Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 66

66: Pefect Dark (N64)
Developer: Rare
Year: 2000

In the middle of the great PS1-N64-Saturn war one game came out that redefined how to do an FPS on a console: Goldeneye 007. The game (which, if this isn’t obvious, is going to be higher on this list than PD) revolutionized great shooter gameplay, home deathmatch, and the like. But it got old after a few years. How does one redo such a classic game? Introduce a spiritual successor. So, three years after the release of its best game, Rare pushed out Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64 and we, as a race, have been better for it.

Set in a “not-so-distant-future”, PD takes place in a time when companies are giant and evil (Google?) and trying to kill the president and what have you. Also, there are aliens. Enter Joanna Dark and her shadow group of… developers and researchers. That’s right, the hero of the game is a merc that works for an R&D group. Of course, the war the aliens are waging in space has roots on the planet, too, but Joanna sees to it throughout the game that the war stays where it needs to stay: between the stars. Along the way she’ll discover conspiracies, national threats, and the secrets of bad voice acting from the guy that did Elvis’ voice. The thing about this game is that the story is so good up until its revealed that its about aliens. The inclusion of little grey men really brought the game down, in my opinion. Oh well.

The game looks so much better than Goldeneye, that’s for sure. Textures are smoother, polygon counts are increased, and the maps and models have better resolution. Overall, its a much prettier thing to shoot your way through. Granted, its based upon the Goldeneye engine, which means that engine’s limitations are featured heavily here, too, but its ok. Compare any level of Goldeneye to the Chicago streets level in PD and you’ll notice immediately which one is the better looking game. The sounds are better, too, as is the music. First off, there IS voice acting which, usually, is acceptable. Enemies shout at you, characters have conversations, and Joanna will take part in idle chit-chat banter with Elvis, the game’s primary annoying grey man. PD is also one of the first games ever released to home consoles allowing for surround sound. Neat!

The gameplay, though, is the real heart of this one. Like Goldeneye, the FPS adventure is breathtakingly fun and addictive, offering a variety of missions and levels, each one with different objectives to go through and tackle. Control is tight, the different guns offer better advantages and disadvantages throughout, and the co-op and counter-op modes (counter-op was awesome, as you got to play through the missions with one person being Joanna, the other person being ALL THE BAD GUYS) made for some extra play time with the game’s plot-based content. The multiplayer really shines, here, with great maps, the ability to use “sims” – computer controlled bot-type enemies – and a handful of different modes of play, including standard deathmatch, capture the flag, and team-based options. Fully customizable to the very last detail, the multiplayer segment of the game really was the icing on the cake to an already fantastic game.

All in all, the first N64 game (and one of the only ones I can really remember) to use that damned N64 Expansion Pack (a little red-topped box you slipped into the top of the console that cost an arm and a leg but actually  made PD look pretty damn great, overall. It was cheap, though, as you HAD to have it to even play the solo player levels. Grrrr!) is a real winner, and one of the few 64 games to really showcase how great the console was, in the end. With a recent, and beautiful re-release on XBox Arcade this year, Perfect Dark is still going strong, despite its lackluster prequel game on the 360 early in its life. A straight-up run-and-gun shooter, PD is a game every person should have at least played once, but probably should have owned, too.

Classic Moment:
In the very first level of the game there is a glitch that makes one of the walls “not there” – that is to say, you can walk right through it. You can then scale the outside of the building and shoot enemies from beyond the windows, or you can press on and fall through the rest of the map, landing at the bottom of the building, right next to the door you finish the level by going through. This allows someone to finish the level in less than a minute and videos of it are all over YouTube. While not a moment in the game’s narrative, it is something that happened to me once on accident and I never figured it out until now that it was a widely known glitch. Cool.

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Added January 24, 2017
Two things:
Never finished that remaster;
That “Classic Moment” is lame and dumb. I don’t know why I picked it. I’m going to side with my real favorite moment which is the mission that takes place in the hub world. You’ve been using it to train, learn new skills, get missions, etc. But then suddenly its invaded by the enemies and now its a warzone. It was an awesome twist and gave new context and rewarded previous exploration.