Perfect Dark

Leave it to the guys at Rare to devise a use for the most useless weapon in first-person shooters: the fist. "Your opponents' vision becomes blurry when you punch them," Rare's Mark Edmonds, Perfect Dark's producer, told us. "It makes it hard for them to aim, and there's a gun in the game that has the same effect."

Sure enough, your perspective goes goofy--all wavy and distorted by the same blur effect seen in Metal Gear Solid--when opponents coldcock your noggin in Perfect Dark's multiplayer mode, which we played extensively at E3. And Rare has crammed this mucho-anticipated pseudo-sequel to GoldenEye 007 with plenty of equally snazzy innovations.

Wanna hear another? "You can shoot out the lights in some of the deathmatch levels," Edmonds continued, "and then use your night vision to see people and shoot them." Nifty. And we haven't even mentioned the computer-controlled "simulant" allies and enemies, the complex mission objectives, the game's Blade Rurrnennsplred cinematic feel or the ability to map your face onto multiplayer characters with the Game Boy Camera.

We'll get to all that later. First, some background. When Nintendo and Rare missed out on the Tomorrow Never Dies license, they built GoldenEye's sequel around a slick new character. Her name's Joanna Dark, she's a rookie secret agent with a Dorothy Hamill hairdo, and she wields twice as many weapons as oP 007. Ms. Dark's adventure-set in dreary 2023--begins when she's assigned to rescue a scientist from the secretive dataDyne Corporation. She learns dataDyne is working with aliens called the Skeedar, who are at war with the Grays, that infamous race of big-eyed aliens who are your allies in the game. One thing leads to another, Dark learns of an intergalactic war, Earth's caught in the middle, yada, yada, yada. The gripping plot twists through plenty of in-game cinemas, while the levels are set everywhere from a future-shocked Chicago to secret airbases to an alien crash site at the bottom of the Pacific.

If you can't tell from the screenshots, these environments are stunning. And according to Nintendo game guru Ken Lobb, Perfect Dark's supreme visuals (and enhanced gameplay) are the result of Rare's major overhaul of GoldenEye's code. "Basically, Rare was like, 'We know what we like about the GoldenEye engine,"' Lobb told Videogames.com. "Let's throw everything else away.' Well, they didn't like very much." As a result, level architecture is more complex, with staircases everywhere, more varied and detailed textures and latticed structures. Gee-wiz graphical tricks abound, including real-time lighting, particle effects, fancy HUD displays, lens flare, steam and falling rain.

Even enemy animation will be beefed up with scads of new motion-captured death throes. Perfect Dark will also support Nintendo's Expansion Pak to punch visual quality up a few more notches, and it'll sound as good as it looks thanks to Rare's immersive Surround and Acoustic Shadowing Technology.

But will it play as good as it looks? Let's put it this way--Perfect Dark was one of the few games at E3 that our editor returned to play again and again. And again. And just one more time. And again. Everything in the single-player game has been enhanced. Enemy Al is at the genius level compared to GoldenEye's bad guys. Perfect Dark's baddies will reportedly work as a team, they'll seek cover, they'll assess your abilities and take immediate action. You'll need to rely on stealth if you wanna walk, breathe and whup ass for long.

Here's the real kicker: You'll have Al guys on your side, too. During your adventure, you'll find computer-controlled buddies who--much like Natalya in GoldenEye's jungle stage, but smarter-wili fight alongside you and respond to formation commands issued via D-pad. They'll provide cover, scout the area, even act as shields from enemy fire. (Oh, and you can access these simulants in multiplayer mode, but more on that later.)

As in 007's adventure, each of Perfect Dark's 18-plus single-player stages will offer three levels of difficulty, with harder difficulties doling out more mission objectives. But Nintendo says the objectives will be more intellectually challenging this time around. So, instead of simply dealing with tougher enemies, Perfect Dark players will face some tricky puzzles at the higher difficulties, or they can stick with the more action-oriented easy mode. Sample mission objectives include planting mines to obliterate security cameras, convincing a scientist to grant access to a computer system, and nabbing a data-storage necklace from a reluctant dataDyne staff member.

Interaction with the environment has also been ramped up. Joanna Dark can push, pull, carry and throw objects. She can shoot and damage even frivolous background details--such as the hovercars that cruise by the skyscraper windows. Like Bond, Dark will stumble across vehicles, including a speedy hoverbike.

Right, but what about the really fun hardware. You want gadgets? Perfect Dark packs more than enough neato 21st-century gizmos. You want guns? Here's where the game kicks into overkill: Joanna Dark will find at least 40 weapons. She'll grip GoldenEye favorites like the .357 magnum. She'll discover massive alien superguns. She'll clear the room with the Devastator, a grenade launcher with a funky not-of-this-Earth shell. She'll wield the Dragon, a high-powered rocket launcher similar to the one in GoldenEye. Then there's the camper-slaying Farsight Xj-220, which...well, just go read the sidebar on this X-raying raygun. And like Jimmy Bond, Ms. Dark can carry two of the same weapon, one in each hand, for two-fisted blasting.

Perfect Dark's one-player game will keep a grin on your face for a long time, sure, but what about multiplayer, which gave GoldenEye its two-years-and-we're-still-playing longevity? Fear not. Rare knows what you want. "A lot of people bought GoldenEye for the multiplayer," Edmonds said, "so we really wanted to concentrate on making better weapons and better-designed multiplayer levels. And we wanted the bots."

That's right--for the first time in any console shooter (although a few upcoming games will pack them, too), you can battle computer-controlled bots in multiplayer mode. All you gotta do is choose how many simulants you want in the arena. You'll be able to go solo against as many as seven simulants (and Rare said they may bump that number to 10). Or you can have four human players in the level with four bots. The amount of multiplayer-mode combinations will be nearly endless. Pit your character against your friends' characters, you and your friends against the bots, you and a few bots versus your friends and their bots, and so on and so on.

