Review  Perfect Dark
- Combat Simulator Challenge Mode
- By Mike Schneider,
-by Andrew Weatherton
, 6.30.00
When you first enter the “Combat Simulator” section of
Perfect Dark you will be greeted by the main menu, which includes four
options. The first of which is
“Challenges”. The challenges
are pretty much a game in themselves. In fact, it could be said that the
Challenge mode alone offers as much of gameplay value as the whole Turok Rage
Wars cartridge. They are a group of 30 challenges preset by Rare and increase
in difficulty as you go on. Each
challenge places you in a different scenario in a different level against
different types of simulants. Players
may choose to attempt each challenge by themselves or with the help of up to
three friends (the game keeps track of how many players each challenge was
beaten with). If you choose to attempt a challenge with more than one
player, the simulants that you are facing increase in number and intelligence
accordingly.
The challenges are nothing revolutionary in any way, but are
an entirely well-programmed entity of their own. Most Challenges from 15 and
beyond are, to put it simply, “a challenge.” Some are just plain
difficult, while others require adapting a specific strategy to them. Take
Challenge 15, for example. The game is a “hold the briefcase” match, in
Grid, against a few simulants, with weapons including the devastator (grenade
launcher). For an extended period of time, I was continually getting brutally
clobbered by the sims. My original strategy was to guard one of the two
devastator locations, the one that is in a large room with an upper level
above it. Because the simulants were continually sniping me from above with
the devastator, I assumed it was key to keep them from getting devastators.
However, over time, I realized that the key was to hold the top, since you couldn’t
get sniped at up there (grenades bounce off of the wall, before landing back
at the ground level and exploding there). Most of the later challenges take
strategy adapting such as this, and are a fun challenge as a result of this.
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Challenge 18 is another great challenge involving an extremely well thought
out strategy, that I have beaten the challenge on numerous occasions both by
myself and with a friend. I
guarantee that at first you will lose this challenge, but once you have the
strategy down you can win. I find
it incredibly rewarding to master a strategy in a hard challenge such as 18
and to prove to myself that it wasn't all luck by going back and beating it a
few more times. There are some
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Challenge 18's sweet challenge is a king
of the hill in Villa.
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challenges though that seem to rely far too heavily on luck.
Even in these challenges though, you are minse meat without a good
strategy. The only challenges that I didn’t particularly like were the two
slow-motion challenges, simply because the matches took too long (timed
matches, and clock moves in slow motion too) and action wasn’t frequent
enough. Plus, it seemed that whoever got the first kill in these challenges
tended to dominate the remainder of the match.
Continue to "Combat Simulator
Menus", page 12. It really is a nice, informative page...
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