The Digest: A Nintendo 64 classic makes its way to XBLA and retains all the wonderful qualities that made it a landmark title back in 2000. While the things that defined it as an innovative, landmark game a decade ago are now commonplace and even outdated, the game retains its charm and value as an extremely entertaining FPS with a super hot main character and tons of spirit.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2010
PUBLISHER: Xbox LIVE Arcade
DEVELOPER: Rareware
ESRB RATING: “M” for Mature
GENRE: FPS
PRICE: 800 MS Points ($10)

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:
Many years ago, a game called Goldeneye 007 defined what multiplayer gaming should be like. It was the product of Rare, a quiet yet incredibly successful development team that produced tons of hits. A few years then passed, and gamers waited for another title that had the multiplayer awesomeness of Goldeneye to come along. In 2000, such a game was born. It featured a 23 year-old female protagonist named Joanna Dark – sexy, confident, skilled and naive – and was styled a lot like Goldeneye sans-Bond. The game was Perfect Dark. Aside from having an excellent single player story, great graphics (that, at the time, required the Nintendo 64′s expansion pack gizmo to handle), it featured a multiplayer game full of ingenious bots that held certain personalities and fighting styles. It was epic – and now, ten years later, it’s back for a new era of gamers to enjoy via Xbox Live. And even better – now you don’t have to play it with that horrible Nintendo 64 controller!

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• Players: 1-4
• Multiplayer versus and 1-2 player co-op
• Rendered in greater definition and detail and sporting a silkier framerate than ever before
• Full HD, 1080p at 60 frames per second!
• All the original game features are included plus new Xbox LIVE ones.

Perfect Dark takes you on a quest as a British agent uncovering an alien conspiracy. The trouble stems from extra terrestrials to the NSA to British corporations, and your long legs, thigh-cut cocktail dresses and fashionable hair are sent to figure it all out. After all, you are Joanna Dark – the perfect human agent/spy/killing machine – hence your moniker, Perfect Dark. Traveling through tons of exotic locations from beachfront villas to outer space and utilizing tons of super cool gadgets and weapons, you rock the socks off of anyone in your way.

There is more content in this arcade release than about 95% of the other titles available. With 17 solo missions that each have multiple objectives (more on harder difficulties), a co-op mode and multiplayer, you’ll keep yourself busy. Playing on Agent mode makes the enemies inanely stupid and gives you less objectives per map, while the higher difficulties ramp up the challenge. When I said there are a lot of gadgets and weapons, I meant it. There are so many gadgets that you often have to use them to complete your goals – though sometimes it’s so random you won’t even know it. Seriously, missions can be confusing – lucky for you, it’s a 10 year-old game and strategy guides are aplenty. As for the weapon stock, it ranges from realistic to sci-fi, including normal things like shotguns and magnums, and non-normal things like laptop guns, alien rippers and maulers.

Yes. Laptop guns. Laptop guns that can be deployed as sentry units. God bless.

Co-op mode allows you to play the story with a friend, while counter-operative mode allows a friend to play as a guard while you play as Joanna. Real cool. Mutliplayer mode boasts those lovable Sim characters that made the multiplayer so special back in the day. Each with their own traits and fighting styles, you can tailor your battles with them in place of real friends. Try FistSim – all he does is slap and blind you.

The game itself is beautiful and is a superbly smooth, presentable port of the original cartridge. While there is some hilarity to be found in the super jagged, square peaks of the snow-covered Alaskan hillside and the purple marble textured walls in the Carrington Institute, these things are bits of nostalgic charm more than they are problems. Sure, people’s mouths don’t move when they talk. Sure, all the enemies look the same. Sure, the voice acting is unbelievably bad. Sure, Joanna doesn’t know how to jump. It all just paints a picture of the evolution of the genre over the past 10 years that led to the epic FPS games to which we are now accustomed. Years ago, this game set precedents and helped define what the genre would be – and that’s why fans won’t be let down at all by this rebirth.

Memories of playing each level ten years ago came flooding back as I moved through, letting out an endless stream of “ooh, I remember that!” as I maneuvered the world. The control structure is great, the game plays well and the glitches from the port are few and far between – and never bad enough that they get in the way of gameplay.

Conclusion: Perfect Dark is a super satisfying visit to a classic game. There is so much to love about this package, its fantastic solo game, its excellent multiplayer and its very high replay value. Paying $15 or $20 for this title would have been totally reasonable, but at only 800MSP it goes without saying that it should be part of everyone’s XBLA collection. It’s one of those games that will continue to age but will never get old.

Single Player: 9/10 | Multi-Player: 9/10