Topic: RFN RetroActive #18 - Perfect Dark (N64/XBLA)

[Jonnyboy117]

This is the official thread to discuss Perfect Dark for RetroActive. Tentatively, we plan to talk about the game on RFN 245 and possibly for a second week after that.

The theme for this edition is "Originals & Remakes". In addition to the usual in-depth analysis of the game itself, we're also interested in comparing the original N64 version to the much more recent version developed for Xbox Live Arcade. You can play and discuss either one, or even both, for this feature! It may be helpful to note which version you are playing.

Since the remake supports online multiplayer via Xbox Live, we may arrange one or two community events to play it together. If you have access to this version and are interested, post your Gamer Tag and check back frequently for more info.

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Perfect Dark was originally developed and published by Rare Ltd. in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. It is the spiritual successor to Rare's smash hit from three years earlier, Goldeneye 007. Perfect Dark features a sci-fi conspiracy story starring a new protagonist, Joanna Dark, who is a super-spy for the mysterious Carrington Institute. The game is a first-person shooter noted for its array of multiplayer features and modes, some of which are arguably unrivaled to this day. In addition to the single-player campaign, the game also supports two-player co-op and "counter-op" for the same campaign, via split-screen. The latter puts a second player in the role of minor enemies positioned throughout each level, with the goal of killing player one before he can complete objectives. When a player-controlled enemy is defeated, player two is transported into a new enemy farther along in the level.

Multiplayer deathmatch-style modes support up to eight characters total, of which up to four may be human players via split-screen. The remaining participants are A.I. "bots" renowned for their human-like behavior on the battlefield and, at some settings, super-human ability and ruthlessness. The emphasis on play against bots, and the extensive settings provided for customizing matches and the bots themselves, makes Perfect Dark a first-person shooter that can be enjoyed in "multiplayer" even when no friends are available. It also allows for scenarios in which a team of human players can face off against a team of bots, sometimes called a "comp stomp" in PC gaming.

About one year before the game's release, Nintendo and Rare showcased an innovative face-mapping feature for multiplayer. By connecting the Game Boy Camera to the N64 Transfer Pak, and connecting both to an N64 controller, you could take photos of yourself and your friends' faces and use a simple in-game tool to map these faces onto playable characters. While the feature was demonstrated extensively at E3, it was removed from the game in late 1999 due to technical problems, according to Rare. Many critics and fans attribute the true reason for this omission to the Columbine High School shooting incident of that year.

Perfect Dark is one of the few N64 games to require the 4MB RAM Expansion Pak for entire gameplay modes. While portions of the game are technically playable without an Expansion Pak, the majority of the game (including both single-player and multiplayer features) requires this accessory. If you are planning to acquire the original N64 version for RetroActive, be sure that you have an Expansion Pak as well.

[broodwars]

Whenever we get around to doing an RFN-wide multiplayer event, my Xbox LIVE Gamertag is broodwars64.

I don't know if I'll go through the singleplayer again for this Retroactive.  It's not particularly long, but I replayed it when the 360 version released and it's not particularly good, either, on the lower difficulties.  And I remember the bonus objectives being downright obnoxious on the higher difficulties.

[lolmonade]

Whenever we get around to doing an RFN-wide multiplayer event, my Xbox LIVE Gamertag is broodwars64.

Online multiplayer is the only reason I wish I had an Xbox 360 to buy this game for.

[gojira]

My gamertag is gojira1980.  I'm also not too sure about replaying the single player since I've just done that a month ago and wasn't too impressed.  Back on the n64 I mostly played "multiplayer" matches solo against bots.  So I don't have much nostalgia for the main game.  Although I may take a stab at an achievement or two.

[Jonnyboy117]

We're not asking anyone to replay anything. Since you guys played the campaign so recently, you're highly qualified to comment on that part of the game!

[Dropkik]

Personally I was late to the party with Perfect Dark.  I first played it at a friends house and he tried to show me the single player game.  I will never forget that my original reaction was resounding befuddlement at what was happening.  The N64 was infamous for having blurry graphics, but Perfect Dark seemed like it's anti-aliasing was far more egregious then anything else.  Many months later my older brother rented it as he had heard the multi-player was better then Goldeneyes multiplayer was.  Sure enough it was and I still pull out the N64 every couple of years to play against the bots with friends.  The only thing that would make the multiplayer perfect would have been the inclusion of Goldeneye's moon raker laser. 