If there's a downside to Perfect Dark's multiplayer, it's that there's no cooperative mode for the regular one-player game. But that's one of the reasons Rare added bots to multiplayer, so players could team up against simulants. Multiplayer modes similar to capture the flag and team battle will be implemented too, of course, and Rare's toying with the idea of adding some mission elements. For example, Edmonds told us players may have to fight as a team to reach and access a computer under simulant guard.

As Edmonds said, Rare has put a lot more thought into the multiplayer levels this time around. It shows. Three levels were playable at E3, and two of them were familiar: the Temple and Complex stages from the original GoldenEye (more classic GoldenEye levels are expected to pop up in Perfect Dark, as well). All the deathmatch levels are more detailed, multi-leveled and crammed with staircases. New to the mix are moving platforms and bottomless pits. Unlike in GoldenEye, your character can now walk off ledges. One false step near a pit and you'll plunge to your death. Despite the more complex environments, Perfect Dark maintains the same four-player frame-rate seen in GoldenEye. So, while things get choppy once in a while, it always remains playable.

We should know; we certainly played the game enough at E3. We left the show a little overwhelmed by the game's potential and Rare's knack for packing innovations into a crowded, ho-hum genre. How does the U.K.-based company do it? It's not like the Perfect Dark team is particularly huge. Only about 12 programmers and artists have worked on the game for the past two years, ever since they finished GoldenEye. Ultimately, Rare's games turn out right because--to the chagrin of impatient gamers--they take their sweet time. "Every developer dreams of working on a game until it's finished," Edmonds told us. "We get to do that, and it works out really well for us."

With games as good as Perfect Dark and the rest of Rare's lineup, it works out just fine for N64 owners, too.

Multiplayer

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Perfect Dark is the best multiplayer game on any current system. And the funky thing isn't even finished yet! If you think GoldenEye has a wealth of deathmatch options, sheesh...forget about it! Perfect Dark is going to blow it away. You can customize your character, you can pick what specific weapons you want on the level--you can even play on old GoldenEye stages! Too bad the frame-rate hasn't changed much.

One Player

Although we played it on a crowded show floor, the quality of PD's single-player game still shined. Requiring stealthier tactics than the majority of Golden Eye's levels, it manages to capture the tension of a spy-thriller as effectively as its predecessor. The new weapons and tactics are awesome. Sniping someone with the wrist-mounted cross-bow is particularly satisfying, as is blasting out windows with the high-powered weapons.

Visuals

GoldenEye was good, but the engine's dated. That's why Perfect Dark was a nice surprise at E3. Environmental detail like rain, lens flare, light sourcing and sophisticated architecture help give the levels a noir-esque edge. Bullet holes, shell casings and blood on walls made me feel the impact of every hit (or miss). Most impressive was the use of different view styles (transparencies and infrared) to portray different gadgets.

Face Mapping

Perfect Dark's face-mappin' feature is one of gaming's great innovations. It's easy; it lets you decorate your head with varied beards, glasses, etc.; and--better still--you can save an army of custom yous to the Controller Pak and unleash 'em in a friend's copy of the game. Sure, the faces are hard to see in the heat of four-player battle-unless everyone stands in a circle and stares at each other--but when was the last time you starred in a game?

All that glitters isn't necessarily gold!

"Perfect Dark is probably one of the few real adult games around!"

You want us to say that Perfect Dark is the best game ever don't you? You want to be told that it is as perfect as the adjective in the title and let's face it you're gonna buy it anyway because of its fantastic big-brother version on the N64! However – and this is not easy for us to say – Perfect Dark on the GBC is not the complete classic we were hoping for!

First, the basics. Perfect Dark GBC is not a sequel but a prequel to the N64 version. A badly training Joanna Dark is in the final stages of her training before she receives her first assignment. Your job, if you decide to accept it, is to guide her through those few training missions so that she can graduate and then tackle her first explosive mission! As you'll discover, this mission is not the walk in the park she expected and it sets the scene for the disturbing secret plans of the dataDyne Corporation that continues in the N64 version!

Give Me Hope, Joanna!

WARNING: This game is not for those with short fuses! We all expected big things from Perfect Dark GBC and on the scale of size it scores rather highly, but the main problem we have with it is with the difficulty of the game. It is not a game for the younger Game Boy Color audiences as this title requires patience, skill, thought and a calm temperament. If you think we are exaggerating then please, play it for yourself! This is not the type of game that requires you to simply run and shoot. You must master all of the skills that you pick up in the training levels if you are to get anywhere in this game!

The most important of these skills is most definitely your ability to attack the bad guys in stealth mode. This means you must sneak up slowly behind your enemy while he/she is not looking and then place a cold, hard bullet in the back of their head! So keep patting in this game depends heavily on your ability to move around the levels without being noticed.

Perfick Lark?

The main negative elements of this game mostly stem from this dilemma. Each level/mission is rather big and if you die you only get one crack at it; you are sent right back to the start and have to do it all over again. This becomes rather annoying when you have to start the level for the sixty-fourth time, with that level's end always seemingly out of reach. Reaching that all elusive end point is made all the more difficult when ammunition is scarce and energy paks are few and far between. Most, if not all, of these items are found on the bodies of the dead but not every body has anything of value. This teaches you to make every shot count and cover your ass against enemy fire (you feel each shot too, thanks to the rumble pak built into the cart!).

When The Going Gets Tough!

As the final whistle of this review approaches, Perfect Dark emerges as one of the few real adult games for the Game Boy Color. The challenge is huge and as you progress through each level, more bonuses open up to you. There are secret photos to print out, secrets revealed, more multiplayer options made available and also cheats to be accessed through a Transfer Pak for the N64 game! Overall, it is a truly smart package with an excellent variety of levels. You can become a sniper, sail down river and drive a truck, guns blazing all the way! Unfortunately, if you are looking for something simplistic, you'd better look elsewhere. At times Perfect Dark can be harder to wade through than a sumo wrestler in quicksand and dedication to your goal is your only driving force. A huge step forward for the Game Boy Color, but one which should carry a sticker reading: "Buyer Beware! Serious Challenge on your hands!"

