden and pick others off from afar because of this. This multiplayer can only serve to be enhanced by the inclusion of some of the weapons that made the original Perfect Dark so fun - weapons with X-Ray - allowing you to X-Ray through walls and other obstacles to see if an enemy is behind it - and Threat Detector - allowing you to see who is and who isn't friendly with colour codes at the flick of a switch, the Bond-esque gadgets are sure to find some fun uses online.
The rather spooky-but-effective X-Ray Feature
With an excellent soundtrack (which is now out to buy) accompanying the action, Perfect Dark Zero seems to have everything going for it. The build I played needed some polishing in areas – mostly a few graphical errors on an otherwise near-perfect landscape, coupled with a few glitches. The physics need a tiny bit of fine-tuning too. However, all the right ingredients are there for a fantastic game – a killer app that the Xbox 360 really needs. Hopefully, come December 2nd, when I’m slotting it into my 360, I can give a sigh of relief as I realise it’s had that final polishing and finish. We can only hope.
Perfect Dark Zero hits stores in the UK on December 2nd, with both a Regular Edition and a 2-disk Limited Edition available. Be sure to check it out.
