Topic: Nice impressions of PDZ

[Don'tHate742]

Agreed.

I'm not too depressed about that situation though, because Free Radical could definitely make a FPS worth playing.

[Stimutacs Addict]

yes but unless Ninty releases it on the Virtual Console then we will never have perfect dark on the penultimate controller. (imagine using Turok style controls (1.2) but with a GCN analogue stick.. beautiful. or better, PD with freehand support (i think that will never happen, the most I can hope for is PDDS at 60 frames/sec.

[KDR_11k]

You'll have it on the penultimate controller (GC), but not the ultimate one (Rev rod).

[couchmonkey]

I like Kameo's design.

*Agrees with Bill on 1up's review of PGR3, mostly*.

[Galford]

I haven't played this yet(don't own an Xbox360), but I get the idea that this game would get higher scores if didn't have the legacy of PD to live up to.

I mean how the hell did Halo get such high scores???
If this game is nothing more then PD with a graphics upgrade and online play,
it should be at least 9.5 all around...

[nemo_83]

My immediate impressions upon playing PD was, "this game is hideous."  Aside from one impressive piece of graffiti I found I stand by that.  I kept hoping it was just starting slow, that it would get better, and then the rest of the night we used the 360 to play Halo 2 cause PDZ sucks!  I am so disappointed, the N64 version was better and it wasn't even as good as Goldeneye; I do not see the same game 1up gave a nine.  I'm going to play further at Christmas, but until then my memory of PDZ is an Xbox game in HD built on turning red switches green to run through the next door.  

Kameo controlled like a piece of flaming poo, the graphics weren't too bad, but the game was linear to the bone stage based like Battle Toads and the transformations are forced upon you to progress through the level.  It's like Metroid Prime gone terribly wrong.  

And I'm going to step out of my political correctness suit for a second and openly point at how dyked out the main characters in PDZ and Kameo are; who are they marketing this stuff to?

[couchmonkey]

I think they're marketing the games to people who want EXTREME heroines.  Look at Joanna, she wears army pants and a cool tank top from Hot Topic.  I know this goes against all my defense of the character designs earlier, but basically I like the designs in spite of their cliche attempts to be cool.

I can't vouch for or against the game designs or controls since I haven't played them, but personally, if the only thing I could find to play on my Xbox 360 was Halo 2, I'd shoot myself.  Then I'd sell the 360 on Ebay.

Edit: clarification on first paragraph.

[nemo_83]

Cliche and trite describe the character designs in PDZ and Kameo perfectly.  

When Nintendo and Rare released the first PD a lot of people were just waiting to crack on it just for the fact they had the grape fruits to title a game perfect, but the game was essentially a less palatable Goldeneye with way more multiplayer options that caused slowdown and kept players from getting into the game because the deathmatch was so complicated.

So in my opinion the first PD played well, but most of the stages were meh, and the sci fi theme just wasn't as fun as the Cold War period of Bond with real weapons.  Perfect Dark should have moved forward by now after like six years and being in development on three consoles.  And there is no excuse for Kameo to play the way it does after being in development on four consoles for longer than Perfect Dark Zero.

I would have expected PDZ to have evolved to be more like MGS (likewise I had expected MGS and Resident Evil to have evolved to be more like a free moving shooters in the past generation but they did not).  I expected a balance between first and third person action allowing players the option of full third person stealth control akin to Splinter Cell or MGS and a well developed first person mode like Halo.  To sum it all up PDZ doesn't even have a jump button and it drives me nutts.  Its so archaic to not have a jump.  The only game that has gotten away with it thus far has been Zelda, but Metroid Prime shows that game design built similar to Zelda's can work out with jumping.  That's exactly it, Metroid ruins PDZ for me.  Metroid has better scifi technology and it has the most powerful jumping first person controls.  PDZ makes me feel like I'm in Doom.  Also I expect more from my games now days; why can't Halo, PDZ, and Kameo operate from a key world.  We're not playing with the N64 or PSX anymore.  Games are nolonger linear.  PDZ would have been better with a free roaming three dimensional city like GTA.

Next gen hardware means to me more than graphics and PDZ doesn't even deliver graphics.  I bet the game looks terrible on a normal tv.

[PaLaDiN]

Don't hold back, nemo. Tell us how you really feel.

Have you played the new game? Because those have to be the worst impressions I've seen of it... then again Halo had nothing but good impressions in the beginning and I loathe that game.

[mac<censored>]

Quote
Originally posted by: nemo_83
why can't Halo, PDZ, and Kameo operate from a key world.  We're not playing with the N64 or PSX anymore.  Games are nolonger linear.  PDZ would have been better with a free roaming three dimensional city like GTA.

I think the answer is:  Developers are lazy, and users are stupid.

The more freedom allowed the user, the more work the developers have to put into pushing technology, adding content, and making sure users can't get themselves into odd situations.   The more things are kept on rails, the less effort required -- and after the long horrid reign of the PSX, users were used to things being on rails to some degree (fixed cameras, static backgrounds, etc).

GTA may be a embarrassingly low-brow game, but it's an important jolt to the industry.  Let's hope they draw the right conclusions -- more freedom for users.  [No doubt there are some developers who think the secret is more games based on 50-cent and drab pavement-filled landscapes.]

[nemo_83]

I havn't finished PDZ; maybe it gets better later on, but as far as I played me and my cousin had little fun.  I felt we were forcing ourselves to play through a game we weren't enjoying just because some guy on 1up gave the game a high review.    

The difference between this and Halo is that Halo has a jump, Halo's weapons are easier to understand, Halo has many vehicles, Halo has better AI, and Halo has a fun factor you rarely find in games these days.  Maybe it is just a sign that I have become jaded, my skin is too thick after all these years of gaming to be impressed with Perfect Dark Zero's tricks.

