Perfect Dark

Perfect Dark is a 2000 first-person shooter video game for the Nintendo 64 game console. The game was developed by Rare, creators of the multimillion-selling GoldenEye 007, an earlier first-person shooter with which Perfect Dark shares many gameplay features. This game is also considered the spiritual successor to GoldenEye 007. The game was first released in Canada and the United States in May 2000, where it was greeted with critical acclaim; PAL and NTSC-J releases followed soon afterwards.

The game features a single-player mode consisting of seventeen missions in which the player assumes the role of special agent Joanna Dark, an operative for the fictional Carrington Institute, as she attempts to foil a conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne. It also includes a range of multiplayer options, including co-operative and "counter-operative" modes in addition to traditional deathmatch settings. Technically, it is one of the most advanced games developed for the N64, with optional high-resolution graphics and Dolby Surround Sound.

In September 2000, a separate game starring agent Joanna Dark, also titled Perfect Dark, was released for the Game Boy Color. Although set in the same universe, it follows a separate storyline. With the use of the Transfer Pak, the Game Boy game allows certain features within the Nintendo 64 version to be unlocked. Perfect Dark Zero, a prequel to Perfect Dark also developed by Rare, was a launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005. Perfect Dark: Initial Vector, a novel by Greg Rucka, was published later that year. A second novel, Perfect Dark: Second Front, followed in 2007.

Story

Perfect Dark is set in the year 2023 against the backdrop of an interstellar war between two races: the Maians, who resemble the stereotypical "greys" of alien abduction folklore, and the Skedar, reptile-like extraterrestrials who can disguise themselves as humans, bearing similarities to Nordic aliens.

On Earth, there is an on-going rivalry between two factions. The Carrington Institute, founded by Daniel Carrington, is officially an R&D centre but secretly operates an espionage group in league with the Maians. dataDyne, on the other hand, is a sinister defense contractor with a clandestine link to the Skedar. The player is cast as Joanna Dark, a new recruit to the Carrington Institute whose impeccable scores in training have earned her the codename "Perfect Dark".

The game begins with her mission to investigate suspicious reports from a dataDyne insider. In the process, she uncovers a conspiracy between dataDyne and the Skedar: the Skedar plan to steal an alien "megaweapon" from a crashed spacecraft on the Earth's ocean floor and use it to annihilate the Maians. When the President of the United States refuses to loan dataDyne the research vessel they need to retrieve the megaweapon, they plot to kill him and replace him with a dataDyne-grown clone. Unbeknownst to dataDyne, the Skedar also intend to test-fire the megaweapon on the Earth, destroying it in the process.

With the help of other Carrington agents and a Maian nicknamed Elvis, Joanna prevents the conspiracy by causing the weapon to self-destruct. She then helps the Maians launch a counter-attack, destroying the Skedar's "Battle Shrine" and eliminating their High Priest, thereby issuing Skedar morale a crippling blow.

Gameplay

Perfect Dark features many elements that are typical of a first-person shooter game, including a range of weapons to collect, enemies to defeat and distinct environments to explore. It is frequently described as a "spiritual sequel" to Rare's earlier first-person shooter GoldenEye 007, released in 1997. Although Perfect Dark is not set in the James Bond universe, the gameplay is extremely similar and it retains many of its predecessor's features, such as the ability to use stealth to tackle missions, and objectives that vary with the difficulty setting.

The weapons of Perfect Dark include handguns, rifles, submachine guns, a shotgun, rocket launchers, combat knives, grenade launchers, various explosives, and several fictitious extraterrestrial weapons. Almost all of the weapons in the game have two modes of fire: a primary mode in which the weapon is used in a typical fashion, and a secondary mode which tends to use the weapon in a more unconventional manner, such as pistol-whipping or proximity detonation. Players can carry an unlimited number of weapons, and certain guns can be used in duplicate, one in each hand. Unlike in GoldenEye 007, where the guns were simply dipped below vision during reloading, Perfect Dark's weapons all feature unique and visible reload sequences.

Solo Mode

The player can explore the Carrington Institute and take part in a number of tutorials and training activities. The most substantial of these activities is the firing range, in which the player's proficiency with each of the game's weapons is tested against specific targets. Completing these trials unlocks so-called "Classic Weapons", which are taken from GoldenEye 007.

