Perfect Dark Zero – Review

I remember a day, many days really, in the Summer of 2000 when I was playing an incredible game named Perfect Dark and wondering to myself, as I was taking out enemies through the mostly well designed levels and listening to the awesome soundtrack, about how Rare was going to top it. This was at a time when the developer was the savior of the Nintendo 64 and it was a good time to be a fan of their work and to look forward to what they had coming out next (at that time, Banjo Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Dinosaur Planet). Rare consistently put out quality game after quality game, so naturally I had high hopes for what would come. I never thought it would come to this.

While I could easily get on the Rare bashing bandwagon, which does have some legitimate baggage, I've been a fan of most of their work since the NES days and before they joined Nintendo, and I still do enjoy their work and own a lot of it. Aside from some thoughtless George Lucas-like tinkering with their past work to bring to a new audience Conker Live and Reloaded, Diddy Kong Racing DS, and a misstep with Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, I've still found some fun in their original efforts since shacking up with Microsoft with Kameo: Elements of Power and Viva Pinata being newer proof they haven't totally lost it. Sadly, I can't say that about them with another return to another past series they have decided to revisit.

Having followed Perfect Dark Zero's development (and from here on I will refer to the game as I do when I search for it on Xbox 360: as just plain "Zero"), I can say without doubt the finished game is one of the most disappointing follow ups I've ever played in my years of gaming. Zero belongs up there (or down there) with the likes of any follow up that forgets where it came from. Many have said that jumping development from GameCube to Xbox to Xbox 360, and from Nintendo to Microsoft, is to blame and that staff changes are to as well. Even rushing to release without being properly tested for bugs, after years and years of rumored development, is said to be a fault. I'm sure those reasons are the case, but after playing another multi-ported game in Kameo (check the back of an old GameCube box – she says "hi") I'm not so forgiving about this game's development hell and there is still something very wrong about the whole mess this game is.

One thing that gets me is that this game didn't need to be rushed to release at launch for the Xbox 360. You see, during the launch some official commercials aired touting the system. Perhaps you recall the "sweat" commercials featuring a sport game that had, well, realistic sweat? In those same ads they also touted a First Person Shooter as one to buy with your new time bomb of a system. Zero? Nope. It was Call of Duty 2. Oh, Zero had its own scarce commercial featuring a look at an aftermath visit from our protagonist Joanna Dark at a dataDyne corporation site, but as a first party offering you would think Microsoft would have been touting it instead of a third party game in plentiful official launch ads.

So, there was Call of Duty 2, and there was Rare's offering of Kameo: Elements of Power at launch. Zero should have been delayed another six months to a year to iron out some bad decisions and to make a better game and have it stand out. What's that delay compared to how long it had been rumored in development (five years)? With this game, it's as if the developers at Rare truly didn't comprehend what made their previous First Person Shooter entries so revolutionary and revered. GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark are hallmarks for First Person Shooters on consoles, and rightly revered as two of the best games of all time. This game, however, is a single dejected bullet casing in a million Halo universe.

The premise with Zero is that it is a prequel to Perfect Dark. We get a look at Joanna Dark before she joined the Carrington Institute a few years prior to the events of Perfect Dark, and what her life entailed during that time being a bounty hunter alongside her father and a co-worker. In this, like in several prequel scenarios, it fails miserably.

First off, Microsoft/Rare decided that we didn't have that many American made action heroes to begin with, so we get another tired one. In Perfect Dark (get used to me saying that), Joanna was English and as such her character took on a tone of coolness that set her apart from other female leads at the time (I even liked her better than Ms. Croft). She was ready with a quip and steady with a gun. Here we have the stupid and unnecessary change to have her with American dialect, giving us another generic American video game character. And, sorry, I don't buy into the justification some have actually made in defense of a "caught" accent. If that were truly the case and her time in England caused her to get one, she would sound as horrible as Madonna and not real English as in Perfect Dark.

Another change about Joanna is that she was sexed up and dumbed down. I greatly admired Nintendo's Rare for having Joanna not presented as another video game bimbo in Perfect Dark, but here she is just wretched. Wearing a cutoff shirt and camo pants, sporting larger breasts, flaming frosted red hair and purple nail polish, our respected agent in Perfect Dark seems to have been a clubbing party ho in her previous life and sports the obvious look one would have when trying not to be recognized by going undercover. I agree with those who have called her a "Bratz reject," but I would go with: a gal who would go down on anyone for a ride home from a club and write about it on her Twit page/"me too" social networking page. And as I recall, MicroRare even went so far to promote her in one of those stupid and crappy men's magazines in Stuff or Maxim or...one of those dumb mags. (No offense to those that like them, it's just I grew my own balls.)