The year is 2023. The place? The Carrington Institute, an ultra-secret organisation dedicated to fighting evil and preserving the safety of the free world. You are Joanna Dark, code-named Perfect – the Institute's newest agent, master of advanced weapons, unarmed combat and all-manner of futuristic technological gadgetry. The game? It could only be: Perfect Dark. Yes, at long last the waiting is over! Well the waiting is over for import owners anyway... PAL N64 users have still got another month or so before they get their hands on the game that everyone has been hanging on for since who knows when. But the fact remains that finally the game is finished. No more shifting the release dates to incorporate some amazing new feature – and to be totally honest it's hard to see how Rare could cram anything else into this game without totally overloading the poor old N64 anyway!

Perfect Gameplay

It's probably fair to say that if you own an N64 and read an N64 games mag then by now you'll be familiar with the basic plot for the game. For those who aren't though: you play Joanna Dark – the deadliest and cutest secret agent the world has ever seen (that's probably sexist – but she is cute plus wait till you hear her voice!) and you have been sent to investigate the multinational data Dyne Corporation. This shadowy business entity has long been suspected of many rather antisocial activities but so far hasn't been caught out. Now intelligence information received indicates that a top scientist is being held against his will by dataDyne at their top security headquarters. Which means that your first task is to get into the building and get the guy out. Thus begins a whirlwind adventure which is going to take you around the entire globe and quite possibly beyond it!

You begin your mission not on the roof of the dataDyne building but in an office inside the Carrington Institute, logged onto a computer terminal. This terminal basically replaces the front-end options screens from Goldeneye. Everything that could have been done to make Perfect Dark as immersive as possible has been, and so rather than reducing the sense of being a top secret agent with stand-alone menus and other screens, everything is modelled as if you were really working for an undercover agency.

This means that if you want to you can log off the computer and take a wander around the Carrington building, but we'll come to that in a moment. Pretty-much everything else in the game is accessed from the terminal and has been presented in such a way that it adds to the overall atmosphere of the game. Multiplayer mode for example is listed as agency training – after all, it makes sense that as an elite operative you'd pit your wits against fellow agents from time to time to hone your skills now, doesn't it?

Perfect Graphics

If you can resist the temptation to leap straight into the main game then it's worth your while logging out of the computer – as mentioned above – and taking a walk around the building. The first person you're likely to meet is your boss, a bearded Scottish fellow called Daniel Carrington, founder of the Carrington Institute who gives you orders and advice during missions and sounds remarkably like Sean Connery! He leads you to the ops room where techs are huddled at computer terminals. Access a free terminal and you can pull up the latest intelligence information that the Institute has on file. This info is updated as you progress through the game and so the ops room is always a good place to visit if you want to be suitably prepared for what lies ahead. Again, you can if you wish simply leap straight into the game but if you can hold yourself back then there are other places still to visit. The weapons facility downstairs contains a firing range where you learn the functions of a variety of high-tech weapons and get used to them in a series of challenges. You might also notice that in the cabinets on the walls in this area are a number of guns that might be familiar from a certain other Rare game involving a well-known secret agent...

Perfect Controls

Keep exploring the building to find the VR training area. In this Star Trek-esque holodeck-style room you can attempt a series of training exercises which familiarise you with the way Joanna moves and teach you a few tricks which should come in handy on your missions. Rare explained that it was basically for those who had never played Goldeneye to get up to speed, so we of course jumped straight to the last training level and lasted... oh, about three seconds!

Your Co-operation Is Mandatory!

Okay... what would have been better than playing the missions in Goldeneye? Answer: playing them with a friend! If you've got two pads and at least one fellow N64 enthusiast then now you get the chance to take on corporate giant dataDyne with another agent to back you up. This means that you can work together in a variety of different ways – one running the mission objectives while the other provides cover, both agents sharing the mission objectives between them, or one person running the mission while the other simply causes as much chaos as possible to distract the enemy forces! As with Goldeneye, you can't play the later missions until you've unlocked the early ones, the good news though is that you can unlock them in either solo or co-operative mode and can basically switch between the two as you go (although not during the actual missions themselves).

A Gadget For Every Occasion

When you come to this security door and the terminal won't allow you access, what do you do? You use a gadget of course! Select your uplink device from your inventory, run it over the offending computer and before you can say "astonishing Q" in a broad Scottish accent the door is unlocked! For beginners the training may be, but that doesn't make it easy! Last place to visit is the hangars section on the lowest level of the Institute. Here you can access information on a range of different vehicles and even take a few of them for a test-drive. Although we've said that it's optional to explore the Institute if you do decide just to jump straight into the game then you may find yourself regretting it at a later date because the Institute doesn't always remain the haven of safety and tranquillity that it is in the beginning and knowledge of the layout can come in extremely handy later on... Rare have done it again!

Once you've familiarised yourself with the inner workings of the Carrington Institute it's time to start your missions. As with Goldeneye you can only select one mission to begin with and as you complete that you unlock the next, then the next and so on. Goldeneye similarities don't end there either because whereas when playing as Bond you could opt to play on Agent, Secret Agent and Double-O Agent difficulty, in Perfect Dark you have a choice of either Agent, Special Agent or Perfect Agent.

Perfect Sound

The missions in the game vary significantly depending on your choice of difficulty level. As well as the additional mission objectives that you had in Goldeneye, the more difficult mission settings now involve extra areas too. So while you might play through a level fairly quickly on Agent setting, playing it again on Perfect Agent could well have you going places that you couldn't access the first time around. Another new feature is that some of the level structures change with the difficulty setting. For instance, on the stage where Daniel Carrington gets captured, on Agent level you must snipe the guards to free the negotiator but on Perfect Agent level you instead play the part of the negotiator!

