I started playing video games in 1982 after opening an Atari 2600 on Christmas day. I’ve seen this industry shift from arcade cabinets to consoles and now to some mish-mosh of everything. But one thing experience teaches you; sometimes doing the right thing isn’t always the popular thing. Sometimes it means releasing a game at the worst time possible with terrible timing and getting completely overshadowed by it’s predecessor.
Perfect Dark is that game. From a technical standpoint it is leaps and bounds better than GoldenEye in almost every way possible. The AI has more depth to it. The weapons are better balanced. The missions are more intricate. It even looks better on the SAME HW! But because it released two years after GoldenEye, everyone was invested in GoldenEye multiplayer and then HALO came out a couple months later on the Xbox, shifting the console FPS discussion far, far away from Perfect Dark.
So let’s take a look at why Perfect Dark was a better game, step-by-step, with actual technical details.
What Perfect Dark Did Better Than Goldeneye
Joanna Dark is employed by a private espionage organization called the Carrington Institute to track a conspiracy mixing corporate espionage and alien technology (pay for this in Final Fantasy VI?). Perfect Dark’s campaign is much more immersive than GoldenEye’s. Missions are comprised of 12 total levels with more intricate objectives. Instead of going into an area and just mowing down guards like you do in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark has you coordinating with your allies, using disguises, formulating plans to complete specific tasks, and extracting targets instead of killing them.
Speaking of AI, the AI in Perfect Dark blows Goldeneye’s out of the water. Enemies can actually call to each other. They flank you. They react accordingly if you were to actually think they could. If you were to, say, peek around a corner and there are enemies set up with a line of sight on the objective you’re trying to reach it won’t be as simple as running up and spray shredding everything – you’ll have to come up with a new strategy. Basic for modern shooters but revolutionary back in 2000.
Perfect Dark offers you more weapons than Goldeneye does and the weapons are better designed. In addition to quantity, each weapon feels like it has a purpose. Tranq rounds allow you to silently take out foes. Proximity mines allow for area denial. Rocket Launchers actually serve a purpose rather than being just an amusing novelty. The farsight rifle allows you to see through walls and shoot at enemies over extremely long distances. The Magsec 4 effectively attaches a targeting computer to your weapons.
The attachment system for PD offers you options that serve specific purposes.
Difficulty settings actually affect gameplay. On Easy mode, the game simplifies objectives and you’ll face fewer enemies. Normal is you know Normal mode. On Hard you’ll find more enemies that have more strategic positions and more objectives to complete. Very hard mode is especially difficult – enemies are smart and know how to take advantage of the positions you leave your teammates in. Each difficulty provides a different experience which gives the campaign more replay value.
The Combat Simulator That Changed FPS
Now we come to my favorite aspect of Perfect Dark that Goldeneye completely lacked. The Combat Simulator. Perfect Dark allowed you to create your own custom matches with YOUR parameters. You chose the weapons available to use. You could decide the competency of AI you’d face. You could pick the map variant. You could play against either AI or players. You literally could custom everything about your experience.
This was groundbreaking in 1999. Players were able to challenge themselves by playing against higher and higher difficulty bots. Training yourself had never been something you could do in an FPS prior to Perfect Dark. You could create tournaments. You could devise your own custom training matches that would allow you to better yourself against your own guidelines. Combat Simulator was really the genesis to what would become training modes and customizable options in FPS games today.
My teenagers and I spent HUNDREDS of hours playing in Combat Simulator. We created challenges such as sniper only maps, melee only in tight spaces, no pistols, etc. The ability to customize your experience gave us every opportunity to find new ways to test our skills against each other.
Technical Giant
This section is where I geek out from a technical standpoint. If you weren’t aware, Perfect Dark looks better than Goldeneye on the SAME HARDWARE. Same Cartridge space. Same amount of RAM. Same Processing Power. Rare just optimized the shit out of the N64 with Perfect Dark.