You see, Joanna's representation is just simply too far fetched from what we get in Perfect Dark to believe the short leap she will eventually make into a respectable and top secret agent later on. I mean, how long did it take Angelina Jolie to go from a massive freakshow to a princess beloved by everyone else? Not a few years, that's for sure.

The story we are supposed to believe involving Joanna is just as absurd. I can't tell you the amount of times I stared incredulously at the screen at what I just witnessed. The game is filled with inept voices presenting vapid dialogue, horribly presented characters, and scenes filled with out of place anime-esque action in which one character flies corkscrew out of a window and lands on his feet perfectly. Que: slow-mo! Perfect Dark was no Sci-fi masterpiece, but it knew when to be funny and when to ask us to take it seriously and its characters were better fleshed out. Cassandra DeVries, Trent Easton, Mr. Blond, Dr. Carroll, Daniel Carrington, and Elvis were all pivotal characters in Perfect Dark that added to the story and were memorable.

Here we get laughable attempts at trite characters too cartoonish to take seriously. At the start Jo's father, Jack, and a co-worker/tech expert, Chandra, join her exploits. Chandra and Jack are Jo's comrades and add even more ridiculous and needless plot. Chandra acts as an annoying guide for you through levels never shutting up when you want her to (ready your hearing in having her say "Jo-ah" and "Da-hk" a lot and in speaking in very orgasmic manner), and Jack is an annoying "protect-me" in others. With them along we get to travel the globe and meet even more laughable idiots.

We get a look at corporation dataDyne's CEO, who is a small shut-in Chinese man that has a tube sticking out of the back of his head filling it with green chemicals. Then we get his daughter, Mai Hem (oh, clever Rare) who is laughably sexed up usually wearing ridiculous non-attire and can't be taken seriously. And finally we get a henchman named Killian who is just there to be villain #2. I honestly did not know I defeated said villain #2 when I boss battled him because he and the battle itself was so generic and forgettable that I simply questioned where he went after I finished the game. Yet even traveling the world to have the story be told and characters presented reveals a story that tends to still make little sense.

From what I gathered corporate dataDyne is trying to get their hands on an ancient relic known as the "Graayl" that grants enormous power to its holder. It's really too fantastic for a Sci-fi plot and not as well implemented as stories that tried to implement Sci-fi and fantasy before, especially in the final battle when the Graayl transforms an enemy into a ridiculous giant spiritual super-being. The plot should have remained Sci-fi throughout, and more explained throughout.

For instance, two "brothers" even show up out of nowhere for you to battle. They have no backstory and take on the form of cowboys – yes, I said cowboys – with fitting attire and a stereotypical good 'ol boy accents while country music plays in the background. It's all very "country," absolutely horrible and out of place. I just imagined them as being Toby Keith and that ass who sang "I Got a BBQ Stain On My White T-shirt" as I took them out. Worked for me since Rare didn't. The "brothers" are one example of many times the story falters to nonsense, to no great payout, no great interest. One event that I recall even retcons to make way for this game's "plot." It involves the meeting of the character Dr. Caroll here in this game when Joanna is supposed to meet him first in Perfect Dark. Meeting Dr. Caroll in that game was one of the first interesting moments in the plot, as we find out what he really turned out to be (he's human here). Didn't anyone at Rare remember the line, "How will I recognize him?" when Jo referred to finding him and rescuing him in the first levels of Perfect Dark? I did – and off the top of my head – and I just play their games. Rare even threw in appearances from Daniel Carrington and Jonathan Dark in a pathetic attempt to legitimize this mess as part of the Perfect Dark series.

The terrible story is the only thing really connecting the 13 nicely presented but thrown together levels that really aren't that captivating to play. Set to some really generic and forgettable "rock" music (Grant Kirkhope is not home), we get sent various good looking locations world wide to meet up and tag along with the forgettable cast. We get to travel to locations such as, um, rooftops while protecting Jack. We get to go to China to infiltrate a castle and a nightclub, and ride on a hovercraft in a snowbound level blasting everything possible. Later we venture to a dig site in the South American rain forest, and then infiltrate an oceanic dataDyne platform named "Trinity." Believe me, most of the levels sound more exotic and exciting than they are with some very bland and forgettable level design that can have the game map you a way if you lose your way. You can turn off the mapping, but why when it makes it faster to finish through the crappy design?