To this day I have never played more then ten minutes of the single player campaign, it remains the only game in my collection I own solely for the multiplayer.  **** Halo, give me the laptop gun and far sight any day over the Nerf toys Halo uses.  I never played the remake as I didn't buy a 360 until Crackdown 1 came out and by then PDZ wasnt even a common joke anymore.

[oohhboy]

If I was to find and plug everything back in, I would find I blew hundreds of hours on this game. While I can no longer excuse the frame rate, at the time I just didn't care when playing with 4 players and 8 fist sims with shotguns. Or comedy gold sedative gun only matches.

Every single weapon were satisfying to use and sounded great, although they tend to fire a little fast. Some of the objectives were a little obtuse if you didn't brief yourself. Level deign were top notch and varied except for War! and Deep Sea: Nullify Threat. One is a litteral corridor shooter and the latter mess of ugly. Great music and voice work marred by heavy compression.

This and Goldeneye in their time were two perfect games on an imperfect system. It's a shame that Rare has lost the magic since.

[lolmonade]

To this day I have never played more then ten minutes of the single player campaign, it remains the only game in my collection I own solely for the multiplayer.  **** Halo, give me the laptop gun and far sight any day over the Nerf toys Halo uses.  I never played the remake as I didn't buy a 360 until Crackdown 1 came out and by then PDZ wasnt even a common joke anymore.

Just an FYI: perfect dark zero was a sequel, not a remake, and it looked mediocre.  I remember my friend got it when he first got his xbox and deluded himself into thinking it was good because of the "awesome graphics" and "omg those explosions look so real!"

lol.

[gojira]

We're not asking anyone to replay anything. Since you guys played the campaign so recently, you're highly qualified to comment on that part of the game!

Except for the part that the campaign is so forgettable I'd have to replay it to make a comment.

[wick]

Ah. I've been holding off playing this game in the off chance it would be selected for a RetroActive 

My gamertag is WICK1978

I'm looking forward to playing one of my favorite games from one of my favorite console generations.

[oohhboy]

For the people who haven't played this game for whatever reason, here is the Let's Play. I have viewed the first video it's quite good. It's the XBLA version, so for someone who has only played the original, it's surreal and makes it a lot easier to play since it always runs with the full number of frames.

[Kytim89]

Check out this great Perfect Dark trailer from 2000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZMph4U0w3o

As perhaps the biggest Rare fanboy on this forum, I can attest that Perfect Dark is one of the best titles from that gaming company sans Conker. I first played Perfect Dark a number of years ago and was hooked by the sci-fi lements and the fine tuned evolution of the game from Goldeneye. In fact, games such as Call of Duty and Halo owe their standing the FPS genres all thanks to the combination of Goldensys and Perfect Dark, but mostly Perfect Dark.
 
For a long time I have been upset that Rare land Nintendo parted ways because I would have loved to see a remake of this game for the Wii with pointer controls similar to the Conduit and the recent Goldeney game. Honestly, this is why I like the Conduit series because it just feels like a throw back to Perfect Dark. Think about it for moment? A secret agent battling aliens with an assortment of guns. All the Conduit games needs is dual wielding for its guns and it would be a perfect substitute.
 
Another thing that I like about Perfect Dark is its assortment of firearms. Being the gun enthusist that I am, I love to have a large arsenal of guns to battle enemies. Give me that dragon assualt rifle and I will take down the entire game.
 
Also, the musical tune at the begining of the game is very cachy and is just plain awesome.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u7MRJi2UGg
 
P.S.
 
Since I love Rare, can the RFN crew talk about its contributions to the gaming industry and whether more of their games will ever appear on Virtual Console?

I do not really like the Xbox, so I will just play this game on my N64.

