Review: Perfect Dark Zero (360)

Let's face it, Halo sold the Xbox. How many people would have passed the console by if Master Chief wasn't there to show people how to do high-action FPS games? So, with the Xbox 360 due, and Halo 3 overdue, Microsoft needed another killer FPS title to sell its new console. What they got instead was Perfect Dark Zero, a prequel to a popular N64 game, itself a spiritual sequel to the system's excellent Goldeneye. Unfortunately, it seems that whatever made those games so enjoyable is missing in action from Ms. Dark's latest (well, technically earliest) adventure.

The game starts promisingly enough, with players being introduced to a younger Joanna Dark in a training exercise. Graphically, Perfect Dark Zero is one of the more impressive Xbox 360 launch titles, particularly in animation, as everything runs incredibly smoothly. However, it's not long after this initial impression that things start to look... wrong. Every character looks excessively rubbery, as if they're all wearing latex masks and look quite out of place in the rather gritty environments, imagine a load of blow up dolls were given AK-47s and you get the general idea. This "blow up doll" analogy is also applicable to enemy death animations, as well as their laughable artificial intelligence: whenever a soldier expires, instead of say, dropping to the floor immediately due to essential bodily functions and brain activity ceasing, they sort of stay up for a few seconds as if in a daze, before slowly flopping to the ground. It's as if the punctures left by your bullets are literally letting air slowly seep out before they drop to the ground in a misshapen heap.

The arsenal with which you destroy the inflatable enemies is nothing spectacular; the idea being that they are futuristic versions of existing weapons. But if it looks, sounds, and fires like an M16, it's an M16, no matter what the manual says; and aside from a few a couple of exceptions you stumble across, the equipment you use is standard FPS fair. What Rare have tried to do is give each weapon a secondary (and, in some cases, tertiary) feature. These range from the bog standard, and rather pointless, silencer attachments, to X-Ray vision; and in truth these can be rather useful in the game's later levels. One of the SMG weapons' secondary features is an 'enemy identifier' which allows you to see the outline of enemies even if they are behind cover. This is very useful in one of the later levels set in a jungle where almost every foe is hidden by foliage. Without that weapon the level becomes annoying and slow as you fire precious ammunition into empty space in an attempt to destroy your unseen assailants... who were feet away from you and slightly to the left. Add to the fact it's incredibly easy to get lost in this level and you have a recipe for a frustration.

Sadly, it is rather easy to spend a fair amount of time wandering around levels wondering exactly where you're supposed to go. It's not especially hard to figure out eventually but you will end up trying one too many doors before you find the right route. To combat this, Rare has implemented a system that, depending on the difficulty level being played, basically sticks a bright neon arrow on the floor if you spend more than a minute without moving in the right direction. While helpful, it does show that Rare's level design skills require artificial hand-holding to get through them.

While the single player game leaves much to be desired, things definitely improve in two player co-operative mode (either local or via Xbox Live); however only a handful of the game's thirteen levels have been designed with the co-op mode in mind, such as the hugely enjoyable Rooftops level, where players must help each other to progress over the multi-tiered environment before battling a heavily armed dropship at its climax. The remainder of the levels, however, are far less inventive in providing fun for two players. The other multiplayer modes such as Deathmatch, CTF and so forth are enjoyable with up to 32 other players, but they've all been done before and the multiplayer levels aren't particularly clever or inspiring.

Perfect Dark Zero is far from being the 360's launch equivalent of Halo. While it can be enjoyable at first, and certainly has some impressive graphics, it soon begins to reveal itself to be little more than an average title which only improves when played with other people. If you don't have Xbox Live, give this title a miss. If you do have Xbox Live there are plenty of other more enjoyable multiplayer titles available for the 360.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Garry Webber