I am not sure we have played the same games adadad.
I am not sure if you have been spoiled by modern shooters which contain checkpoints every 5 or so minutes, but you can't make a FPS with levels that takes 5 minutes to complete outside of a speed run. Perfect Dark by your definition should take 100 minutes to complete start to finish in a normal first time run including special missions. What you are looking for is Time Crisis, not a FPS. All the action scenes out of the movie without any of the build up. A shooting range in which PD provides for.
Damn right, I suppose you could say that I'm looking for Time Crisis, insofar as I dislike a lot of the mission padding in PD.
I don't think I explained my point very well in my last post about the length of the levels. Some of the best levels for me in Goldeneye are Train, Caves and Facility which give the player very little to think about in the way of objectives. The obstacles in your way are primarily soldier opponents. If you ignore the enemies in Facility and go straight for the objectives, that level can be beaten in under 2 minutes, which boggles my mind. But a first timer is not going to play that way it's so risky. At a more leisurely pace that level usually takes me upwards of ten minutes, and I should say that there is nothing wrong with that length per se (the speed run times for Caves are almost 10 minutes long). But what does annoy me is how often the levels in Perfect Dark go for non-linear level design on a large scale combined with vague objectives.
So, right now I'm playing Area 51: Rescue, and after a fun start in a big room with huge containers and a silenced pistol it goes downhill when you break a wall to get into the labs. It gives you so many potential ways to go from there that it's just ridiculous, and as well as being lost I also have no idea which objective I'm supposed to tackle next, or how to do it. Missions like this, where you have to dress up or obtain access to a lab or some such are tricky too since the goal is not represented visually. A counterexample is in GE's Frigate level, in which you have to place a tracking bug on a helicopter. You have the tracking bug in your inventory already, so there's no confusion, you know what to look for. By the way, I'm not in any way implying here that Goldeneye is exempt from the same criticisms as PD - many levels in GE suffer from confusing objectives and hard-to-navigate level layouts, most notably the Surface levels...bad enough the first time round, they had to put in ANOTHER one, even worse than the first?!
I can't grasp why anyone would play these games for anything other than the action though. Most objectives consist of nothing more than going to a place and hitting the B button. And there are no puzzles to speak of, so I'm confused. Where does the most satisfaction in the game come from? For me, the objectives are simply the conceit to move from A to B and have fun shooting lots of guys along the way, and maybe that's why it annoys me that objectives are integrated in a less linear fashion in PD than in GE. And I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way - Nik Vendiers said something earlier in this thread which echoes my thoughts:
I do remember playing through it and thinking that some levels were way too long or the way in which they implemented the objectives did so in a way that only extended the game by creating seemingly pointless backtracking or other such means of wandering around the level endlessly searching for some mundane switch or lever that the game gives no hint as to its location.
Worth quoting, because he said it better and far faster than I could.
As for your claims of Head Crabs and Vortigaunts, I am not sure want the hell your smoking
Seriously, what are you smoking.
Oh, what a fool you've made me look! Wasn't it clear that I was not attempting to suggest that these creatures look in any way similar? The point is that their interaction with the player is similar. The Vortigaunts beam in at set points in a flash of light and attack at close quarters, just like the Skedar when they appear close by (I wasn't aware you could see them using the IR scanner). And the baby Skedar things jump at you if you let them get close enough, just as with headcrabs. My complaint with these enemies is not that they're clearly an homage to another game, but that without guns (and obviously this doesn't apply to the Skedar who use Reapers) and in the small numbers the level throws at you, there is almost no strategy required to beat these guys and they pose little threat. Again, compare with GE's Train or Aztec levels, which encourage the player to be cautious and strategic by having numerous enemies in a single room who will shoot immediately if you're visible to them.
In almost every way PD is a better game, looks better except for the frame rate. Massive number of guns, larger levels, more gadgets, secondary fire on all weapons, fully voiced, larger variation in mission types, an AR HUD for Joanna that is your in game HUD. If it wasn't for the frame rate PD would inarguably be the better game since it makes such an impact on gameplay. GE is also a more arcady game, a lot less deliberate than PD should you prefer the former style.
I don't disagree with anything here, although I don't understand what you mean when you call GE less deliberate than PD. You're right though that the crux of this whole argument is that GE is more arcade-ey, which is a style I prefer to PD's bastard hybrid of modern and old-school elements. For me, the arcade style of GE is what makes it unique and still worth playing today. I might add that my reaction to Perfect Dark has been a huge disappointment for me, since I was compelled to complete GE in its entirety for the first time recently, beating every level on 00 Agent and all the speed challenges, and I'm not usually a completist. I had high hopes for PD, but so far I'm less than half-way through PD on Special Agent and I'm not enjoying the experience much at all.
PD built on this and I can't see how you could ask for even more let alone state that it was crudely done from borrowed elements from the PC when it's predecessor had effectively in parallel invented said elements for the console in a working state!
You seem to be under the impression that I wanted PD to perfectly replicate the experience of shooters like Deus Ex and Half-Life. I wouldn't say I'm asking for anything more from the game already has, if anything I'm asking for less since I wish they'd removed the fat from the game and focused on the strengths of their engine. It's the poorly thought out implementation of the missions' "variety" that is the problem.
When going back to an old game like this I think it's worth asking: what does Perfect Dark offer that other shooters haven't done much better since? I can see the arguments for the multiplayer, which has had its merits discussed both on RFN and in this thread (bots, weapons, etc), but the singleplayer missions not so much.
Ugh, I apologise for another essay.
Topic: RFN RetroActive #18 - Perfect Dark (N64/XBLA) (Read 29716 times)
