Perfect Dark Zero Review (Xbox 360) By gashead

6 / 10
15 Dec 2005 at 14:35

Review by: gashead

To be honest, when I first saw the launch lineup for the Xbox 360, I was a little disappointed. There was nothing that I really thought I could see myself playing in a few years time. Sure there's variety, but the quality seems to be lacking that killer app. Fortunately, I have been proved wrong, sort of. Project Gotham Racing 3 is fantastic, Condemned is well worth the money if a little repetitive. But what about Perfect Dark Zero, the prequel to one of the best shooters of all time.

Well to put it simply, its good but its nothing really new. There's nothing in the game that hasn't been seen before in other titles. The story goes that you play Joanna Dark, a sexy dark agent who battles against the evil dataDyne corporation that controls practically everything.

The game plays like virtually every console FPS that I've played. The controls are a little slow and unresponsive, especially when compared to mouse and keyboard. If, like me, you prefer your FPS' on PC then this is a little annoying but is quite easy to get used to. You'll get peeved every time you get shot and don't know where its coming from, but its not a big enough issue to condemn this to the bargain bin. I do think that the game would be better if it was done with an over-the-shoulder which worked so well with Resident Evil 4 or even an option to change to Third Person would've been nice.

Weaponry is pretty varied and I like the way that you only have a certain amount of space for weapons with bigger weapons taking more room. Gadgets are also a nice addition although they can sometimes feel a little underused and worthless. They are operated in a sort of puzzle fashion (press “A” at the right time for example) and this works quite well.

Rare have done a resonably good job with the AI. They'll shout to their team mates about where you are, they'll cover their team mates while they're reloading. But it does go a bit haywire when you're in deep forestry areas, not making any noise, and your enemies easily spot you. It doesn't happen often, but it is quite annyoing. Hopefully, this, and some more, hardly noticable bugs, will be fixed with a future XBL Download.

Graphically the game is incredible. Some levels look absolutely stunning and it is definitely one of the best looking launch titles. While some textures do look a bit dodgy close up, this isn't really a big deal. Facial textures are truly a work of art! Rare has done a very good of making the faces look real. One complaint I do have with the graphics is that they look slightly cartoony, something I wasn't really expecting to see yet on the Xbox 360.

The music in game is good and suits the game but is probably not to everyone's taste. It can of course be changed to your custom soundtrack is you want. One thing that does annoy me are the voice-overs. On some occasions they are dreadful. They don't really fit that characters. I do think that some more thought could've been put into the voice-overs. Barring the voice-overs, most other sound effects are great.

Although it seems as though I have little good to say about Perfect Dark Zero, I've yet to talk about Multiplayer. For me, its a bit of a blessing in disguise. The levels are well laid out and are all well varied. While there are a few idiots, which is to be expected, on the whole, most people play fair and more importantly most people are at the same level. With PC FPS', you'll often feel inadequate to the more experienced players, especially if you're new to the game, but with Perfect Dark Zero, you don't.

While I can't see myself playing the single player game in a few years time, I can see myself blasting away on multiplayer for a long time.

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