[oohhboy]

I just finished watching the LP of the (Pre)sequel Perfect Dark Zero. So much went wrong with that game. I did play it myself years ago and I figured I only remembered the "Bad" parts, but my memory wasn't mistaken. The basics are there, your know, a first person shooter, but beyond that there was nothing connecting it to the original greatness. The voice work is laughably bad and Jo doesn't even have a English accent and Carrington's is over blown. Weapon selection a fraction of the original. Poor sound engine. Poor art design. Average levels. An embarrassing plot that smashes it's face into a brick wall with an ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

It makes me all the more appreciate Perfect Dark for all it's achievements it accomplished 2 generations ago.

[Kytim89]

I just finished watching the LP of the (Pre)sequel Perfect Dark Zero. So much went wrong with that game. I did play it myself years ago and I figured I only remembered the "Bad" parts, but my memory wasn't mistaken. The basics are there, your know, a first person shooter, but beyond that there was nothing connecting it to the original greatness. The voice work is laughably bad and Jo doesn't even have a English accent and Carrington's is over blown. Weapon selection a fraction of the original. Poor sound engine. Poor art design. Average levels. An embarrassing plot that smashes it's face into a brick wall with an ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan.

It makes me all the more appreciate Perfect Dark for all it's achievements it accomplished 2 generations ago.

The quality of Rare's titles fell way off after they spilt with Nintendo. They peaked with the N64 and the way I see it if Microsoft can not make good quality titles from Rare's IPs then they need to sell them off back onto the market. I really do not want to buy a $200 system to play a game that I got off of Ebay for $12 and a system that I got for $20. 

[Jonnyboy117]

Jon, James, and I just played a couple of hours of online multiplayer. I was frustrated by the limited weapons and features that you start with, so we started working through the Challenges to unlock more. That was after at least 15 minutes of running around Carrington Institute looking for the multiplayer challenges -- they are accessed via Game Settings in the Combat Simulator mode (deathmatch). We finally got to play with Farsights in Challenge 5, but I don't know if we really unlocked anything yet.

[Crimm]

Farsight with idiotsims.


I WILL RUN AT YOU WITH THIS GUN!


Oh, I died.

[Jonnyboy117]

James and I played the first 10 challenges separately, then teamed up to try 11-14 and were stomped on all of them. Are these events harder to conquer in multiplayer, or is there just a huge difficulty spike starting with Challenge 11? It seems worthwhile to finish them since that's how you unlock a ton of multiplayer content.

[Traveller]

I do like a lot of the levels in the single player for PD. I love that its not always required that you do things in a set order, and you can adjust your route if need be.


If anyone wants to play some multi, feel free to add me on the 360. I am up for it.


Traveller7

[adadad]

I've been trying to get through the singleplayer campaign on the N64 version on Agent, and I think I'm on the last mission now (the Skedar Ruins), but suddenly the lack of mission checkpoints has become very frustrating. It takes me about 20 minutes alone just to get to the boss even now knowing exactly how to proceed through the stage. After finally getting the boss, to be killed instantly by a single rocket at that stage is incredibly annoying. That's one thing I prefer about Goldeneye. While that game has its share of long stages (Facility and Control in particular), in the case of Control for example, the most challenging test - the protect Natalya objective - can be taken on after perhaps five minutes of preamble. Another example is the Jungle, in which the tricky Xenia fight is early on. You are by no means incapable of dying after the Xenia fight, but there aren't any further obstacles which involve grenades being launched at you. It doesn't feel like Perfect Dark's missions take the lack of checkpoints into account for players in quite the same way.

And yes, to Johnny's point, the challenges do dramatically ramp up in difficulty in the original game too. I'm currently stuck on a King of the Hill challenge involving multiple Elvis's.

Struggling through these challenges reminds me of the main reason why, as a child coming off years of Goldeneye, trying Perfect Dark at a friend's house left me somewhat cold, although not unimpressed. I dislike the fact that if you get caught by someone with a good automatic gun, you're dead almost instantly, before you even have a chance to realise what's going on. This makes it more satisfying for the killer, and it is cool to get the drop on someone and kill them before they can get on a shot at you, but I feel as though it leaves the automatic weapons like the Laptop gun feeling too much like powerful explosive weapons, so that pistols are too weak to compete.

