Review  Perfect Dark
- "What's New In Multiplayer"
- By Mike Schneider,
-by Andrew Weatherton
, 6.30.00
FALLING/JUMPING OFF OF LEDGES:
In Goldeneye you could not fall or jump off of any ledges
even if there wasn’t something in your way (with some small exceptions such
as coming out of the vents in the facility).
In Perfect Dark this is no longer a problem, if there isn’t something
blocking you from jumping then you can go ahead and jump off of a ledge.
In many cases you can jump off of a ledge and land on a platform below
to save time or to try and evade a pursuer.
This newfound ability effectively speeds up the action and gives people
running away from some one a better chance of
| being able to loose their
opponents. Don’t be afraid
though, you won’t find yourself accidentally falling off of ledges all that
often. A small barrier to prevent
people from being able to jump off guards some drop offs.
In some cases though, you can actually fall to your death.
This isn’t as much of a nuisance as you may think.
There are only about three places that you can actually fall to your
death and so you have to watch your step in there and be careful to not be
shot off by someone else. Rare
added these pits to make the levels unique and they don’t get in the way as
I thought they would, they actually add strategy.
I feel that most players will find the ability to jump off of ledges
makes the game feel less constraining and |
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One of the rare "pits of death",
this one being in the G5 Building.
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helps speed things up, it also makes
for more variation and a raised level of excitement in matches knowing that
someone could just hop down from above you at any moment
WEAPONS IN MULTIPLAYER
Goldeneye’s weapons were great, both in their variation and
in their overall James Bond feel. How
could Rare make guns that gave players more of a giddy sense of superiority or
secret agent stealth than the grenade launcher or the silenced pp7?
Rare decided to not only make futuristic type weapons that still felt
worldly but also alien type guns which are loaded using “orb osmosis”.
Some players find Perfect Dark’s guns to be a little too futuristic,
however I think they fit the bill perfectly.
There is such a wide array of guns to choose from and a good player can
kill another player using any gun if they know how to use it right.
You still get that power rush when you pick up those sweet guns like
the Callisto NTG, and you can still find that secret agent feel if you use the
Falcon (silencer).
But enough about the descriptions of the guns, you’ve
already read about them in the “Weaponry” section right?
Of course you have. What
makes them fun in a multiplayer battle? Well,
there have been a few changes to the overall weapons mantra.
This time around it’s not considered cheating if you are armed with
more
Using 2 weapons at once in multiplayer is
great. |
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than one gun, in fact it’s something you should try to do.
After all, two Maulers are better then one.
Not all guns let you carry more than one; just the smaller pistol type
guns allow you to do this. In
order to get double guns you must pick up two of that same gun, it’s a great
concept that helps even out the pistols and the automatics.
The next minor change is a welcome one, and it deals with the guns and
ammo boxes. There is now an option that allows you to make these items glow, making easier to find them |
and see them from a distance. Also,
they tend to reappear significantly quicker then they did in Goldeneye. In only a few seconds the gun or shield you just took will
likely reappear. Both of these
are welcome changes to the goodies that fill Perfect Dark’s arenas.
Another modification is the ability to use certain gadgets in
multiplayer arenas. Besides
weapons there are five items that you may choose to go into a slot in the
custom weapons selection window. Those
items are the X-ray Scanner, the Cloaking Device, the Combat Boost, the
Shield, and Disabled. The Shield
is the body armor from Goldeneye, and now you can choose whether or not it
appears, and how often. Disabled
speaks for itself, but the three others are newbies they are items that aid
you in killing your foe, but do not actually do any damage.
The X-ray Scanner allows you to see through walls and thus see your
enemy before they can see you. The
Cloaking Device enables players to become completely invisible; there is a
weakness though, if you fire your weapon or are hit you will become visible
for a split second. The Combat
Boost slows down the action so that you can concentrate on getting headshots
(I think this option is dumb, but it’s not like you have to use it).
The folks at Rare did bless us with one extremely large
innovation in the weapons department; secondary functions.