There are 17 missions in all spread over nine different stages ranging from the dataDyne headquarters at the start through a tropical island to the President's aircraft Air Force One – and those are just some of the more mundane levels! It's not giving any secrets away to tell you that those popular aliens the Greys play an important part in the plot. What you may not know though is that the Greys aren't the only alien race that you run into...

Classified: Counter-Ops

Okay... let's assume that you manage to finish Perfect Dark on Agent setting. Then you finish it on Special Agent setting. And then you triumph on Perfect Agent setting. You've finished all the challenges. You've even completed the bonus levels. What's left to do? Once we'd finished Goldeneye the entire office contented themselves with month upon month of deathmatch games and of course that's an option with Perfect Dark. But there's also another option: counter-operations. This is where you play the solo missions with a friend, but this time player one takes the role of the good guys and player two assumes the role of the bad guys. This means that player two has control of one of the 'enemy' and once killed jumps Matrix-style into the body of another bad guy and then another... and so on. While this is a little one-sided on Agent level because the enemy guards can only take a shot or two before they die on Perfect Agent it makes for a fantastic challenge and guarantees almost limitless replay value. Oh... and in case you were wondering, you can't just play through the whole game in counter-op mode – missions can only be opened solo or co-operatively (just in case the enemy player feels like defecting!)

Perfect Plot

The AI of the bad-guys has been improved dramatically over those that you faced in Goldeneye. Not that the AI in the Bond game was bad by any means but sometimes you just felt like the enemy were kind of setting themselves up to be shot down. Obviously on the easiest setting the guards in Perfect Dark still aren't that bright but having said that the game still isn't easy! Another thing that's changed is the intelligence that's required from you: the player. With Goldeneye, aside from the missions where you had to safeguard hostages or protect the odd scientist, for most of the game you could pretty much operate on the theory that if it moved, you should shoot it. That method of play won't get you very far in Perfect Dark though! To begin with there are many more non-combatants in this game – be they scientists, simple lab technicians or even just civilians wandering the streets. This seems fair enough right? If they've not got guns: don't shoot 'em – if they have got guns: shoot 'em! Okay? Except that it's not okay. Several of the missions in the game send you into places where the guards on duty are the good guys too. After all, just because some evil megalomaniac rents some space on the fiftieth floor of an office block that doesn't make the night security guards who get paid minimum wage to patrol the building evil, does it? Some objectives even require you to enter friendly government installations where the guards are working for the same people as you but they don't know that and you're not allowed to tell them. Now if you went around 'offing' the guys and girls on your own side, what kind of heroic secret agent would you be then?

Perfect Multiplayer

So stealth is the name of the game in Perfect Dark. Joanna can knock people out with her unarmed combat skills (which unlike the Goldeneye slap don't actually kill them). She can use her special abilities to disarm hostile guards. And she also has a number of non-lethal weapons with which to subdue those pesky but really quite genuinely 'nice-once-you-get-to-know-them' armed opponents. It can be quite frustrating sometimes when you've got half-a-dozen heavily armed troops trying their level best to blow you away and you're under orders not to harm them – but that's the life of a top secret agent for you! Quite simply: the one-player game is fantastic. To be honest we were just hoping that Rare could take the concept of Goldeneye and not ruin it. What they've done is take the original game and improve absolutely every little detail that they could. It's almost as if they sat in on the millions of Goldeneye game sessions that must have taken place all over the world in the last few years and made notes every time some over-excited gamer said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if..." What you've got in Perfect Dark is basically the best game that is ever going to come out for the N64. Oh, so there's a new Bond game on the way and another Zelda title but if they can even come anywhere close to holding a candle to this one... well we'll be very surprised indeed!

And that's just looking at the one-player game alone. Did we mention the co-operative mode? Yes, it's true, you and a friend really can play through the game together, backing each other up, shouting 'cover me, I'm going in' and other such macho action-hero terms over the fantastic split-screen action with seemingly no loss of game speed. The great thing is that you can unlock later stages in either co-op or one-player mode too, so if you wanted you'd never actually have to play the game alone. And of course it doesn't end there!

Need A Friend?

Okay... so you've got your N64. You've got your copy of Perfect Dark. You've even got more than one joypad. One problem: you've got no-one to play with you! Now, we're not suggesting that you don't have any friends here, maybe you've got loads of mates but they're all rubbish at videogames. Maybe you live somewhere isolated, like say a research base in the Arctic Circle. Whatever the reason: you haven't got a second pair of hands so you can't play Perfect Dark co-op mode, right? Wrong! Thanks to the all-important (and rather impressive) game AI, you can play co-operative with a bot as the back-up player! While obviously this isn't quite as much fun as having someone to exchange tips and encouragement (or more often insults) with in the room with you, it does mean that you can play the game full-screen and if you turn the lights out you could even pretend you're playing with a real-life person!

Let The Deathmatch Commence!

Considering that in Goldeneye the deathmatch mode was apparently something of an afterthought, it certainly proved worthwhile. So you'll be pleased to know that Perfect Dark has just as many deathmatch arenas and even more modes of play! There's the standard 'kill your mates' mode, where you can set custom game limits (time, number of kills, etc) only this time you can also have up to eight bots in the field at the same time. Then of course there's team mode where any combination of players and bots can team up against one another (two vs two with four bots each, three humans and eight bots against one player... you get the idea). Then there's a 'capture the flag'-style game where each team must try and get possession of the other team's briefcase while retaining hold of their own. There's also an uplink game where you must break into the other team's computer and a 'king of the hill' game where the player who manages to occupy a certain area on their own for the longest wins... basically, there are enough combinations of multiplayer games to keep you going pretty much indefinitely. Who cares that the release of the Dolphin has been put back? We've got Perfect Dark!

