Review  Perfect Dark
- Missions
- By Mike Schneider,
-by Andrew Weatherton
, 6.30.00
More
than likely, if you are reading this, then you have had the pleasure of
playing through Goldeneye’s immersive and action-packed one player. If this
is you (and who wouldn't this be?), then you'll have no problem jumping right
into the Agent setting of Perfect Dark. The missions take you through a large
variety of environments, and although it all feels very similar to Goldeneye,
we cannot complain about this fact. Levels, improving off of the already
well-designed levels in Goldeneye, are put together with care and special
attention to detail. But, even
the greatest of the Goldeneye veterans will have an extremely hard time
jumping into the Perfect Agent difficulty setting.
| Perfect Dark has a much more complex feeling in its hardest setting
than Goldeneye ever did. In fact,
on Perfect Agent some levels double in size compared to what they were on the
Agent level, this is due to doors being unlocked.
There are even missions where Joanna takes on different roles depending
on which difficulty you play on. For
example, in a level called “The Villa” Joanna begins her mission on a
small bluff above Daniel Carrington’s home located on the water.
Joanna’s first objective is to pick off the enemies guarding a
hostage negotiator, all of whom are down on a dock.
When playing the level on Perfect Agent difficulty, the opening cinema
changes a bit and Joanna becomes that negotiator and must fight off the guards
on her own. It’s this kind of
stuff that makes games great. These
types of new intricacies came as a good thing in our opinion, but some may
find this change to be detrimental to the gaming experience.
We would argue against this, Perfect Dark has a much more involved
feeling than Goldeneye did, and this is a move towards a better all-around
gaming experience.
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Villa on Agent.
Villa on Perfect Agent.
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Other games attempting to emulate Goldeneye’s success have often failed in
one major area, and that is game flow. It
was often difficult to know where to go next or what to do next.
Rare has managed to emulate themselves perfectly (yes that may sound
redundant but it’s true). Though
Perfect Dark’s missions are considerably larger and more complex than
Goldeneye’s were, it still manages to give players the sense that they know
exactly what they’re doing in most cases. In many instances, you'll get
verbal cues from Dr. Carrington, or Joanna making comments herself, alerting
you that you are closing in on what needs to be done. "Be careful with
that trigger finger, Joanna, you're closing in on our agent," is one
example of Dr. Carrington letting you know that you are close to completing
the objective of locating the double-agent. For this reason, as well as
generally more interesting objectives than Goldeneye, the level layout in
Perfect Dark works well. Levels seem to, in general, feel bigger and more
complex than Goldeneye, and problems rarely arise as a result of this (unlike
Turok 2's massive levels that seemed to meander and have no particular flow).
As it is
though, there were some levels that had too much of a maze or labyrinth feel
to them, which did detract from the overall level design. In Goldeneye, I seem
to remember getting stuck in the game because I was getting killed, where as,
in Perfect Dark, for whatever the reason, I’d primarily get stuck in the
game because I did not know where to go for an objective. In my opinion, more
could have been done to prevent this from occurring. Being on Air Force one,
there’s simply too many rooms and passage ways, and it took far too long to
locate the President or the lowest level within the plane. Pelagic II or
Attack Ship missions are two other examples that come to mind of levels that
try to be far more complex than necessary. I realize that Rare was trying to
make these missions “bigger and better” than Perfect Dark, but at times,
the flow that Goldeneye had was lost in Perfect Dark.
However,
as demonstrated in the Crash Site level, the level design is just sheer
brilliance in other situations. Try going through that level a few times, and
you’ll discover that between the intricately scattered tunnels, open
environments, and caves, that you can travel many different routes through the
level, while still being able to win the mission. Fantastic.
Another
element that the one-player levels have improved on over Goldeneye is the AI
of the computer-controlled enemies. Goldeneye had slick AI, some of the best
that a game had seen at the time, but Perfect Dark expands upon GE’s
ten-fold. One nuance for Joanna, that you will undoubtedly both love and hate
is that when you are firing at enemies from a distance, when they aren’t
shooting at you, they have the innate ability to hop from side to side, which
results in a lot of missed shots by you. Get too close to them, and they roll
to the nearest cover available, and aren’t afraid of punching or kicking you
if you are within range. In addition, it is stunning just how large the
enemies vocabulary is. We’ll discuss this more in the sound section of the
review, but the voices in Perfect Dark add so much to the mood and help to
convey a sensational sense of realism. The following is an example of what may
occur in a situation where Joanna raids a room with three guards inside of it.