Secondary Functions are ultimately the cream in the twinkie when it
comes to Perfect Dark’s weapons. They are activated by holding down “B”
for about a second. A secondary
function is usually a more powerful form of a weapon that uses more ammo then
the primary function would. For
example you can charge up some guns so that their initial blast is more
powerful, or you could transform the Super Dragon from an automatic weapon
into a grenade launcher. Each gun
has it’s own unique secondary function, you can use the Falcon to “pistol
whip” your opponent, you can crouch using the Sniper
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A laptop gun in its secondary function.
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Rifle, and you can even
throw the Dragon out in proximity self-destruct mode so that the next person
to pick it up is blown to organic confetti.
Hearing that explosion
and then seeing “killed so and so” has got
to be one of the best feelings in the world, no seriously. Some guns become threat detectors in the secondary mode thus
effectively warning you about when things like proximity mines are around.
If you use the Laptop gun in secondary mode you can throw it out as a
sentry turret and rack up some cheap and easy kills.
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Two additional innovations are the reloading animations and
extra sticky mines. Extra sticky
mines? Yes, now you can actually
stick mines to other players! So
you can put a remote mine on someone, wait a few seconds to allow yourself
time to get away, and then blow them up.
While the reloading animations are a daring thing to add, they have the
possibility of becoming annoying. Every
gun has it’s own unique reloading animations, each of which is really cool
to watch, but there is a meaning behind the reloading.
These animations help to balance the weapons out. For example a gun may
seem to be very dominant over another. However,
it may be impeded by a long reload animation and a short clip.
At first this is annoying, but it helps prevent any one weapon from
dominating all of the others.
UNARMED, BUT DON’T COUNT ME OUT
Rare has managed to make the fist a formidable weapon of
sorts. No longer is it the least
useful gun in the game (well, perhaps it was better than the Klobb).
If you manage to punch someone when you are disarmed you will make
their screen blurry, punch them enough and they’ll be about as mobile as a
drunken Nintendork staffer. But that’s not all; the secondary mode of unarmed is
“disarm”. Yes, you can
actually run up to someone with a great gun and disarm them.
It is the ultimate humiliation if you actually manage to steel
someone’s gun and kill them with it. Let
the trash talking begin.
DEATH ANIMATIONS
This is where I was surprised by Rare, they didn’t really
do anything to make any really cool death animations like the enemies in the
solo missions. Your character
will just make a final grunt (what no death pleads) and fall in virtually the
same way every time. The
dead player’s screen slowly fades red (blood doesn’t trickle down ala
Goldeneye) and some music key plays something that sounds like it’s ripped
straight out of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.
Though it’s just not the same as the James Bond cue from Goldeneye
it’s not exactly going to kill your gaming experience.
RADAR
If you weren’t a fan of the radar in Goldeneye you would
have to earn the “No Radar (Multi)” cheat by beating the Frigate on Secret
Agent in under 4:30, this is no longer the case. Now you may choose to have radar off either for only specific
players or for everyone (except for the simulants who, as I mentioned early,
seem to always know exactly where you are).
If you are a radar fan though (like me) then you will be glad to know
that it has been slightly improved. Now
the size of the opponent’s dot on your radar depends on whether or not they
are on the same floor as you. If
they are on a different floor they the dot is more of a half circle, if they
are on the same floor then it is a small circle.
This is helpful so that you know whether someone is around the corner
or on a different floor, but it is fairly difficult to distinguish the two
dots.
THE TRIPLE DUCK
Have you ever been hiding from one of your
friends and they just snapped a look at your screen to find where you were?
This is no longer a problem if you perform a third duck, after you are
ducked as low as you can go, then your screen will darken so that the other
players won’t know where you are just by glancing at your screen.
This is just another one of those nifty features that lets you know
that Rare added every little detail they could think of.
It is useful at times though, such as a two player “Hold the
Briefcase” battle.
Continue on for some in-depth looks at the many ways the multiplayer allows
for Customization, on
page 15.
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