Automated Enemies

Remember the automatic miniguns from Goldeneye? Well, they're back in force for Perfect Dark! As before, they're usually positioned somewhere fairly innocuous waiting to ambush unwary agents who don't keep their wits about them. The best way to deal with them is to stay out of their range and blast them with a weapon that has a zoom – the bad news is that on the more difficult game settings the range of the guns increases! Oh... and there are now mobile AI versions of these guns which follow you about!

once in a while and have an annoying tendency to 'accidentally' shoot you in the back when you're playing any kind of two-player co-operative game. Well now you can put their slightly warped qualities to good use, because as well as a two-player co-operative mode Perfect Dark also offers you a two-player counter-operative mode. Here one of you plays the heroic secret agent and the other takes on the role of dataDyne lackey.

Starting in the body of one of the guards, our would-be evil-doer then gets to pit his or her wits against you as you take on any of the missions that you've unlocked. Each time the character that the 'evil' player is controlling gets killed control simply switches to the next available bad-guy and combat continues. What a fabulous idea! The only catch is that you can't unlock new missions when playing in this mode – Rare obviously don't trust their audience of dedicated gamers not to cheat!

Did we mention the co-operative mode?

The co-op and counter-operative modes ensure that the main mission-based section of Perfect Dark retains great replay value, particularly when you add the fact that there are a number of hidden bonus missions once you've finished the game and other little details too. Some levels for instance give you a 'buddy' to aid you on your mission even when playing in solo mode and although the first time around you only get one buddy, once you've finished you unlock new characters who can then be called upon when you play through again.

Perfect Characters

Now... what really made Goldeneye such a success was the incredibly addictive multiplayer mode. So what, you may be asking, could Rare have done to improve upon that? Well the first thing they've done is to add a variety of different multiplayer games. Check the deathmatch boxout for more details. They've also tweaked a lot of the elements from the Goldeneye deathmatch mode. Time and kill limits are now totally customisable. As is your choice of weapons. This is fantastic news if you're one of those Goldeneye gamers who used to whinge about playing with – for instance – proximity mines. Choose from a wide range of pre-selected weapon sets or make up your own set as you see fit. When playing in team games one of the things that used to be a bit of a pain was working out whether that figure in the distance was on your side or not – sure the radar showed you what colour they were but who ever actually played with the radar on once they'd enabled the cheat to deactivate it?

Exclusive: Alien Autopsy On Video!

Remember an item in the news a while back about an apparent alien autopsy video which had supposedly been discovered by some journalist or other? Well it was all true! Your briefing for one of the missions includes this grainy video footage of dataDyne scientists preparing nothing short of a Grey alien for an autopsy. And no ordinary Grey either! This one is called Elvis and has been communicating with the Carrington Institute for quite some time – so it's up to Joanna to rescue him!

Perfect Weapons

And then of course there are the bots. You can add up to eight of these to a game and they can really liven things up. Bots come in all shapes and abilities too – there are those who are deadly killing machines, there are 'revenge' bots who only go after players that attack them and there are even 'pacifist' bots who would like for us all just to get along and so run around collecting as many weapons as possible but don't use them! This means if a friend of yours is rubbish at the game, not only can you now increase his or her health, you can also give 'em a few bots to lend a hand!

It's incredibly difficult to find something bad to say about the game! The number of different play variations that the multiplayer games offer is practically endless and of course there's always the option to play deathmatch solo against just bot players. While this might not sound that great to some people it means you can play deathmatch full-screen (just like PC-owners do online only without the huge phone bill) and it also gives you the chance to learn the deathmatch arenas and hone your fighting skills – which is incredibly helpful for both beginners and pros alike!

Perfect Dark is an absolutely fantastic game and like Goldeneye it's a title which more than justifies the purchase of an N64 all on its own. If this game doesn't boost sales of the machine then you may as well give up now Nintendo because nothing will! While this whole review so far has basically sounded like an advertisement for Rare it's a simple fact that it's incredibly difficult to find something bad to say about the game! Obviously there's the removal of the face-mapping feature as result of the 'my-kid-owns-four-guns-has-no-discipline-at-home-and-is-basically-a-right-little-git-but-nevertheless-videogames-are-to-blame-for-him-shooting-his-school-friends' mentality that seems to exist in the US at the moment. Okay, it would have been nice, but at the end of the day it was a novelty and the game is no worse (really) without it. Probably the only criticism we could really make is that due to the amount of stuff that has been crammed into this game, without the expansion pak you can't play the deathmatch games with more than two-players and you can't run the one-player game at all! However on the flip side of this argument, you can say that Rare should be praised for actually making good use of the expansion pak – as opposed to the usual 'look, the graphics are slightly better with it' that we get with most other games. Plus there's the fact that by now most gamers are going to own an expansion pak anyway – one of the big criticisms of Donkey Kong 64 after all was that you couldn't buy it without the pak! And finally, if you don't have an expansion pak by now then this game more than warrants buying one!

Just Perfect!

Yes, there have been delays in the release of Perfect Dark and yes, the N64 is reaching the end of its life. But the fact remains: Perfect Dark is the game that your N64 was invented for. Forget about buying a Dreamcast, a PlayStation2 or even a Dolphin at this point – by the time you tire of playing Perfect Dark we'll all be looking at the forthcoming 'next generation' machines as antiques! Rare have done it again!

The long-awaited 'sequel' to Goldeneye was playable at E3 for the first time. Was it as good as everyone was hoping? Hell, yes!

Perfect Dark is the new game from the Goldeneye team – well, most of them, since a few of them defected to start their own company. The sensible souls that remained at Rare got to put in all of the cool stuff that, for one reason or another, couldn't be included in the first game. Set in the year 2023, the game stars secret agent Joanna Dark, assigned to rescue a defecting scientist from the sinister dataDyne megacorp in a mission that will ultimately uncover a worldwide conspiracy and lead to a confrontation with extraterrestrials...

The E3 version of Perfect Dark only had three playable levels in the one-player mode, but even these early stages were enough to show how far the game engine has advanced since it was used in Goldeneye. It's faster, smoother, more detailed and stuffed with more special effects. It's also bigger – the levels are far larger than in Goldeneye, spreading over multiple floors with a lot more variety in architecture. Different floors are connected by lifts, and it's now possible to drop down from ledges. There's still no jump button, but the levels are designed so that you don't need one.

