Better Than Bond?? Yes!

Goldeneye sticks in the hearts of many as the greatest First Person Shooter ever, Goldeneye is some of Rareware's best work ever. The idea was genius, just take a worn out first person shooter mold, add tons of depth to it, and add a sort of spy/espionage feel to the game. This turned out to be a killer combo, Goldeneye was one of the fastest selling N64 games ever, but when has a company ever released a million seller and not made a sequel? Very few, so Rare began working hard at a sequel to Goldeneye 007 that they hoped would outsell Goldeneye 007. But this would prove to be a difficult task, I mean it must have been extremely difficult to think of new ideas to create a worthy successor to one of the greatest games ever made, but Rare succeeded in my opinion, and even surpassed my expectations with their successor to Goldeneye 007: Perfect Dark.

The greatest aspect of Goldeneye 007 was the multiplayer mode, so why the would Rare leave it out of this game? They didn't, in fact they even added a whole lot more depth to it. Now instead of just one multiplayer mode, Rare has added 3 different modes that Multiple players can play together.

Co-Op Mode
Co-Op mode is exactly what everyone has been wishing for, it allows 2 players to tackle the missions together. This feature was not in Goldeneye 007, and was welcomed in Perfect Dark. Basically player 1 takes control of the star of the game Joanna Dark, while player 2 takes the part of Joanna's sister. One thing I wish Rare could have added was the addition of Joanna's sister to the story, when playing in Co-Op it totally leaves her out of all the cinemas and everything from the story. This is my second favorite multiplayer mode in the game.

Combat Simulator
Combat simulator is the funnest multiplayer mode in the whole game. 1-4 players can play together against each other, or even against a set number of bots. You can set up to 8 bots in the game, but I recommend only about 6. In this mode you can set everything: Bots, Weapons, Level, Music and anything esle you can think of. A really live addition to the game is the fact that you can have bots on your team, and set their personality. For example you can set a certain bot on your team to follow you, or to chase a particular enemy. There are a lot more things you can set your team to do, but I won't list them all here.

Counter-Op Mode
Basically the same thing as Co-Op mode except for one major difference: one player plays as Joanna while the other plays as one of Joanna's enemies. Joanna's goal is to successfully complete the mission without dying, while the enemies mission is to kill Joanna before she can complete all her objectives. This mode is just for messing around, and I didn't think it was as fun as the other modes.

Solo Missions
The solo missions are the same as they were in Goldeneye 007, basically you control Joanna and must complete objectives to finish a mission. I have spent the most time with this mode, and I have realized that it is fun, but not nearly as fun as Combat Simulator.

There are a ton of weapons in this game, far more than there was in Goldeneye 007. And to add depth to the game each weapon has a secondary function. For instance if you have a superdragon rapid firing gun you can hold down the B button for a second or two and Joanna will flip it over and it will automatically become a grenade launcher. I really like this feature as it adds a lot more to Multiplayer.

The bots in this game are another great addition. In combat simulator you can set up to 8 bots, and you can pick the bots character and type. There are several types of bots, my personal favorites are the fistsim and the rocketsim.

My Ratings

Graphics 5/5
The graphis are astounding, well for the N64 anyways. If this game had come out for the PlayStation 2 or the DreamCast I would have rated this lower. The polygon count is high, and the textures may have a little blur to them, but it didn't bug me in the least. The lighting effects are a true spectacle though, whenever a gun is shot, or a rocket explodes the room lights up for about half a second. A cool mode to try this out with is perfect darkness, everythign is dark and you must fire your weapon to see, it really shows off the brilliant lighting effects in this game. One thing I wish had been added was more character animations, the game still doesn't show you when another character punches or throws a mine. It doesn't take from the experience though.

I like the way Rare designed each character in the game, they fit their personalities. My favorite character is Mr. Blonde, he looks pretty menacing and is a huge bulky character that is fun to play with in combat simulator. I hate Elvis though, he was unoriginal in design, and I also just hate his voice!

Story 3/5
I didn't like the story a whole lot, and I thought that it moved along way to fast. One second your recuing scientists, and the next you are fighting off aliens. I think that Rare should have put more details into it, and it shouldn't have been based one aliens. I rated it so low because I didn't like it, this is one case where Bond does it better.

Warning: This Paragraph May Contain Spoilers
Your mission should you choose to accept it is to assasinate the king of the skedar aliens. Sounds kinda strange, huh? Well that's not all, you have to rescue the president, kill the president's clone yada yada yada.

Control 5/5
The control scheme has been taken straight out of Goldeneye 007, and has been added to. You still use C left and C right to strafe, the joystick still moves your character, adn Z still fires. Everything else that I didn't mention is just the same, but there is one major addition: if you hold down the B button the function of your weapon will change. Big whoopie!

Sound 4/5
The music to this game is great, it helps capture the secret agent essence. A lot of the music is reminiscent to Goldeneye, but with a lot more depth. All sounds from this game are highly detailed, when Joanna runs you can even hear her footsteps.

The sound effects are awesome too, every gunshot, explosion, and scream sounds just right. Joanna's footsteps sound differently as she runs/walks on different terrain, which I thought was a nice feature. The voice overs are surprisingly clear for the N64, I could understand everything that was said.

MultiPlayer 5/5
The Mutliplayer mode of the game is reason enough to spend your money on this title. It adds tons and tons of replay value to the game. I already described the multiplayer modes early in this review so I won't describe them again.

Total: 22/25
Overall Grade = B+

I recommend this game to anyone, especially someone that has a lot of people to play with. This game can keep you entertained for months!