Guard
one: “What the? Hey, intruder! Sound
the alarm!”
You
quickly shoot the guard in the leg as he runs to the alarm; he grabs his
injured leg and limps very realistically.
Guard
one: “I’m hit! Medic!!”
Guard
two: “Someone hit her!”
Guard
three, after missing you a few times: “Damn she’s good.”
You
shoot him in the face.
Guard
three “You bitch! Why me?”
Guard
two looks at his fallen comrade, “He was my best friend!”
Guard
two runs at you, guns blazing, trying to exact revenge on his friend’s
killer…you.
You
shoot him in the arm.
Guard
two grabs his arm and quickly rolls behind a sofa.
You run
behind the sofa to kill him, but are quickly disarmed by the desperate enemy.
You are
now dizzy and have to get a new gun, but because you were low on health to
begin with, the guard has already killed you before you are able to recover.
The
enemies in Perfect Dark are simply on the cutting edge of Artificial
intelligence, and they are so interesting to play against that you could spend
hours on the same level just messing around with them.
It’s like playing Goldeneye for the first time all over again, but
better.
Another
renovation from Goldeneye is the refined clipping. Clipping was a problem in Goldeneye; enemy guns would stick
through doors allowing you to shoot them, and when you killed an enemy they
would often end up having half of their bodies go through a wall.
Thankfully, this has changed in Perfect Dark, and it’s amazing what
such a simple revision can do to enhance the gameplay experience.
Now if you kill a guard who falls back on a chair, his body will
actually fold accordingly rather than just fall through it.
Or, if you shoot a sniper who is located on a roof he may stumble and
fall to the ground, (screaming appropriately of course).
Another thing you will notice about the enemies is that they don’t
disappear nearly as quickly as they did in Goldeneye, in fact, some never
disappear.
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The blood is definitely more realistic and
gruesome this time around.
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There
are times when the new improvements on clipping cause amazing occurrences that
are so realistic that it’s like you are watching an action movie.
The following is an illustration of this.
I was playing on a level called “The Villa” in Perfect Agent.
I came to a door with a window next to it and noticed that there was an
enemy standing behind the door. I
decided to try and shoot him through the window to avoid confronting him face
to face. After shooting him I
could hear him slump forward and moan. I
looked at the door, and to my amazement saw blood seeping under it. After opening the door, the already dead guard fell onto the
ground in front of me. I was so awe-stricken by this occurrence that I
didn’t even
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see the guard who killed me.
It just amazed me when I thought of all the things that had to change
with Goldeneye just to make this happen.
Had this been Goldeneye, I would have shot the guard’s gun because it
was sticking through the door, and he would have fallen forward through the
door with a red paintball looking mark on his chest.
At first
it may seem that Perfect Dark’s plot is rather shallow. It isn’t that Perfect Dark has a weak storyline, since the
story turns out to be cool when you get access to the “background” and
“The Story” files in the Carrington Institute. But rather, the problem
with it lies in the fact that too many elements of the plotline are not made
readily available when you are initially attempting the mission. For example,
in one mission you are disguised as a stewardess aboard Air Force 1, and a
Skedar UFO attaches itself to the plane in an attempt to kidnap the president.
However, the reason for this isn't discovered until you read through “The
Story” file that is opened after beating the game through on agent. PD has a
great story; unfortunately it's just not made readily available to the player.
More could have been explained in the cinemas, or even in the mission
briefings because, sadly, there will probably be people that will unknowingly
not bother reading the story file.
Perfect Dark’s background
is very important to understanding the game’s plot.
It is something that Rare should have made more accessible to the
player, but failed to do so. If
you have not yet played through Perfect Dark, or if you haven’t had the
pleasure of reading the background file yet we recommend you do so.
Continue onto Perfect
Dark's Background, page three...
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