Gun freaks have plenty to be happy about. We only saw a small selection of the numerous bits of lethal hardware in the game, but what we did see just left us drooling for more! Joanna's basic weapon is the Falcon 2 pistol with laser sights, but very soon into the first level she picks up the CMP-150 sub-machine gun, which is as handy in combat as Goldeneye's ZMG – and you don't even have to battle your way to the final levels to get it! Also available in Joanna's arsenal of around 40 weapons are the Dragon and Super Dragon SMGs, the AR-34 (yes, 34) assault rifle, the Devastator grenade launcher, a crossbow and the alien-derived Farsight XR-20 laser... which comes complete with Eraser-style x-ray sights that let you see – and shoot – through walls. Coolest of all the weapons at the show was a nifty little number that starts off looking like an ordinary laptop computer, but unfolds into a lead-spewing machine gun!

There are several extra features in Perfect Dark that came as complete surprises to everyone at the show. The most obvious is – get this – a way to put your own face on a character in a deathmatch! By using the 64GB pak with a Game Boy camera, you can take a snapshot of your own fizzog, then scale it to fit onto the skull of a deathmatch player. Another deathmatch feature is the addition of 'bots' – as well as four human players, another four computer-controlled opponents can be thrown into the mix. There are also 'simulants', bots that fight alongside you and respond to your commands from the D-pad.

Other additions are changeable weather conditions (one level, set in what looks like LA's flood control channels, takes place in a furious downpour), real-time lighting effects and... blood! Yes, you asked for it, and now you've got it. There are also new death animations to go with the sluicing gallons of red stuff, as well as wounded enemies staggering around clutching at perforated body parts. Don't ignore them, though – they can still pull a trigger. Fallen enemies don't simply fade away after a few seconds, as they did in Goldeneye – they now stay put, so you can even navigate around a level by the corpses!

Goldeneye fans will be delighted to learn that at least two deathmatch levels – the Temple and the Complex – have been transferred to Perfect Dark, with new features (you can now drop through the holes in the Temple floor, for example). You have to be careful of falls now, since unlike Goldeneye long drops are lethal. Several deathmatch levels have narrow walkways over deadly chasms, and in the one-player game, if you shoot out a window in the dataDyne building, it's possible for you to be blown out of it by enemy fire...

Preview Playtest

A lot of people at the show came away with identical first impressions. "It's just like Goldeneye!" could easily have been the phrase of the show. Well, duh! What did you expect? It's based on the Goldeneye engine and written by the Goldeneye team!

Perfect Dark's main differences are under the surface. It's a lot faster and smoother than Goldeneye, the most noticeable improvement being in the four-player deathmatches. The game's lo-res visuals seemed to have annoyed a lot of people, but if the choice has to be made between frame rate and resolution, any action game should take the former. Besides, it's not as if Perfect Dark is undetailed, even at the standard 320 x 240 resolution.

What pushes Perfect Dark way beyond being just a sci-fi Goldeneye are all the extras that Rare has crammed in. The Game Boy Camera feature on its own is sheer genius, and will be imitated by absolutely everyone, but the addition of the bots and simulants to the deathmatch game takes multiplayer N64 gaming to an entirely new level. As for the Farsight x-ray sniper rifle... hours of fun await! Nintendo may peg Donkey Kong 64 as their big game for late '99, but in terms of imagination, playability and sheer coolness we reckon Perfect Dark totally comes up trumps. Game of the show without any doubt, the queue for the ultimate action game starts here…

YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST IN OUR E3 report last issue, but deadline pressures meant we couldn't give it as much attention as we would have liked. (Which was a lot of attention.) Well, now we can.

We predict that Perfect Dark is going to be even better than Goldeneye. Since we at 64 MAGAZINE are firmly of the opinion that Goldeneye is the best game on the N64, that's quite a prediction to make. But somehow, we don't think we'll be making arses of ourselves...

Perfect Dark's heroine is Joanna Dark, top secret agent of 2023AD. Droolers who are looking forward to staring at a top-heavy Nintendo version of Lara Croft had better put their tongues back in, since Joanna is not only realistically proportioned, but decked out in combat gear to boot. Leer at her and she'll shoot you!

Joanna has been assigned to uncover a conspiracy orchestrated by the Datadyne corporation – a conspiracy which, in proper X Files fashion, threatens to engulf the entire world. Datadyne is in the process of retrieving a crashed alien spacecraft from deep beneath the ocean – you don't have to be Fox Mulder to work out that the billionaire boss of Datadyne is probably not going to hand out alien technology freely for the benefit of all mankind...

Why is Perfect Dark going to be so cool? Put it this way – the team that created Goldeneye are also creating Perfect Dark. They've improved the 3-D game engine so that it's faster and smoother. They've devised ways to include more special effects. They've got more futuristic weapons than Judge Dredd, including heat-seekers and guns that lock onto targets and track them even as Joanna runs around. The enemies are a lot smarter. In short, they're going to put in all the stuff they wanted to do for Goldeneye but couldn't. And yes, there will also be a deathmatch game.

Now Rare have announced that the game is due to be released next year, they are retreating behind their usual Area 51-level security, saying only that they will reveal more about Perfect Dark “nearer the time.” Let's start the countdown...

Set for release this winter, Rare's GB version of Perfect Dark chronicles Joanna Dark's past as she finishes her training. Set in the South American jungle, the game has Joanna chasing after cyborgs and trying to destroy a robot factory. Watch for cool features galore...FMV, speech, infrared and printer support, rumble cart and two-player deathmatching. By beating this game, you can even open up new modes in the N64 cart (and vice versa), using the Transfer Pak.

