Perfect Dark: One of the Best Video Games Ever Made

Gameplay

One of the genres that doesn't come across so well these days is cyberpunk. It has just gotten a good deal less imaginative than it once was, relying on leaning on the way the modern world looks without much else to say or do. Where it was once a possible look into where the modern world might head, it ended up becoming a flat and muted dystopian present without much in the way of the blood and dirt cyberpunk needs to justify itself.

But it didn't used to be this way.

Take Perfect Dark, for instance. A video game from the year 2000 on the Nintendo 64 at the end of the console's lifespan, it remains one of developer Rare's highlights even two decades removed from its original release. This is a game that nailed the cyberpunk feel of a familiar yet alien future where things aren't quite right. Even twenty years later the game still looks futuristic enough to be a look into our future.

However, it is the gameplay that makes it what it is. Even on the N64 it was ahead of its time, and remains so now even as the genre has since sunken to having the ambition of a doorknob. What makes it one of the best games ever made is its ambitious nature.

Finding Perfect Dark today is not so easy, though.

After its original release it didn't get much in the way of attention. The game has since been re-released by Microsoft on both the Xbox 360 and in Rare Replay for the Xbox One which fixes the framerate, gets rid of the fog and blur, and otherwise leaves the core game alone. It no longer needs the N64 expansion pak just to access game modes. If only more companies would learn to upgrade their early 3D games this way.

But I'm getting off the trail. What is it that makes Perfect Dark special? For that we need to go back to the genre's start.

In 1993, another of the best games ever made was released. DOOM more or less took over PC gaming, helping to turn it into a force for creativity at a time when consoles and the arcades were unstoppable. It was a genre more or less based on playing out the final shootout from Death Wish 3. Being that action movies were still big in the early '90s, the genre exploded in popularity. This led to the rise of the First Person Shooter, which soon became one of the staple video game genres in mere years. The 1990s were their creative peak, and Perfect Dark came at the tail end of this high, before their dip a generation later and their creative bottoming out right after that.

In a first person shooter, your goal is to navigate a 3D space to either find something, or reach an exit, and you use your guns to blast your way through anything that stands in your way. It's a very simple formula that relies heavily on level design and shooting mechanics to make it work. Without those, the genre just doesn't work.

However, by 2000 there were already many wrinkles in the genre from the pseudo-RPG of Strife to the cinematic scope of Duke Nukem 3D. Even though they changed things up, they never lost the focus of the genre in question. What all these games had in common was a heavy emphasis on exploring large levels filled with tough enemies to hold the player at bay. This is what makes the genre stand out from the crowd.

Eventually the FPS would lose its way by the time Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare came out and sucked up all the oxygen in the room. Every game had to be like that: highly scripted hallways with little in the way of player interaction with the environment.

But before the first HD generation the focus was on hardcore gameplay and testing the player. Rare's shooters for the N64 were no different. Where now one complains of consoles "ruining" the genre, Perfect Dark had none of the worst concessions modern developers put in their games. You could carry an arsenal of weapons and gadgets, you could get lost in the levels, and there was no hand-holding whatsoever. It stacks up to the best.

The game deserves its reputation as a classic FPS.

From the remaster

In GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64, Rare added a superspy-twist to the proceedings by adding in a good bit of stealth, and accomplishing objectives (which change depending on difficulty level), as well as a cinematic presentation around the levels. Perfect Dark followed up on this by having voiced cutscenes between levels, bigger stages, a more robust multiplayer (with bots!), and far more inventive weapons and gadgets, with a bonkers story. It was a proper sequel to GoldenEye, and outdid that mega-seller in every way that counted.

Perfect Dark is a first person shooter starring super-spy Joanna Dark, as she gets embroiled in a convoluted plot involving corporate conspiracy that ends up spiraling into dealing with the existence of aliens. You sneak around highrise skyscrapers, hidden factories, cyberpunk backstreets, and alien ships. It's completely over the top and insane, but what is important is that is a followup to the phenomenally popular GoldenEye 007 for the N64.

Perfect Dark pushes beyond even that.

For those unaware, GoldenEye 007 is a game based on the movie of the same name in the James Bond superspy franchise. In that game you are tasked with being James Bond and working out missions from, and based on, the movie of the same name. You go through challenging stages swarming with enemies and obscure objectives that test your mettle. It goes without saying that the game was a massive hit. No other game at the time was as good as allowing the player to play a character as well as GoldenEye did. This then set the James Bond franchise to have a long-running video game series of its own, but none by Rare.

However, while I enjoyed GoldenEye at the time, and still think its campaign is very well designed, I think Perfect Dark is the far superior game. It is an unpopular opinion, but it's one I will stick by. I don't rate anything on nostalgia, but how well it succeeds. Even without its re-release, Perfect Dark was just an improvement over GoldenEye all the way around.