A small additional note too is that the music in this game is really weird. It seems that every level simply cycles through tracks at random? I suppose the variety isn't a bad thing, but the changes between songs are often jarring, and unlike the Zelda games for instance, the music doesn't appear to function dynamically. Again, this was a feature that Goldeneye made use of too, if I recall correctly.

[lolmonade]

Got my copy in the mail yesterday.  First thoughts when first loading:
 
1) "Jeez, I don't remember the textures being so blurry"  Joanna Dark's face looks like it was covered in mud and beaten with a lead pipe".
 
2) "Ok, create a profile....why won't it save?...oh dammit, do I need to have a memory card for this game?!?!"
 
Yeah, haven't played the game yet.  Plan on putting some hours in the game tonight to at least see if playing with bots was as fun as I remember.  Not the best re-introduction but I'm still holding out hope.

[Nick DiMola]

James and I played the first 10 challenges separately, then teamed up to try 11-14 and were stomped on all of them. Are these events harder to conquer in multiplayer, or is there just a huge difficulty spike starting with Challenge 11? It seems worthwhile to finish them since that's how you unlock a ton of multiplayer content.

I'm not sure what happened with the XBLA re-release, but most of those challenges seem to have been made impossibly hard. Back when it was released I played a few with one of the other guys on PixlBit online and we just got annihilated. I beat 100% of Perfect Dark back in the day, including all of the Perfect Agent missions, cheats, and challenges. Needless to say, I know my way around, and I just couldn't beat the damn sim enemies in the challenges for crap.

It felt like they would instantly headshot and kill you no matter where you were. I know I'm not as good as I used to be at the game, but I'm still plenty proficient with modern shooters (god knows I have to review enough of them). With that being the case, I don't think we made it past Challenge 15 before just giving up on it. That experience adequately soured me on the game in general and I haven't picked it back up since.

[Crimm]

There was a king of the hill challenge where Jonny was being annihilated and I had established a perimeter of safety where I was quite proficient at driving off the sims (or killing them). However, as it was king of the hill they weren't totally concerned with killing me. That all changed when my hiding spot became the titular hill. It was like when they see the fin in Jaws. They were a blur, circling my position, and then I was dead.

[Mop it up]

James and I played the first 10 challenges separately, then teamed up to try 11-14 and were stomped on all of them. Are these events harder to conquer in multiplayer, or is there just a huge difficulty spike starting with Challenge 11?

I can't speak for the XBLA version, but in the Nintendo 64 version, yes, challenges are harder the more players you add. If you have two or more players, they will add either more simulants, or the sims will be on higher difficulty settings (sometimes even both). I beat all the challenges with four (skilled) players and I felt it was easier than trying them by myself. But the extra players will need to be skilled in order for adding them to be worth it, otherwise you're just making them tougher.

In the original, there was a glitch you could use to beat challenges by using a second controller to select a preset when player one selects the challenge, but I'm going to guess that was removed from the XBLA version.

[gojira]

I can't talk about Perfect Dark without saying a bit about Goldeneye first.  I'm not a big fan of the FPS genre.  But I did enjoy Goldeneye quite a bit.  I've played through the main game a few times (the first level many times), but I didn't play much of the multiplayer.  I didn't have any friends that were too into games enough to do the 4 player thing more than once a year or so. 

So then totally flip that with Perfect Dark.  Other than the first level, I probably only played through the game once.  The game was all about multiplayer for me.  I didn't all of a sudden get gamer friends, but I did make great use of the bots.  I loved playing King of the Hill with a certain loadout of bots and weapons.  I loved the laptop gun and double maulers.  I may dig out my N64 (just moved) and Perfect Dark just to see what my stats were. 

Having such great memories of PD I bought the HD port on XBLA right away.  I played through the single player on the lowest level and it was okay.  But I had zero desire to play any multiplayer since I've had so much more fun in other better games recently.  I totally got into Transformers: War for Cybertron last year with the same enthusiasm I had with Perfect Dark back in the day.  I just felt like if I was going to playing multiplayer online it wouldn't be PD since there's nothing really special about it.

[Jonnyboy117]

In what ways do you feel Perfect Dark multiplayer is different or better than that of modern first-person shooters? And compared to the original Goldeneye? I have my own theories but would like to hear what you all think as well.