2000 Rareware - Nintendo - N64
Storyline
The storyline of this game is quite futuristic and involves creatures of other worlds. From the dawn of man the Earth has been watched by other races. Some of them were only waiting for a time to introduce themselves while others had other, less friendly, plans.
When the company dataDyne all of a sudden gets a rapid burst in its technology developement Daniel Carrington, at the Carrington Institute, suspects that they have somehow gotten in contact with species of other planets.
Whether that's justified or not he decides to send the newly approved agent Joanna Dark to the dataDyne HQ. Joanna Dark, whose code name is Perfect Dark, did really well on the tests and is told to be one of the best agents ever.
The storyline starts of on the Earth only, with missions based in buildings and cities. But it takes a great turn when the presence of alien species is detected. Two other races than humans are involved in this game, the evil skedars and the friendly mayians (or however it's spelled. I'm too lazy to turn on my N64 right now). After the quite drastic turn of events the game turns into a intergalactic war or something. The missions are spread out all over the universe (sort of). Some places will still take place on Earth, but in more futuristic environments, and some missions will take place far away from our planet.
Gameplay
The controls in this game are damn near perfect. You move around with the joystick, look up and down and strife to the left and right using the C-buttons. Use the B-button to reload and open doors, or hold it to enable the secondary function of the weapon (just like in Turok: Rage Wars). The Z-button to fire/throw/use. Press the A button to switch weapons or hold it to get a menu of all of your weapons (again, like in the Turok games). While in this menu you can also press Z to get to a function menu, and if you press Z again you will get to a menu where you can give out commands to the simulants on your team in multiplayer. To aim you just hold R-button. You can also stand in three positions, by holding R and pressing C-up or C-down you can sit down (the first press makes you duck, and if you press C-down again you will crouch even lower). The only thing that can be annoying is the colour of the haircross. It's green (a popular colour in futuristic games) and is hard to spot against bright backgrounds. A better colour would've been red.
The missions in this game are very different from each other and to beat them all you really have to be skilled in all ways possible. Some people say it's too hard (way more difficult than GoldenEye was), but I say it's good. So far I've only beaten the game on the easiest level, and some stages on more difficult levels. But I just don't have the patience that is needed. If I die once I won't try again until maybe weeks later, and some stages on normal or hard I've only actually played once and never tried again. Haha. But if you're a good player (which I consider myself as) and can replay a level several times (which I'm bad at), then you can beat this game after a lot of practice.
If you don't like playing by yourself you can also play missions together with someone else, either a human or a simulant controlled by the CPU, or just play the multiplayer levels together with up to three other humans and up to eight simulants. And that's the best part of this game. I have never ever played a multiplayer game better than this one. Fuck all online PC-shit. This rules! CounterStrike and Quake can all go to hell.
If you appreciate good gaming, then this is the ultimate multi player game. Well . . . not ultimate I hope, 'cause I hope it will be even more fun in the sequal to the GameCube (seven years later: Which ended up being shit and released for the XBox!). When playing in "advanced" multiplayer mode you can choose between several levels (a few taken from GoldenEye) and a lot of weapons. There are some pre-arranged settings, but you can also use custom where you choose six weapons by yourself.
Multiplayer also holds several different types of games to play: normal combat, king of the hill, pop a cap, hacker, catch the briefcase, and more. For all games you can also use simulants. Up to eight are availiable, and they can be set to act in very different ways. E.g. there is the VengeSim who mainly attacks the person who last defeated him or the JudgeSim who goes for the person in the lead at the moment.
If you don't like any of these ways to play you can also play Counter-Operative Games. You can choose any of the missions and one of the players will be Joanna Dark (and try to complete the missions, obviously) while the other one is a random guard on the stage. If he gets killed or commits suicide he will get to play as a new guard. This can be extremely fun.
NOTE! If you want all the modes to work you need an expansion pack!
Graphics
The graphics in this game are, just as in any other Rare-game, great. The characters are mostly originally designed (even if the concept of small aliens with big heads and black eyes have been used before), and there are a lot of them. The missions have very unique styles and are very different from each other. There is also a nice amount of interaction to be had with the environment. E.g., with a single shot you can break a light which prevents it from shining in your eyes as you're looking in its direction. And you can move couches and such around to use as protection from enemy fire.
However, it can occasionally get a bit laggy when you play one of the most detailed missions in two player mode when there are a lot of enemies on the screen at once. But that doesn't really bother me, 'cause a two player game that is so much fun should not be taken away 'cause it might lag in one or two missions. And of course when you play 4-player combat with eight Sims you're bound to get a slow game. But just decrease the number of sims and you'll do fine. This is however nothing that makes the game bad, it's just something that Rare can fix for the sequal. 'Cause this is still the best multiplayer game I have ever played, and I would rather be able to make the decision on how many sims I want in game at once and suffer the lag if I so please, than for them to just disable it.
Sound
The music fits well into the surroundings and all mission-themes exists in two versions. One slow and one hectic. When you play multiplayer games you can choose music on your own. Choose a hectic song and just about everyone will run around and fire at everything that moves. Choose a slow song and most people will take it slow and easy, and not try to run into fights without having a clue where the enemies are. That shows how well produced the music for this game actually is.
As for the sound effects. They are just as everything else in this game: great. A nice effect I got a lot of morbid fun out of is if you shoot an enemy's throat you can actually hear him/her suffocate from the blood flowing into the lungs. Mwaha!
Replayability
Haha. If you ever beat this game the best missions can be replayed an infinite amount of times. I will never grow tired of the Carrington Villa, both in the missions (single- and multiplayer) and as a multiplayer level. And of you like shoot 'em ups you can play the multiplayer mode for months without growing tired of it. And if you want your character to reach the Level 1 title you HAVE to play for at least 12 days and 12 hours.
Originality
We have seen futuristic FPS games before. But none of them have been close to the greatness of this game. This game has original missions with original objectives. Awesome secondary functions for the the weapons (well . . . Not all the functions are awesome, unless you're the pistol-whipping kind of guy/girl), even if some of them are a bit over powered. Well . . . I wish I didn't have to repeat myself all the time, but it's great.
Overall
The best multiplayer game ever made. Fuck online gaming, this rules.
And everyone has a great challenge in this game. There's not a single human being that can say that all of the missions are too easy. And the better you play, the more awards you get.
Ratings
Storyline: 8/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Replayability: 10/10
Originality: 9/10
Overall: 10/10
//Benny