The game design just doesn't feel like next gen, the control is not next gen, and the graphics sure as hell are not next gen.  One should expect more from a game in development for six years from a company that redefined shooters with Goldeneye and sold fourteen million copies in two years.    

[KDR_11k]

Story-driven games are rarely freeform. When you're telling a story where the player has to fight for his life or do a job quickly you don't want him to go out and just admire the landscape for an hour or so because the character wouldn't do that, either.

[ThePerm]

actually id rather not a shooting game have jumping at all..unless its completely in the future and your wearing bio suits..like halo or half-life or metroid. With PD though you could never jump before(cus in real life if you jump like an idiot you'll die faster, crouching is more realistic)

the thing i didnt like about pd is i couldn't customize my controls enough. I hate dual analog. The game plays exactly like its n64 counterpart, but it sucks because i can't do something like play with the face buttons for strafe. I used to own at perfect dark because i had precise control, but now im stuck with using a joystic..which for me is hard to strafe without looking down or up

[nemo_83]

You should put all of your movements on one stick and all your looking on the other.

Dual analog is history now; the Revolution is about to own.

[ThePerm]

damn right

[Don'tHate742]

Quote
Originally posted by: ThePerm
actually id rather not a shooting game have jumping at all..unless its completely in the future and your wearing bio suits..like halo or half-life or metroid. With PD though you could never jump before(cus in real life if you jump like an idiot you'll die faster, crouching is more realistic)

the thing i didnt like about pd is i couldn't customize my controls enough. I hate dual analog. The game plays exactly like its n64 counterpart, but it sucks because i can't do something like play with the face buttons for strafe. I used to own at perfect dark because i had precise control, but now im stuck with using a joystic..which for me is hard to strafe without looking down or up

Agreed. Dual Analog makes the game feel slow for some reason. During PD or GE, I could run super fast if I was strafing and walking. I could also aim with great precision and fire within a second. Those two things made for incredibly intense battles, espcially with the more powerful weapons (like the grenade launcher...oh damn!). Halo is still fun, but its not as unnervingly fun as the two rare games.

I hope the Rev can bring back that sense of speed.

[Galford]

The biggest reason PDZ looks the way it did was the launch date.  The game was rushed and here are the results.  Rare thought they had another Halo on there hands and it doesn't seem to be playing out that way.

PS - How many people remember what the original concept of Halo was?
Hint:  It wasn't the XBox game we got...

[KDR_11k]

I remember a claim in some magazine that the PC version would be much more tactical and involve battle strategies, which would be removed from the console versions (back when it was still announced as a title for both).

OTOH, many people say "Marathon 4" while the Marathon fans say "No freaking way that deserves the Marathon name!".

[Galford]

That is correct KDR.  

If I remember correctly, Halo was suppose to allow all sorts of jobs a player could choose from in a rather expensive game universe.  Some of the other ideas kicked around were the game was suppose to load once and then there would be no "levels" per say, just battlefields with data constantly streamed in.

The online component I believe was also different.  I remember one magazine talking about how one player could be a medic, another could just drive wounded troops from the battlefield to the hospital.  All this while the rest of you team fought the Covenant.

It's funny, some people on the Internet now claim Halo is some sort of prequel to Marathon...

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

People have to make up SOMETHING to satisfy their forum logic.

[couchmonkey]

Some people really feel the need to JUMP in games.  I guess I can understand that, sometimes it drives me nuts when a game won't let me jump, but I know where Rare is coming from...the developers over there feel that a first-person game should never including jumping because there's no reference point.  This seemed very true to me during the sections of Halo which actually required jumping.  Jumping just for the heck of it works fine, but the platforming parts are irritating.  On the other hand, Metroid Prime seems to do jumping fairly well.  I'm not sure why it works in that game, but it does.  Maybe it's because (as far as I played) it doesn't require really precise, difficult jumps too often.

[PaLaDiN]

No, Metroid Prime works because Samus, a smart bounty hunter, looks slightly downward when jumping. Try it. Also because there's so much jumping it becomes second nature after a while.

[Shecky]

First, Metroid Prime felt good in jumping because it employed a system that was slightly forgiving.  Jumping a tad late, or landing a tad short wouldn't cause you to miss.  Auto jumping in the last Zelda games helps take out the frustration of wondering "can I make that jump?"  A curse of platforming (is that a word?) games is where a gamer is forced to ask himself, "maybe I didn't time the jump perfectly" and that with a bit more effort it might be possible.  If you miss a full speed jump in Zelda it's because it's to far, period.  Metroid employs the same tactic in a different way.  There are no required jumps that are at the full extent of your normal range.

Oh, and looks like there are some more impressions of Perfect Dark Zero...
"Penny Arcade"

Edit: I absolutely enjoy the jumping mechanics in both games.

[Pale]

Holy crap..

sometimes i'm a moron...

ignore me...

[cubist]

I have played some PDZ...and decided to pick up Timesplitters: Future Perfect.  I was hoping that the price would've dropped by now...but that's beside the point.  After playing the 2 games, Free Radical's Timesplitters: Future Perfect and Rare's PDZ, I noticed that both play very similarily to each other (e.g., they've got no jumping).   Furthermore, I found the Free Radical entry this generation to be 10 times better than the next-generation PDZ.  It isn't even close.  Sure, PDZ in HD does have the advantage in looks, but in terms of gameplay and level design, there is a huge difference between the two.  Funny how the level designers from Goldeneye leave and this aspect of the two games just seems to jump out at you.

I'm still a RAREWARE fan...and I hope they can make their way back to the developer elite; however, from what I've played in the current generation(s), the Stamper bros. need to get crackin'.