Played on:
Xbox 360
With the launch of the Xbox 360 comes your usual run of first- and third-party games. Those who have seen console launches over the years know that most of the time, the selection of games on a console's release date is usually slim, and most of the games are boring or just downright lousy. Microsoft has really put some effort into making sure that doesn't happen with the Xbox 360, and one of the main ways they are trying to accomplish this is with Rare, the developer behind many classic console games that Microsoft bought a couple years ago.
Perfect Dark Zero is a prequel to the original PD, an excellent first person shooter on the Nintendo 64. The first game had plenty to live up to, as it was Rare's first FPS to follow the legendary Goldeneye. It included a pretty decent story, plenty of kickass gadgets, and a unique futuristic atmosphere. In the creation of PD0, Rare's done their best to keep these elements together while giving the game a huge boost in visuals and playability. For the most part, they've been very successful.
The first thing you'll notice with PD0 is the graphics. They're just plain awesome, especially if your first impression of it is on a large HDTV. The environments are very detailed and the special effects, which cover just about every surface, bring the game's art and architecture to life. While the very first mission, which has you training in an underwater facility, may not be so visually impressive, the rest of the game does a much better job of this. The outdoor environments really shine in this game, and the gameplay is usually tailored to take advantage of these larger areas.
You may or may not have heard that PD0 doesn't have a jump button. For some reason, this is a complete deal-breaker for some gamers, but hear me out before you decide you'll never play this game. You don't really need a jump button here, because any low wall that you'd otherwise jump over, well, you can climb over it anyway just by walking forwards towards the wall. And otherwise, jumping just makes online gaming silly - just look at the effects of "bunny-hopping" in online games on the PC. Honestly, after I spent 20 minutes in the multiplayer mode in PD0, I didn't miss the jump button in the slightest bit.
Instead of jumping, the A button allows you to get cover behind a wall or pillar. This switches the camera to a third-person mode and lets you do things like reload in relative safety behind cover, and you can pop out to shoot and expose less of yourself. It's vitally important in many places during the single player campaign, and is very handy in the multiplayer modes as well.
As you go through PD0, you'll uncover a storyline that has the game's main character, Joanna Dark, going after a crime lord who's stolen some new technology. Along the way, Joanna's father and fellow operative is captured and she'll have to go after him. The single player campaign will last you somewhere around ten to twelve hours, has unlockable weapons to use in there, multiple difficulties, and can be played in cooperative mode both over a split screen on the same console or over Xbox Live!.
But all those features are useless if the campaign's no fun. Luckily, PD0 keeps the action going by giving you a waypoint (marked by a path along the ground that pops up) to wherever you need to go next. This way, the larger levels don't wind up becoming a huge bore as you search for the next door. The problem comes with some absolutely hideous dialogue and an overall story that's very disconnected. It feels much more like a series of separate missions rather than an overarcing story, and this is only made obvious by the fact that every time you finish a level, it dumps you back out to the game's menu in order to move on to the next mission. While the coop action certainly makes the campaign much more fun, the story just doesn't hold up to what we've been getting used to from PC action games like Half-Life 2 and F.E.A.R.
Firefights are made interesting by the huge arsenal of weapons available to both the player and enemies. We're talking over two dozen weapons here, folks, and all of them have secondary (and some even tertiary) fire modes and/or attachments to stick on. This massive arsenal that you can employ really makesthis game special. Everything from dual-wielded pistols, to a whole set of different submachine guns, to melee weapons, and even some big fat heavy weaponry are all included, and this doesn't even count the vehicles you can also drive. Whether you play in single player or in multiplayer modes, you will not have any problem finding a gun you really like. The only issue I have with the weapons in MP modes is that you can only select five to be available on the map, and only one starting weapon can be set up to start. These limitations do help balance the online play by quite a bit, but it'd be very nice if they were lifted some time in the future.
Most of the weapons look beautiful and sound even better - the sounds of gunfire are modelled in 3D and will sound different based on where it's coming from and how that sound is getting to you. If you hear a submachine gun rattling out bullets around a wall, it will sound very different when you go around that wall and find the guy waiting for you. Likewise, explosions are much more dull-sounding from a distance, but will be not only louder but sharper as explosions happen closer and closer to your character.
PD0 uses many of the new special effects that the Xbox 360's powerful graphics processor can do. My favorite effect has got to be parallax mapping - this can take a simple, two-dimensional texture, like a brick wall, and literally make it 3D. With a couple of "layers" of totally transparent overlays, the game can make the bricks stand out from the mortar and they look correct as you see the texture from different angles and get up close to inspect. This effect also looks brilliant on the cobblestone streets of the Desert multiplayer map.