In Perfect Dark's solo missions, the player controls Joanna through a series of levels collected together into missions. In each level, the player must complete certain objectives and then exit the stage. The requirements are varied, with many levels requiring the recovery and use of numerous high-tech gadgets. If Joanna is killed or fails an objective, the player must start the level again.

There are three distinct difficulty levels in the single-player game: Agent, Special Agent and Perfect Agent. There are a number of differences between the difficulty levels, including the objectives that must be completed, the amount of ammunition available, and enemy accuracy and damage. On higher difficulties, the optional "auto-aiming", in which the game corrects slight aiming errors automatically, becomes less effective and bonus items such as protective shields are absent. Once the game has been completed on one difficulty level, the levels can be tackled in any order on the other difficulties (apart from the final mission of the main story arc, which can only be played at a given difficulty after all other missions have been beaten on that difficulty). If all the levels are completed on Perfect Agent difficulty, an additional setting becomes available; titled Perfect Dark, this mode allows the player to customise various aspects of enemies, such as their health, their aiming accuracy and the damage they inflict.

Four bonus missions may be unlocked by the player. One, "The Duel", is a holographic training simulation against three opponents, and is unlocked by completing all of the entry-level weapon challenges in the firing range. The other three bonus missions are unlocked by completing the game on each of the three standard difficulties, and allow the player to control other characters — Elvis, Mr Blonde and a Maian warrior — in scenarios parallel to the main narrative. The gameplay is essentially unchanged, with objectives to accomplish and enemies to battle, but these characters do have some special characteristics, such as Mr Blonde's cloaking device.

Additionally, the player can unlock cheats by beating the levels within certain time limits. Some cheats, such as "All Weapons", can alternatively be unlocked by using the Perfect Dark Game Boy Color game and Transfer Pak. The cheats range from "Perfect Darkness", which makes the level pitch dark but gives the player a pair of night vision goggles, to more traditional extras such as Infinite Ammo.

The game includes a co-operative mode in which two players, or one player and up to three computer-controlled players, tackle the missions together. If two humans play, the game uses a split screen display, with the option to split horizontally or vertically. Only one human player is required to survive the mission, although all the objectives must still be completed. Finally, there is a "Counter Op" mode, in which one player plays the missions as Joanna while the other takes over the role of an enemy — including their weaponry and low health — and attempts to stop her. The Counter Op player takes control of another enemy if they are killed, and cannot cause the mission to fail directly by, for example, killing Joanna's allies before she meets them.

The solo player areas feature numerous easter eggs and strange objects, areas and glitches to fuel the exploration efforts and wild speculation of many gamers. Rare staff have admitted that some of the oddities in the game were put there "for a laugh", and that the constant barrage of questioning emails they got were sometimes "a free source of amusement".[8] Perhaps the most famous curiosity is the piece of cheese hidden on every level. These were intended to be collectable items, although the purpose of collecting them has never been revealed. This idea was scrapped, but the cheese remained.

Multiplayer

The Combat Simulator is Perfect Dark's multiplayer mode. A game can be played with up to four human players and eight computer-controlled players. Again a split-screen is used if more than one human is playing. If three or four humans play, the screen is divided into quarters, with one quarter left blank if necessary.

Players enter the game unarmed and with a certain amount of health. Weapons and ammunition are scattered around the level in preset positions. Once a player is killed, they are regenerated elsewhere in the level, once again unarmed. The overall objective of the game is determined by the scenario being played, of which there are six:

• Combat — The traditional deathmatch mode. This can be played in teams.

• Capture the Case — Perfect Dark's equivalent of Capture the Flag.

• Hold the Briefcase — Players must take a briefcase and survive with it for as long as possible. One point is received for every set number of seconds the case is held. If the player with the briefcase is killed, they drop the briefcase and it can be picked up by anyone else.

• King of the Hill — One area in the level is "the hill". Points are awarded for locating this region and staying there for a set number of seconds. Having been "captured" in this way, the hill moves to a new location, or if a certain game setting was set, the hill remains in the same spot while the timer resets.