I will admit, though, that the "Trinity" platform is by far the best level out of the 13 in the game that actually fits in the Perfect Dark universe, as it's design is brilliant as you make your way from the depths of the lower ocean laboratory up to the landing revealing a huge rocket. If only the rest of the game had more interesting level design such as that. I mean does infiltrating warehouses and crossing a giant bridge sound fun? Two more gems for your consideration if you play. And don't expect any bonus levels such as in Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark – 13 is all you get. Well, make that 12, as one doesn't really count. Another disappointing thing about the levels is what lies within. Microsoft bent Rare over the barrel, willingly, and has allowed for trends to be followed instead of broken by scattering similar elements from Microsoft's most popular FPS within.

Imagine, if you will, being a top executive pinhead at Microsoft Game Studios. You have the current FPS champion under your belt and have acquired one of the most revered FPS IPs in the history of gaming. What do you do? Give gamers both types of gameplay? You allow one type of gameplay featuring more open expansive levels shooting anything that pops out to exist while resurrecting another type that hasn't been seen fully in years featuring corridor crawling espionage with gadgets and guns? Oh, you rational fool. Of course you don't – you make them both play the same. Hooray for popular. We can have lovely checkpoints waiting within that decide where you belong after dieing because the levels are way too long, and we get to have our health recharge when we get shot with the tacked on addition of having armor as well. Beautiful.

And in one of the most shocking gameplay elements presented, I discovered after failing an objective, we are no longer able to proceed if we do fail during some missions. The differing difficulty ratings makes a return, but so what when we have to abort the level and try again. That's right, we can no longer scope out every area and enjoy exploring, testing strategies out and having fun at OUR leisure because we mess up one objective. That's right, we can no longer do what we could do in games developed in 1997 and in 2000 by the same company and some of the same developers.

You can forget about unlocking cheats in the missions as well. Oh, the target time to beat the missions which should have rewarded you with cool unlockables is still there, but apparently the devs left in charge of the feature did as the rest of the development team did and went to lunch as the game was rushed gold. It must have been one hell of a bangers and mash, bubble and squeak feast.

Another popular trait hold over is now Joanna can only pick up two guns at a time switching if you want to wield them all. Oh, but wait! How can Rare screw up that type of set up even more? By having a grenade count as a weapon. Yup; the grenade of your choice takes up a slot of four. It was stupid during the game to have to give up a two slot weapon, such as a SMG, if I wanted to pick up a grenade that requires only one slot and have an empty slot.

Now let me just blog-lite why I find the two gun pickup not very enjoyable since I have mentioned my dislike before in past reviews but never elaborated. And let's leave Halo out of this, because it's fine there; I've accepted it as a part of the series when it made its archaic debut and have no problem there. Where I do have a problem is in this: it's stupid. Again, strategy, my ass. Let's say you run out of ammo or want to use a different gun. You have to run back to where another gun is lying and switch – pick it up and drop a current weapon – instead of pulling it from your hold. My question: what the hell? I mean, why make it a chore to go and get, or find, a gun rather than just whip out the one you want? In this game, a weapons system is introduced. such as one found in the Hitman games, where the gun you finish a mission with you can use and select for another. You essentially collect weapons, and here I found myself having to go looking for a weapon I dropped because I had to switch to use another. Not fun, not "strategic." And why can't I hold two big guns? If I have a rocket launcher is it really going to be diminished by also carrying a sniper rifle? I really believe there should be a compromise for those of us who really don't care for this set up: let us keep what we want and toss what we don't. It's not unheard of that the most powerful weapon can be beat with the skill of a lower one in the right hands. Let me have the choice to prove this, have the guns to prove this.

And to wield these weapons. There's no place to practice, no place to test out the guns such as a placement for the Carrington Institue from Perfect Dark. However, once you realize that the weapons just aren't that much fun to wield it's not such a loss. Those that have been brought back from Perfect Dark have been given a more nerfed quality. The laptop gun for instance is horrible in accuracy and isn't as useful when deployed as a sentry. There is no Farsight equivalent, just a weapon that lets you see through wall and not shoot through them. Oh, and the mines don't stick anymore; they just fall off of whatever you lob them at. To top it off most of the Perfect Dark weapons have had their bullet rate decreased such as the cool, and my fave, CMP150 having a hold of 24 bullets instead of 32 as in Perfect Dark. At least it still sounds the same. The secondary options to the weapons can be cool though, such as having a holographic image of Joanna presented shooting out of the gun. Forget about any camspy being of any use or fun, however, as you hardly use them or any of the new gadgets presented, such as a glorified door opener.

