Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Perfect Dark Zero for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.
A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
642: Perfect Dark Zero
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JaySevenZero
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Re: 642: Perfect Dark Zero
Four months prior to its release here in Australia, the only way to pre-order an Xbox 360 was to purchase a "VIP Pack" - a tidy little box containing a wireless controller, an Xbox Live Gold card, and a copy of Perfect Dark Zero. The game was not something I would have bought - I have no experience with the previous title - but it was my key to a launch-day console. Whilst my friends in the UK were already playing their 360s - it released in November in the US & UK, and March here - I was left to savour the feel of the controller and page through the PDZ manual.
Despite the overall "meh" critical response, PDZ was the first thing I played when I eventually got my 360. I was wowed by the Bond-esque opening movie, and drawn in by the shiny new HD graphics in the intro... but as soon as I started playing the Campaign mode, I knew something was wrong. Controls felt awkward and disconnected - I was reminded of how Timesplitters 2 felt on the Xbox after I had been introduced to console FPS controls via Halo CE. But I plodded through the game, and eventually completed the nonsensical narrative to receive a massive ten GamerScore smarties.
But other, much better, 360 games had triggered my Achievement OCD, and so I continued to fire up PDZ. I spent maybe seventy hours setting up local multiplayer games to get the many (many!) grindable multiplayer Achievements - and I'll admit it was amusing hearing the announcer recite his kill-streak barks (Killtacular! Killamanjaro! Killharmonic Orchestra!)... well, the first couple of times, anyway.
Then I returned to the Campaign, intending to work my way through the four difficulty levels to snaffle the rest of the Achievements. And the combined soggy crapulence of controls, naff narrative, and brutal level design very nearly broke me. I tried multiple times to rope in friends, friends-of-friends, and even toxic politically-offensive finance bros to help with the co-op Campaign. In all, it took fifteen years of on-again-off-again self-flagellation to wrap up the last of the Achievements on this game.
It's fair to say that, save the opening movie and accompanying Morrison Poe song, I genuinely disliked every part of Perfect Dark Zero. In fact, there's only one game on the 360 that I hated more. It may have initially appeared to be an attractive early foray into the HD era, but I'm so very glad that we've learnt lessons from its multiple mistakes and consigned it to the dustbin of history.
Despite the overall "meh" critical response, PDZ was the first thing I played when I eventually got my 360. I was wowed by the Bond-esque opening movie, and drawn in by the shiny new HD graphics in the intro... but as soon as I started playing the Campaign mode, I knew something was wrong. Controls felt awkward and disconnected - I was reminded of how Timesplitters 2 felt on the Xbox after I had been introduced to console FPS controls via Halo CE. But I plodded through the game, and eventually completed the nonsensical narrative to receive a massive ten GamerScore smarties.
But other, much better, 360 games had triggered my Achievement OCD, and so I continued to fire up PDZ. I spent maybe seventy hours setting up local multiplayer games to get the many (many!) grindable multiplayer Achievements - and I'll admit it was amusing hearing the announcer recite his kill-streak barks (Killtacular! Killamanjaro! Killharmonic Orchestra!)... well, the first couple of times, anyway.
Then I returned to the Campaign, intending to work my way through the four difficulty levels to snaffle the rest of the Achievements. And the combined soggy crapulence of controls, naff narrative, and brutal level design very nearly broke me. I tried multiple times to rope in friends, friends-of-friends, and even toxic politically-offensive finance bros to help with the co-op Campaign. In all, it took fifteen years of on-again-off-again self-flagellation to wrap up the last of the Achievements on this game.
It's fair to say that, save the opening movie and accompanying Morrison Poe song, I genuinely disliked every part of Perfect Dark Zero. In fact, there's only one game on the 360 that I hated more. It may have initially appeared to be an attractive early foray into the HD era, but I'm so very glad that we've learnt lessons from its multiple mistakes and consigned it to the dustbin of history.
Re: 642: Perfect Dark Zero
Perfect Dark Zero was, if I remember correctly, the only launch title I initially picked up with my Xbox 360. I had never owned a Nintendo 64, but I had played enough of Perfect Dark and Goldeneye at friends' houses to have reason to be excited about a successor, and I didn't know better as far as the state of Rare as a company post-Microsoft was concerned to have any reason to doubt that this game would live up to its lofty expectations.
That said, I was underwhelmed by the look of the game in the lead up to release. Halo 2 (texture popping aside) had pushed the first-gen Xbox to its limits and looked, at least to my eyes, superior to this "next-gen" shooter in virtually every way. Games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 on my PC looked lightyears ahead of it.
Even still, without a Halo game to play on Microsoft's new console, PDZ felt like it would be the next-best thing, and Greg Kasavin (pre-Supergiant) had given it a glowing review at Gamespot.
Unfortunately, my friends and I tired of the multiplayer after a single session. A surprising amount of the game felt archaic in its design, and it had failed not only to recapture the magic of Rare's 64 titles, but also to have grown with modern shooters.
In singleplayer, whatever fun was to be found in PDZ was entirely neutralized by the game's AI, which had enemies literally queuing up in doorways for me to take out one by one. With a sigh, I popped the disc out of my console and replaced it in its limited edition steelbook, which I would never again reopen.
The game would have had me doubting my console purchase if I hadn't picked up Call of Duty 2 the following week and Dead or Alive 4 the following month. I rank it among the worst launch titles I've ever bought, and, of those, I'd even claim that, for my money, Mortal Kombat Gold on the Dreamcast was a better purchase.
That said, I was underwhelmed by the look of the game in the lead up to release. Halo 2 (texture popping aside) had pushed the first-gen Xbox to its limits and looked, at least to my eyes, superior to this "next-gen" shooter in virtually every way. Games like Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 on my PC looked lightyears ahead of it.
Even still, without a Halo game to play on Microsoft's new console, PDZ felt like it would be the next-best thing, and Greg Kasavin (pre-Supergiant) had given it a glowing review at Gamespot.
Unfortunately, my friends and I tired of the multiplayer after a single session. A surprising amount of the game felt archaic in its design, and it had failed not only to recapture the magic of Rare's 64 titles, but also to have grown with modern shooters.
In singleplayer, whatever fun was to be found in PDZ was entirely neutralized by the game's AI, which had enemies literally queuing up in doorways for me to take out one by one. With a sigh, I popped the disc out of my console and replaced it in its limited edition steelbook, which I would never again reopen.
The game would have had me doubting my console purchase if I hadn't picked up Call of Duty 2 the following week and Dead or Alive 4 the following month. I rank it among the worst launch titles I've ever bought, and, of those, I'd even claim that, for my money, Mortal Kombat Gold on the Dreamcast was a better purchase.
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Tolkientaters
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- Joined: April 22nd, 2021, 10:39 pm
- Location: Florida, USA
Re: 642: Perfect Dark Zero
I tried this via gameplay and didn't play much for a very simple reason, it just felt bad to control which is a big issue in a first person shooter.