• Hacker Central — Players must locate a data uplink and use it to hack a computer system; both items are randomly placed in the level. The data uplink is moved to a new location when the player carrying it is killed. When hacking the computer system, the player cannot use weapons, and cannot move from the terminal without breaking the link.

• Pop a Cap — Similar to "Assassination" type multiplayer games. One player is labeled as the target, and the other players go after him. If the target kills his hunters, he receives a point bonus. If the hunters kill the target, they receive a point, but they then become the targeted player. The term pop a cap is used in this game in reference to the slang term "pop a cap", which usually means to fire a gun or to participate in gun-wielding activity.

Aspects of each game can be customised, such as the chosen arena, the weapons available, and the winning conditions. Players can be grouped into teams or compete individually. In a team game, the players can optionally be shown coloured according to their team. Each game can be customised to a greater degree than was possible in GoldenEye 007's widely acclaimed multiplayer mode. For example, the earlier game only allowed players to specify a pre-set class of weapons, such as "Automatics", but in Perfect Dark, players can individually select the weapons to be included and where each should be located. Shields may be placed in any of the weapon slots or omitted entirely; GoldenEye 007's body armour was fixed in one position for each level.

Computer controlled bots, called "Simulants", can be included in the multiplayer game. The appearance, team affiliation, skill level and playing characteristics of each Simulant can be individually customised. For example, the VengeSim always pursues the player that killed it last, the FistSim will not fire guns but will attack with punches and thrown weapons, while the PeaceSim does not fight at all but merely tries to disarm the other players. Simulants can perform super-human feats on the highest difficulty settings, such as moving faster than the player can. During team matches, a human player can issue specific orders to the Simulants on their team, such as "Defend the Base".

The Combat Simulator includes thirty "Challenges", pre-set games against Simulants which may be tackled by one or more players. The Challenges cover a variety of game types, weapon arrangements and level setups. As a player completes them, additional features — including new weapons, player models and bot difficulties — are unlocked in the Combat Simulator. A complete list of features unlockable through this mode is available; see Combat Simulator Challenge Earnings.

At the end of the match, the overall results are shown, alongside information about the individual players' performance. Color-coded "medals" are awarded to the winners in several categories: Accuracy, Head Shots, KillMaster (for achieving the most kills) and Survivor (for suffering the fewest deaths). The game also acknowledges, often humorously, other aspects of performance by awarding messages such as "Best Protected" (for people who frequently use body armor) and "Mostly Harmless" (for particularly ineffective players).

Players can keep track of their performance by creating and saving multiplayer profiles. Each profile contains a ranking, ranging from "Beginner: 21" to "Perfect: 1", which is determined based on the accumulation of certain statistics such as number of kills, time played and ammunition used. The number of medals earned is also counted. (See Combat Simulator milestones.) A player achieving the rank of "Perfect: 1" is given the message "Username: Entropic Decay, Password: Zero-Tau." Rare had originally intended these details to allow access to password-protected parts of the official Perfect Dark website, but these sections were never implemented.

Multiplayer profiles also allow players to customize their in-game appearance by selecting the head and body of any of the game's character models (excluding the Skedar), as well as several which do not appear in the single-player mode. A feature called "Perfect Head", which appeared in previews of the game but was not included in the final product, was intended to take player customisation further. This feature allowed the player to place a photograph of their choice onto their in-game character's face, via a Game Boy Camera combined with the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak. The images taken would be uploaded to the cartridge and manipulated with a simple image editing program to adjust color and skin tone (as the Game Boy Camera was black and white) and add facial features such as facial hair. This texture could then be saved to either the cartridge or a Controller Pak and then loaded onto a player's character in multiplayer, thus creating a virtual representation of the player. Officially Rare said the feature was dropped due to "technical issues", but it is likely the real reason for the feature's removal was due to "sensitive issues" surrounding the ability to attack images of real people. While Rare stated the feature was completely removed from the game code, hackers using a GameShark eventually found text references to the feature such as the menu and related messages, however no code other than this remains.

Trivia

• In the Xbox Live Arcade release of Perfect Dark, it is possible to unlock an agent from Crackdown 2, known as "Agent 4", as a playable character. To unlock Agent 4, you must have a Crackdown 2 save file on your console.