Textures are better. Characters have more polygons. Animations are smoother. Draw distance is greater. Frame rate is consistent. This is what happens when you take your time and truly understand your hardware and make it absolutely sing.
Even the weapon models are crafted with care. Each gun has a unique animation when you reload. That simple act of reloading can illustrate that this weapon is different from what you’ve used before WITHOUT it being stated in dialogue. The level architecture in Perfect Dark is more detailed than Goldeneye.
As you increase the difficulty the level geometry actually changes. Guards in Perfect Dark position themselves based on priority targets.
Why the Campaign Still Matters
Fast forward to today. Multiplayer shooter games come with a campaign mode tacked on for single-player enjoyment. Perfect Dark had a campaign YOU ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT and multiplayer was simply a cherry on top. The narrative of each mission in Perfect Dark makes sense. Joanna Dark grows as a character over the course of the game. The conspiracy is unveiled before you methodically over the dozen missions. Instead of just rushing into a room full of dudes and spraying your way through you’re given specific tasks to complete that actually matter.
Even the mission briefings are well written. You know what your goal is and why you’re attempting to accomplish it. There are multiple ways to play each mission in Perfect Dark. Stay loud or be stealthy. Extract targets alive or eliminate them. Make use of the tools provided to you or improvise with what you have on hand. Unlike Goldeneye, you are provided with unique load-outs before each mission. Perfect Dark values your ability to play how you want.
By the time you reach the last mission you have been through a wide assortment of challenges. Tracking multiple people through a crowded nightclub undetected while tagging certain targets in Chicago. Scaling a Japanese penthouse filled with enemies where positioning is key rather than spray-and-pray. Fighting off an alien invasion with your rudimentary gadgets in what essentially is a boss fight.
Is Perfect Dark Still Relevant?
The Perfect Dark campaign stands up against any FPS games today. The mission design is fantastic. The AI is smart. The objectives are clear and well-defined. The pacing of each mission is great. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome either – I’d imagine you can beat it in 10-12 hrs.
Sure, Perfect Dark’s multiplayer isn’t going to wow you with it’s modern game feel. The graphics are outdated and the frame rate drops when a lot is happening on screen. But the game plays great. The guns feel good. The maps are enjoyable. Multiplayer is actually FUN.
It takes some getting used to if you’re used to modern games with analog stick aiming, but once you get used to the control scheme, it works. People misunderstand older games a lot of times. Just because things don’t feel the same doesn’t mean it’s bad – it’s just different.
Why People Forgot about Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark released in March of 2000. Goldeneye had already been out for 2 years by this point and was etched into multiplayer gaming royalty. Everyone had invested all of their Goldeneye multiplayer memories and then HALO was released 2 months before Christmas on the brand new Xbox, effectively dominating the next generation of console FPS.
Perfect Dark fell between generations – too late to make an impact on the N64 but a little too early to where development studios knew how to take advantage of the next platforms and evolving gamer needs. Perfect Dark is an absolutely fantastic game that unfortunately got swallowed up by the hangover of previous and next-gen games.
Conclusion
Perfect Dark is better than Goldeneye technically in almost every way possible. The AI is more robust. The weapons play better and feel better. The mission design is more thoughtful. The campaign as a whole is more rewarding. The Combat Simulator allows you to create your own custom matches. It looks and sounds better.
Want to see what a pristine console FPS game was designed like in 2000? Play Perfect Dark. Want to learn how developers can really push their hardware by taking the time to truly optimize their games? Study Perfect Dark. Want to learn why society forgets great games based on market timing and nostalgia? Learn about Perfect Dark.
Perfect Dark showed that Rare knew how to make a console FPS game far better than they let on with Goldeneye. Unfortunately, popular opinion disagrees with me.
Rating: 10/10 – The FPS that should have got WAY more love than it did.
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Samuel’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 and still thinks 16-bit was the golden age. Between accounting gigs and parenting teens, he keeps the CRTs humming in his Minneapolis basement, writing about cartridge quirks, console wars, and why pixel art never stopped being beautiful.
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