eet the Darks, Jack and Joanna, father-daughter bounty hunters out to thwart the megalomaniacal DataDyne corporation. Crafted as a prequel to the universally acclaimed Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64 (now almost six years old), Perfect Dark Zero apes the comic industry's fetish for publishing "zero" issue flashbacks and knocks Jack and Joanna chronologically askew (albeit with just a slight time bump backward) for a parade of Blade Runner-y first-person scuffles with bad guys wagging relentlessly homicidal toys.
Packed into 13 levels, Perfect Dark Zero unfolds episodically, pitting players—as the young and nimble Joanna—against DataDyne's thuggish operatives. Level goals often change as "trigger" events morph the story, but players essentially begin at one end of a continuous bounded 3-D construct and must sneak or fight their way to the terminal side using Joanna's numerous techie toys. With bits of Halo and Splinter Cell cobbled together, success depends as much on stealth as ballistic proficiency.
Joanna views the world exclusively in first-person (hit the left button for a brief autonomic third-person view as Joanna dive-rolls forward) and wields an array of futuristic weaponry with primary and secondary fire modes. She can swap munitions on the fly and occasionally dual-wield guns like her P9P (think pistol) or the UGL Liberator (think Uzi). In close quarters, melee weapons like viblades (sword) and combat shields complement a short but explosive list of projectiles like frag and "flashbang" grenades. A few high-tech gadgets round out the "stealth" aspect of each mission: the Datathief for computer terminal hacking or the Locktopus, which—true to its name—sports "key-tentacles" for picking practically any link or latch.
Perfect Dark Zero offers up to 32 multiplayer battles through Xbox Live or up to four-way local split-screen action, including a co-operative story mode option that pits two players simultaneously against tougher DataDyne operatives. Live brawls are either deathmatches, where the highest kill count wins, or "dark ops," which add a cash-and-carry element: At the close of a round, players buy weapons with personal cash earned through previous enemy kills. Either mode has variant settings, from the traditional "capture the flag" in deathmatch to the taglike "infection."
Fun—but rarely perfect
If you're looking for a diverting first-person shooter with decent graphics and exceptional control, and you don't already have a powerful computer to run the superior PC version, go pick up a copy of Call of Duty 2 for the 360—it's solid, reliable and a ripping good time online. If, on the other hand, you're determined to deal with a sporadically fun, grotesquely beautiful, poor-controlling, designedly uneven and thus grossly disappointing sequel to one of the best console games of all time, then Perfect Dark Zero passes inspection nicely.
PDZ's opener is hopeful—a cagey corridor crawl through bug-eyed glass walls, oscillating tripwires, clinking spider-bots and unbelievably nuanced surfaces. Your eyes practically combust, in fact, under the visual assault of gleaming corrugated walls, furrowed wooden crates, rubbery-smooth clean suits, reflective flesh tones and, well, pretty much ultra-shiny-everything. As the shock wears off—and it does, before the opener hits mid-level—you're likely to feel like C.S. Lewis' Edmund, gorged on sticky-sweet Turkish delight yet, for all the thrills, still empty, frustrated and starving.
Like bugs wriggling beneath its glossy next-gen veneer, PDZ turns out to be a "perfectly" mundane shooter. Mediocre aim-fire dynamics, jerky controls, sub-average level design, over-saturated color schemes, hyper-contrasted light-dark areas that blind you to shadowed enemies ... it's a list that could run another paragraph or two. Where the original Perfect Dark capitalized on the tight FPS gameplay of the most beloved console shooter of all time (Goldeneye 64), PDZ squanders the Xbox 360's potential on mere sound and fury. Witless enemy AI, linear paths through levels, a stupid "blurring" effect that generates frequent overcorrection when quick-aiming—need I go on?
If there's a redeeming quality, it's PDZ's multiplayer modes. Co-op adds a few tactical thrills to the otherwise spasmodic narrative in story mode, and if you ignore pistols and automatic guns in favor of melee swords, shields and long-range sniper fare during online deathmatches, you can wring a bit more substance from the fanfare, but not enough to rate this one buy-worthy. Rare's been getting by for a long time on jazzy graphics and detail overkill—not this time.
The devil's in the details ... too much of a good thing ... Perfect Dark Zero has my brain afire with platitudes. Count me a fan of the original, and every decent clone since—PDZ, alas, fails even to approximate its predecessors' grace and polish.
—Matt
Back to the top.