Without the license surrounding it, Rare had to be creative and come up with its own world and characters, and they did it in spades. I'll get to just why that is, in a moment. Suffice to say, they went all out and created a game many are still waiting for a proper sequel even now. There is a very, very good reason for that.

This is still Rare's best game even years later, in my eyes.

The music is perfect, too

First, I have to say that Perfect Dark is very ambitious.

If we take a look at the gadgets and weapons, we have an alien sniper rifle that fires through walls, a gun that makes the victim sick, a rifle that turns into a proximity mine when thrown, a crossbow, throwing knives, different types of mines,  grenades, and my personal favorite, a laptop that turns into a gun that then turns into a turret when thrown against a wall. You can also fistfight and knock fools senseless, if you want. Not to mention that every single weapon has an alternate firing mode, technically doubling the amount of weapons that can be used. Modern FPS games wish they had as much variety.

Then there are the many different modes. I can't remember the last time an FPS offered so much to gamers. It might have been the last Timesplitters game--which was developed by ex-Rare guys. There is much for both single player and multiplayer.

Not only is there a co-op mode for two players, but there is also a counter-op mode. In this one the second players takes control of weaker enemies and must take the player down before they complete the mission. When the second player dies he respawns as another bad guy on the map, thereby evening the odds. For a Nintendo 64 game to do this is awe-inspiring on its own, but that it works quite well as a mode is even more impressive.

This is in addition to the 4 player split-screen multiplayer that also allows all manners of bots to compete. You have a plethora of maps from parking garages, to alien temples, to Area 51 sites to cyberpunk factories. Also included are some of the best maps from GoldenEye. On the N64 the slowdown of all this content allowed the game to chug, but the remake fixes all this to make it smooth no matter what you wish to play or do. With friends and bots, the sky is the limit in Perfect Dark. GoldenEye does not even come close.

In addition to that, there are many additions to single player beyond the 9 base missions (split into 17 levels) including bonus missions once the game is completed.

Of course, playing the missions on higher difficulties also changes and adds objectives, thereby opening up the maps more and altering the experience a good deal.

You can wander the Carrington Institute from the main menu which is a hub before those became more standard for FPSes. You also unlock classic weapons from GoldenEye (renamed, of course) by competing and getting good scores on the firing range in said hub, and wander around Joanna's headquarters for fun and for Easter eggs.

The game is stuffed with things to find and do.

The first stage

All this is buoyed by the fact that the core gameplay just feels smooth to just play. Joanna slides around catlike, making sneaking around fun. Her playful attitude makes her a likeable protagonist that you want to hang around with as she goes on adventures

The AI is good enough, and silly enough, to know how to react to the player's actions from rolling out of the way of fire, to running for alarms, to having dramatic deaths with cheesy one-liners that make you feel unstoppable and like a superspy. Every shot you fire has weight, as they always either prevent an enemy from firing back, cause them to drop their own weapons, or die in an over the top manner. You always enjoy shooting in this game.

The atmosphere of Perfect Dark is perfect cyberpunk from immaculately clean office buildings and offices, to chrome-plated factories, to dirty and decaying backstreets and hidden underground tunnels. The incredible synth music sells it, too. The cheesy voice-acting gives the entire affair a b-movie feel without having to rely on the hallway and scripted design of overly serious modern shooters. If you play this one you will be guaranteed an experience like no other.

It really is a shame Rare only made a small handful of shooters. Aside from the Timesplitters series a few years later, which is not quite the same as these, nobody made games like they did at their peak. It is tough to nail ambition and enjoyability in equal measures, but they did it here.

However, I wouldn't recommend playing the game on an N64 today, just as I wouldn't for most 3D games of that era. The 32-bit console generation's 3D games have aged horribly and are really tough to play today. They all suffern from some combination of tons of slowdown, blur, fog, or sluggish control. Perfect Dark is no exception to this.

I would instead recommend finding the remake 4J Studios made for the Xbox 360, re-released in Rare Replay for the Xbox One. As said before, it is the remake all 3D games from that era should have: leave the core gameplay alone and simply polish and eliminate performance issues. This is the one you want to play, and is the way the original would have been without hardware limitations.

Because as it is, Perfect Dark is an excellent first person shooter, and in my opinion is one of the best. It's actually in my top ten.

In an age of brown gray hyper-serious overly-scripted sleeping pill shooters, Perfect Dark has only gotten better with the passage of time. We have plenty of "Boomer shooters" in 2020 that take inspiration from classics like DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem 3D, to create new experiences from their base, but nothing yet that has reached for the eccentric heights of Perfect Dark. In other words, there isn't anything like it.

But if you want the fun of being a superspy cyberpunk dealing with evil corporations, cheesy one-liners, and strange aliens named Elvis, then don't pass it by.

Games like Perfect Dark validate the existence of video games as a medium. Fun is fun, and they don't come much better than this.

Check out my own dark stories. Heroes, magic, and monsters, in the magic city!