From the development team behind the brilliant GoldenEye 007 blasts Perfect Dark, a futuristic first-person spy shooter that hopes to surpass GoldenEye in every category from story line to gameplay. You play a talented young field operative named Ioanna Dark--codename, Perfect Dark. After uncovering a conspiracy that spans hundreds of light years, you grab your gun and hunt for clues and bad guys in locations that range from alien shipwrecks to top-secret air bases. The mission objectives promise to be more intense than GoldenEyes, while the gadgets and weapons will be more high-tech and even deadlier. Look for the game to hit some time this fall--it could be Nintendo's best title this year!

Even without the 007 license, Rare's "sequel in spirit" to Golden-Eye was one of E3's most buzzed-about games, gleaming with the potential to become another stellar hit for Nintendo. Set in the year 2023, Perfect Dark opens as top operative Joanna Dark is sent to reconnoiter after a distress call from a scientist at the mysterious dataDyne Corporation. Naturally, a conspiracy that spans the globe unfolds, and Dark is the woman for the job. Playing from GoldenEye's familiar first-person view, you'll scoop up cool gadgets and take down enemies with a wide array of weapons as you tackle mission objectives in levels that range from a deep-ocean alien crash site to the rooftops of futuristic Chicago.

Perfect Dark packs in some slick innovations, including a multiplayer mode that pits four human players and four CPU-controlled bots in a battle to the death. Even better, gamers will be able to take pictures with the Game Boy Camera and tack them onto faces in the multiplayer game. Now that's cool! Rare also focused on the A.I. to fashion enemies that work together as teams, recognize and use cover, and more. As long as Rare continues to work its usual magic with Perfect Dark, the game is bound to be a chart-topper this holiday season.

One of the best games we saw at the show was Rare's follow-up to GoldenEye 007. This hot prospect isn't scheduled to be released until December 1999, but when it does come out, Perfect Dark is aiming to take you on a run-n-gun sojourn through some amazing levels. You'll play as Johanna Dark, a secret agent who uses two guns to wipe out her enemies, John Woo-style. And when the action gets intense, Johanna can use her weapons as a shield from bullets by crossing her guns in front of her face. No one got to play PD at E3, but the video that Rare showed indicated the game has lots of cool promise. Even though this game has no connection to James Bond, GoldenEye fans will be amazed.

No doubt about it: Perfect Dark's got frame-rate problems. Although the one-player game zips along at around 25 frames per second, the Cooperative, Counteroperative and simulant-packed four-player modes can bog down so badly that players accustomed to high-powered PC deathmatching might just upchuck. Check out our Chop-o-Meter chart for more frame-rate info, but bear in mind that the game's pretty much unplayable when four humans and eight simulants trade shots in the same arena. But that's OK, 'cause PD gives you so many multiplayer options (most of which you'll open by clearing 30 Challenge missions) that you're bound to find a variation that works for you and your buds. You can combine human and simulant players in any team combination. (Holding A and tapping the Z trigger twice calls up a menu of orders you can issue your simulant teammates.) Social concerns may have forced Rare to remove the game's facemapping feature, but you'll still find enough head and body types here to build a decent custom character. The weapons menu lets you pick any mix of guns and gadgets you desire. Submenus let you tweak player handicaps, turn off radar or turn on special/x-style slow-mo effects. You'll even uncover cheats such as the original GoldenEye weapons and Perfect Darkness, which shuts down the arena's lights and forces everyone to hunt with night-vision. PD lets you do everything short of designing your own deathmatch levels. Best of all, you can save your custom setup to a Controller Pak, name it, then tote it to a friend's house--or transfer it to your Web site via the DexDrive and share it with the world. Oh, and one last thing: You won't want to play PD without the Expansion Pak. More than half of the multiplayer options are closed without it, and it'd be a crime not to experience this game to the fullest.

We've been saying for months that Rare is working on a follow-up action game using the GoldenEye engine, but don't think anyone was expecting anything as advanced as Nintendo was showing at E3.

The underlying principle is still the same--it's a 3D action/shooter with lots of stealthy spy shenanigans. You play the part of Joanna Dark (codename: Perfect Dark...naff, but we can live with it), a hi-tech spy in the year 2023 who finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy concerning a William Gibson-esque corporation of the future called dataDyne.

As with GoldenEye, the game follows a strong story line that unfolds through events in the game. Beginning at the top of a skyscraper, it takes Joanna through locations that include secret bases, laboratories and even to an alien wreck at the bottom of the ocean.

Again, as with GoldenEye, this is filled with loads of cool weapons that vary from your usual pistols and Uzis to high-tech alien gadgets capable of blowing the crap out of huge chunks of buildings. There are also some vehicles dotted around the place too. The demo at E3 included a brief showing of a hover bike that seemed to control in a very similar way to the tanks in GoldenEye--so it should be possible to look and shoot while travelling along.

Speaking of vehicles, there were also some nice little cosmetic touches on the first level that make use of them. As Joanna works her way through the offices in the dataDyne skyscraper, you can see helicopters flying around in the distance. If you blow out the windows (very cool effect) you can shoot at these vehicles and watch as they crash into buildings or tumble down into the streets.

As far as gameplay is concerned, it seems fairly safe to assume that the game's pedigree will help ensure excellence. Al has been a particular point of focus for the team and we were assured that the bad guys would all behave in a very convincing manner. The demo we saw already had them hiding in shadows and actively ducking down behind desks, cupboards and doorways to avoid being shot. By the time everything is finished we should see Bosses that appear to be fully aware of their environments too.

Visually the game is nothing short of stunning. The lighting effects are all used to dramatic effect, while transparencies, particle effects and environmentmapping are employed to give a realistic environment.

Rumors abound that Perfect Dark may make use of the planned 4Mb expansion module featured in this month's news. Although denied by Nintendo PR, there is a distinct possibility that we could see the game enhanced visually with the addition of the module.

The demo on show at E3 was enhanced in this manner--although we were assured that this was for development purposes only.

Perfect by name...

