[Review] Perfect Dark Is A Perfect Adaptation (For Better And For Worse)

Nostalgia is a hell of an emotion.  When Perfect Dark for the Xbox Live Arcade was announced at E3 ’09, I was absolutely giddy.  You see, back when Nintendo 64 ruled the roost, I was one of the few people that legitimately liked Perfect Dark more than GoldenEye.  In fact, it happened to be my favorite game on the N64.  So, one of my favorite childhood games adapted for the big, bad Xbox 360 must be a match made in heaven, right?

Well, the answer is “Sort of”.  As it seems is the case with almost everything, the things that you held so dearly as a child almost never quite live up to your sky-high memories and expectations.  It didn’t take long at all for Perfect Dark to remind me why I loved it so much, and at the same time, how far we’ve come in gaming.

When you load up the game, the first thing that you’ll probably notice is how outdated the menus look.  I realize that the developers wanted to capture the essence of the original and bring it to the next-gen consoles, but I honestly think that the menus could have been polished up a bit in order to resonate with newer gamers.  I realize that this sounds like I’m nit-picking, but it really is the things that we take for granted now that stick out so blatantly.

[autoviewer=405]

If there’s been one main selling point to this game, it’s definitely been the 1080p graphics and the 60 frames/second movement.  It took all of three seconds to realize why this was the case.  Joanna moves (or rather, glides) incredibly fluidly, and everything moves super-smoothly.  On top of this, the 1080p graphics add a new shine to the game while still allowing it to feel like a semi-retro title.  It all works very well, and 4JStudios was wise to make these changes a focal point of the port.

The solo and co-op campaigns were hands-down the most fun and interesting aspects of Perfect Dark, and that still holds true today.  Upon starting the campaign, the layout of the levels and the objectives suddenly rushed back to me, and I knew exactly what to do.  The only problem with this is that for those who have never played the game before, older games used to be pretty unforgiving.  Specifically, there’s little to no help explaining how to achieve your objectives or where they can be found.  A lot of time can be spent wandering around trying to figure out what exactly what to do.  Also, we’ve been spoiled as of late in regards to health systems (i.e. get away from the action long enough to recover).  In Perfect Dark, you have a health bar that never recovers (although you can find shields).  Furthermore, if you die, there are no checkpoints; you have to start the level over.  It’s systems like this that make you realize how ‘hardcore’ games of yesteryear used to be, and how fluffed up a lot of them are now.

[autoviewer=389]

Perfect Dark’s control scheme is, for lack of a better word, unusual.  The controls feel rather unintuitive and take some getting used to.  Also, it seems crazy now, but Perfect Dark had a setup where you had to toggle between the primary and secondary functions of your weapon.  Again, a far cry from modern shooters, and it takes some training to get used to.  To be fair, there are three different control setups that you can pick from – Classic (Perfect Dark), Spartan (Halo), and Duty Calls (Call of Duty), but I had to keep it real and stick with Classic.

There were a few other gameplay nuisances that I encountered; the biggest one being the aiming system.  Perfect Dark has an auto-aim system that can make the game entirely too easy.  I’m assuming this is because the N64 didn’t lend itself as well to shooters as the dual-stick consoles of today do.  However, if the auto-aim doesn’t lock onto your target immediately, you’re going to have to dodge some bullets to take down your opponent.  Additionally, the scoped aiming system is incredibly difficult.  While zooming in on your target, your character stays planted where she is standing.  This means that tracking your enemy isn’t much of an option, and renders sniping almost impossible.

For all of the slightly negative things that I have to say about Perfect Dark, make no mistake, I love the XBLA port.  In my opinion, besides the beefed up frame rate and graphics, 4J Studios made an absolutely perfect adaption of Perfect Dark.  Everything about the game feels exactly like it did on the Nintendo 64.  The game’s problems aren’t anyone’s fault per se.   It’s just that that’s how games were back in 2000; they were very different than they are in 2010.  However, at the bargain-bin price of $10, you can’t really go wrong with picking up Perfect Dark.  If nothing else, it’s well worth the trip down Nostalgia Lane.