As I was playing Perfect Dark on my PC tonight using an emulator (try it out people it's AWESOME) I started thinking of Perfect Dark Zero. I know there are a lot of polarizing opinions on the prequel to one of the greatest games of all time. 

 

A lot of people HATE PDZ. I am NOT one of those people. I love the game actually. The shooting action is a lot of fun. Thankfully just like the first game (and unlike the majority of other shooters out there anymore) the computer controlled bots are back!

 

A lot of people wouldn't really care about this as many Xbox 360 owners have Xbox Live Gold. I do not, and do not have a simple way to keep my system online all the time in order to play online. I'm also not a huge online buff either but that's not the point.

 

I enjoy multiplayer sometimes and although I cannot go online with my 360, I can still enjoy the online experience of Perfect Dark Zero since the bots are still in the game. 

 

This is a huge feature of the game in fact. The multiplayer levels (of which there are VERY FEW sadly) can thankfully be opened up depending on the number of players. You can have many variations on the same level. There's a small version (which is generally quite large by default), and then there are 4 bases (I think) for each level. You can have 2 bases open at a time, which significantly increases the size of the multiplayer levels. Of course without any vehicles turned on, you're going to be doing a lot of boring running to the other bases to fight, so make sure you have enough players and vehicles to keep things interesting. After playing in them for a while you learn what base combos you might want depending on the match type, vehicles, and so on. 

The multiplayer aspect is a terrific piece to an already really good game. However there are MANY things that were in the original Perfect Dark that were excised from this game which is on a MUCH MUCH more powerful system. Namely your own persistant multiplayer persona. In the original you could create a character (mostly just take a head and body combination you like and put them together). But the negative thing about it is that you don't have consistent stats like you did in the original, which encouraged the player to gain medals, and just get better at the game. 

However, my problems mostly stem from the single player. While the first half of the game is pretty good, the last half takes a ride to weirdness town. The end boss ends up being a giant......dude. And this guy gets all these magical powers and so on. However, despite the original being about aliens, it wasn't completely insane. 
In the original game, you end up going to Area 51, freeing a loveable alien named Elvis (some people hate him for some reason, I think he's cool). Eventually you end up on Air Force One, stopping a clone of the President of the US, getting captured on an alien vessle after your compound (a base somewhat like MI6 from the bond films) is attacked. You then go to the invading alien's home planet and take care of the threat once and for all. I of course left out MANY details but still. The story was based in science fiction and dealt with aliens but there weren't super people. 

The problem with Perfect Dark Zero is that they make completely unnescessary changes to the established history and story from the first game. Although this game is BEFORE the original Perfect Dark, there are a number of things that are changed for the worse. Namely the characters nationalities. In the original game Joanna Dark (the "James Bond" like character you play as throughout the series) was British. However in Zero (which takes place 3 years before PD) she is American and has an American accent. Also Carrington (the Perfect Dark version of "M") was British as well. In this new game......he's Scottish for some reason. And even wears a friggin KILT. He also looks like an idiot because of it. In PDZ Joanna acts more like a child while in the original (which is only 3 years later mind you) she was a woman who was very much a professional and in charge of herself. How does that make any sense? This misguided change in the very CHARACTER of Joanna gives her a misguided feeling throughout the game while the original character had her mind set on what she was doing at all times. 

These changes weren't needed and took some of the interesting dynamic out of the characters as Joanna is voiced by a different woman. The Carrington actor is the same and adopts the new accent just fine, but it wasn't necessary.....EVER. 
I do enjoy that Joanna's father is her mentor and teaches her how to fight and all, but sadly he isn't around the entire game. 

That being said, while I really don't like some of the incredibly STUPID story changes they made to this new game, I feel that the game itself is great. The shooting action feels fantastic and the game actually plays better than some other more popular shooters out there now. While the story gives this game a MUCH different feel to this material than the first game had, the vibe is quite good, the squad fights alongside you quite well, and the gameplay is top notch.

As for my hopes with the sequel, I want them to make a Perfect Dark 2 already! Joanna is BRITISH and so is Carrington!!!!!! Also in the original game you could walk around the entire Carrington Institute when you weren't playing through the levels. This allowed you to train with your weapons as well as find funny glitches to exploit and just have silly fun. Well since the Institute was pretty much beaten up during the invasion by the Skedar during the first game, make a new Institute. Put the options that were in the first game but taken out of Zero BACK in for the second game. Allow players to make a persistant online character. And let the player hold more weapons. Yeah it's probably more realistic to hold 2 or 3 but during multiplayer matches in the first game, you never had more than 6 anyway. Plus being able to hold all the weapons at once means the player can experiment during levels once "Have All Guns" cheats are turned on. 

A lot of games that have come out in the past few years put many limits on the players so that they can't take advantage of other players during online matches. This is fine, however allow the OPTION to hold all weapons or items etc so the players can goof around if they want to. That's what my friends and I did on the original and it provide hundreds of hours of fun. 

 

While I HIGHLY enjoy PDZ, the vibe and storyline from the original is just unbeatable. When the second game comes out, I expect nothing less what could be considered the rightful sequel to Perfect Dark. 
I HIGHLY recommend picking this game up if you own an Xbox360. It's very cheap now and is quite worth it. Don't expect the game to be as phenomenal as the original, but expect fun, because it's there and there's plenty of fun to be had playing Perfect Dark Zero. I think I'll give this game an 8.5 or a 9 out of 10 (can't decide). If the story wasn't so retarded near the end with the big super guy, and the ridiculous unecessary changes hadn't been made to the two main characters backstories, I might've rated it higher even. As it is, it needs more thought in the plot department next time. Don't make it so dumb. Take us back to see Elvis. And make the Carrington Institute important and meaningful again. 

If you want to actually SEE the game check out the review on Gamespot. Greg Kasavin must not have been a Perfect Dark diehard like I was and doesn't complain at all about the silly changes to the storyline. He does however say many things about the game that I would be fine typing up here had I not gone on so long about the story. That being said, I FULLY agree with EVERYTHING he says here on the positive side, but my review had a lot more about the negatives as well that he skipped over. Hopefully next time I review a game I'll pick one I won't complain about like this one. Haha. 

[4/5]

 

By Jedilink : September 1, 2010

ILLegal Alien: Jedi Link of USA.

Of all the muthafuckas in the world, he's the muthafuckest.

This one is a bizarre case. Some places he fits in, others he stands out. No matter where you find him, he'll always be the same guy as he never puts up a facade for any reason. A filmmaker on the rise he has a vast knowledge of useless garbage. If it's in a movie he's seen it. Thanks to the internet he's seen worse. This one is severely scarred by an incomprehension of how retarded people can be. Generally a loner, he knows few, those few don't always support him so he stands on his own.

 

 

He is relentless in his pursuit as a filmmaker and refuses to be left out of a business he wants to see improve. He also has ADD which explains the somewhat "all over" nature of his own description.