You know that feeling you get when you've been waiting for something for so long and it just doesn't live up to the hype? It's called anti-climax. Take Star Wars for example, if you can honestly say that you enjoyed the film after the onslaught of the hype then you are clearly in need of psychiatric help! Thankfully Rare's latest title - possibly the most anticipated videogame ever - more than lives up to its advance publicity. Perfect Dark is worth all the hype that preceded it and then some - it most definitely is 'all that'!

This game was first mentioned in 64 Magazine way back in issue 15 (14 if you include the rumour about Goldeneye 2!) and it has since been delayed more times than a Virgin commuter train. Now, in issue 41, the UK version of the game is finally here and the wait is almost over. In just a couple of weeks life as you know it will be over, as you are

Better Than A Lottery Win!

The year is 2023 and you play Joanna Dark, a special agent working for the top secret organization known as the Carrington Institute. Being the concerned operative that she is, Joanna decides to investigate the sinister dataDyne Corporation. Needless to say something is amiss and you soon find yourself travelling all over the world as you tackle the 17 missions in this game. Not to mention a trip into a secret Area 5i-style location populated with Grey aliens! Like Goldeneye, each level in the game involves several different objectives which need to be finished before you can progress any further. The higher the difficulty setting the more objectives you get - the trials Joanna must overcome getting progressively more dangerous as you choose from Agent, Secret Agent or the ultimate: Perfect Agent

Tastier Than A Gourmet Meal!

The difficulty setting you choose also makes a massive difference to the gameplay. Whereas in Goldeneye you could wander round the entire level and even complete all the objectives of 007 Agent on the easiest Agent setting (you just wouldn't gain anything by it), in Perfect Dark all that has changed. The higher difficulty settings open up entirely new parts of the levels which cannot even be explored on the easier settings! With this and the random placing of enemies, each of the missions becomes a new challenge each time you play it. On some of the levels even more drastic changes are made between Agent and Perfect Agent settings. On one level for example, you enter the stage as a rooftop sniper, protecting a negotiator on a pier below. However, if you are playing on the harder setting, you yourself are thrown into the centre of the fray as the negotiator!

It's not just the missions themselves that change though, as the enemy Al has been given a serious boost since Goldeneye. Whereas in the Bond shooter the henchmen seem like they're novices straight out of boot camp, these dataDyne bods seem to have degrees in making your life a misery! In Goldeneye you could quite happily predict what your opponents were going to do, but now they try such underhand things as attempting to circle around behind you. This increased Al makes the challenge a hell of a lot better and the gameplay a lot more tense.

More Desirable Than Buffy!

Another thing which gets bumped up as you move through the difficulty levels is the accuracy and power of the sentry guns. In Goldeneye they pretty much stayed the same whether you were on Agent or oo Agent but in this game they pose a whole new problem. Slip up on Perfect Agent setting and you're human Swiss cheese faster than you can say 'help'! One thing you do notice as soon as any gun starts firing is just how gory Perfect Dark is! We're not talking Turok standards here but the stained Soviet suits of Goldeneye - which looked quite frankly like someone had suffered a wine spillage - are gone! Now if you pepper someone with bullets you get a viscous-yet-stylish blood spray, which pebble-dashes the surrounding walls!

Killing people has never been so much fun and Perfect Dark is sure to bring a disturbing maniacal smile to your face. As well as the gory red showers the comedy death animations also make a welcome come-back. This time new ones have been added to the already improved classics and the reactions almost make your feet sympathetic...almost! If you took ,great pleasure in torturing someone with the pistol in Goldeneye then you'll take even more pleasure in doing it in Perfect Dark.

Faster Than A Ferrari

There are certainly plenty of tools to help you reap havoc upon the enemy in this game. 40 gorgeous futuristic weapons are just waiting for you to slap in a clip, ready to rock and roll. These even include a few classic guns hidden away from Goldeneye like the PP7! Best of all though, almost every single one of the guns in Perfect Dark has a second function - which brings the killing unarmed then you can opt to disarm the bad-guns and turn their own weapons variety count up to nearly 80! The automatic Dragon weapon for example, doubles up as a proximity mine which can be thrown on the floor and if you're on them!

Of course any self-respecting special agent should never be without their toys and Joanna is no exception. She has James Bond-style gadgets coming out of her ears - and as this is set in 2023 the toys are futuristic to say the least. Included in her arsenal are a floating pod camera, which can be flown into rooms and a lap top which doubles up as a sentry gun! Throughout the course of the game you also get to pilot a hoverbike, which is a lot faster and a lot more fun to drive than Bond's tank was!

Better Than Goldeneye

The bike, gadgets and especially the guns are made even more desirable by the seriously pumpin' sound effects. If you haven't got your N64 hooked up to your stereo or a decent surround-sound system yet then this game is the 'perfect' excuse! With the volume cranked up the gun sound effects are quite literally breathtaking and if you take your games seriously then there's always the bonus with surround sound of being able to hear where the enemy are coming from.

It's not only the sound which stands out about this game, because unless you're blind then you'll notice that V it also looks mouth-wateringly delicious! In fact, Perfect Dark is so gorgeous it puts Goldeneye to shame making it look just like what it is - a first generation N64 title. Even Turok 2 and Quake should bow down to this game! The lighting effects look amazing and the outdoor levels are practically fog free. Oh and then there are the blurring effects! Normally this would be a big no-no in any game but here blurring is used to show the effects of drugs, blow darts and radiation poisoning. It's the numerous small touches like this which make this game really stand out from the crowd.

Almost Perfect...

The only major grumble against Perfect Dark is the fact that if you don't have the Expansion Pak, then you won't be able to play the one-player game at all! Worse still, without it the multiplayer becomes restricted to just a two-player game! So if you don't already own a pak then this does bump up the price quite a bit but then again if you haven't got one yet, why not? They've been around long enough - hell it was even bundled in with Donkey Kong If that isn't enough of a reason then how about this - it's Perfect Dad. This is the best game ever to grace the N64 and if you have to sell your soul to the devil himself to get an Expansion Pak then so be it!