However you do need the weapons for battle and, well, that brings the enemies into play; and, yes, they are terrible. Appearing to have escaped from their action figure holding box, the plastic looking sometimes accountant attired non developer presented enemies run from side to side and scramble about as you try to gun them down. They are just terrible in action, but at least they still retain some form of body hit detection when shot at. It's not as great as in Perfect Dark, as they don't hold their arms and hobble about with blood dripping or splattering. In fact the blood is minimal to "T" rated levels, and you can't even shoot guns out of their hands. Worst of all, the developers decided to give some armor to wear that makes them take several more than necessary rounds to drop in the wearing of helmets. Gone is the fun of playing with your enemy in deciding how you want to take them out, as headshots seem the only way to go here for the helmet-less. I would love to know the rationale from the idiot/idiots who thought that adding this armor with the given ammo output of the weapons would be a good thing.

Just to touch upon the aiming of the weapons at enemies: I don't think it's actually as bad as some have described. If you've played FPSs before it is tolerable if not clunky. What happens is that the gun is "attached" to the screen. Meaning it doesn't move independently like in Perfect Dark: when you move the gun, so goes the screen.

The aftermath of such weaponry doesn't really give a great feeling of use. Most of the environment is rather static even when shot up, and thanks to the wonderful ragdoll physics some enemies can simply stand against walls when killed, or some downed enemies can even begin spazzing out and fly around flailing ridiculously. If you check earlier reviews of the game, you will see that the spirit of Chris Martin was in that version and is still retained in this Platinum Hits version as well. So much for testing...again.

Guess what happened with the multiplayer. Oh, I think you know.

Gimped. The once legendary feature in Perfect Dark is a laughable set up of featureless dreck. Bots that thankfully return are relegated to having A.I. with such descriptions as "Vanilla." Telling not only for them, but for the whole of multiplayer. Yes for bots, crap for everything else. Including not all the characters being available for play. I don't like seeing a million Mai Hems, so where's my little Chinese guy with tube head? It's simply ridiculous to not have all the features that a cartridge game had at the turn of the century and add to them. Five years later equals more of a move to online multiplayer than a cohesive offline/online model. True, I didn't stay long in this feature, but what I did play of it left me sorely disappointed. Online, however, was fun in the few games I played, and I did like the ability to scale the levels for larger battles or more confined ones. Jetpacks and hovercrafts I did not test out, so my disgust lies in wonderful features left to a better game and not implemented for use.

I know my words are plenty, and long overdue, and mostly directed at those who recently became fans of the great Perfect Dark port on Xbox Live, but I still have not conveyed how incredibly let down I feel. Displeased, shocked, saddened, betrayed, horrified, disgusted and left in disbelief, I simply cannot believe what I have experienced. I feel like a conservative after a tour through a museum of natural history. So, the sequel to one of the best games ever made is a sham. How could so many things be left out, be bastardized by the same holders of two of the best FPSs ever made? How could this game be the legacy of GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark? For me, it's as simple as this: Perfect Dark Zero is to Perfect Dark what GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is to GoldenEye 007.

If my words mean anything, I would recommend to you that you leave this terrible game alone and find better FPS fare, but if you play to see for yourself I recommend you find it for rent if you still can. If not, and if you don't belong to the growing number of morons within the community of gaming who equates buying used with stealing (piracy) and who add to the disproportionate amount of stupidity found within, then I believe that buying used should be the way to go. Get the Platinum Hits version as it has some maps from Perfect Dark including some revised from GoldenEye 007 included for one dirt price instead of buying what MicroRare is still ridiculously asking for on the Xbox Live Marketplace on the side.

I know it is common that many will accuse me of that wonderful "whining" and that I expected too much and wanted another Perfect Dark. Well, I did. I wanted another stellar and evolved FPS from Rare and instead got this (hell, I wanted a fun FPS period). My question to the ones who bash Perfect Dark and praise this game (oh, there are those that think this game is better and some go so far as to neglect their future Darwin award winning spawn to make it so that Perfect Dark fans know this "fact") has always been: if this game had what Perfect Dark had in choices and features, it would suck? Those things would make this game terrible? I would argue, of course, it would make the game better, save for the terrible story. There are moments when this game could have been brilliant, but few as they are they are stuck in a terrible game. To those bashers of Perfect Dark, I will humor them and actually go and do what those of us who think this game pales in comparison to the original have been told to go and do by them. No, not that, but instead go and play Perfect Dark, and I will revel in its choices, features and fun. Perfect Dark is the better FPS, the better game, and the better example of how to make a follow up game to a masterpiece.