LogFAQs > #963188640

Perfect Dark Zero (360)

One thing I can say about myself is that I'm someone who is pretty susceptible to hype...in a negative way. If you tell me something is amazing, the best thing of all time, a must-play/watch/listen, I'll probably walk away from it disappointed. Contrariwise, tell me to avoid something like the plague because it's bad, I'll probably walk away from it feeling pretty happy, having had a good time.

Unfortunately for this game, that wasn't the case this time.

Where do I even begin? Perfect Dark Zero is the prequel to Perfect Dark, a N64 game. This immediately creates a somewhat puzzling paradox, as a lot of Perfect Dark Zero actually feels more advanced than Perfect Dark (the locales maybe being the sole exception) yet the gameplay feels more dated than the original's. Joanna in this game is treated more like an actual secret agent; the game wants you to be somewhat stealthy, take out cameras, and gives you objectives that follow in this trend, like killing a guard to take his radio to signal the enemies to turn off their communication.

While this sounds like a neat enough idea, there are zero gameplay systems that support stealth. Like in the previous example, if you kill said enemy, once his corpse is spotted by another enemy, they omnisciently target you, even if you are nowhere in sight. Hide the body you say? That's just not possible. You essentially need to know exactly what you're doing to get anything done. There's also no help from the HUD either; in the first mission you're supposed to not engage any of the enemies and just take pictures of two specific guards; these guards are not marked on a map or in-game, and the second of these guards in a different area from where you find the first one, but it makes that you aren't exactly sure if you can or should go that way because of enemy placements and the lack of direction given. In the original Perfect Dark, all the weapons also had a pretty clear indication of having a secondary-fire feature, and swapping to it generally gave the name and thus an indication of what it actually did. No such thing exists in PDZ; if you remember weapons having two modes of fire, enjoy some trial-and-error to figure it out.

This makes the gameplay in general very frustrating, because aside from 'stealth' missions, there's also some escort and timed missions sprinkled in to really annoy you. And the worst part? There's two missions in the game where you are unshackled and allowed to play it like an actual FPS, and they're far and away the most fun you'll have in this game. That's actually saying a lot, considering some of the gun controls are less than ideal (honestly, zooming into the scope is generally more of a nightmare than anything else).

On a technical level, the game is a mixed bag; the graphics are pretty good for a 2005 game, but they're marred by some shocking character design; Joanna and Mai Hem especially are your typical early noughties sexpots. I wasn't too impressed by the soundtrack, but the main (menu) theme did get stuck in my head easily, and not in annoying way.

The less said about the story, the better. Honestly, it jumps all over the places and characters take decisions to drive the plot forward, rather than things happening because it fits the characters and the world.