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What do you think of the popular classic FPS, GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, two games that were very popular on the N64 back in the day? While common consent states that GoldenEye and Perfect Dark's multiplayer modes were the two games biggest selling point, I thought they both had surprisingly good single player modes as well. GoldenEye is the best movie tie in game of all time, while Perfect Dark built up on GoldenEye's original winning formula with great success.

And how does Rare's latest FPS, Perfect Dark Zero, measure up with it's more famous predecessors?

I prefer Perfect Dark. It's single player sucks donkey balls, but it's multi has interesting levels, better game modes, more/better/varied weapons, and nice character customisation. Goldeneye is better single player, but it's multi isn't as good.

Stark wrote: It's single player sucks donkey balls,

How so? Perfect Dark's level layout, bad guy AI, mission objectives and graphics were (for the most part) uniformly excellent. I certainly thought the dataDyne skyscraper and Area 51 were five or six times better than 90% of GoldenEye's mission campaign. Does anything please you Stark?

But it was let down by mediocre voice acting and a somewhat weak storyline; but what does that have to do with it's excellent game play? And I thought GoldenEye had a cheesy setting and clichéd storyline as well, despite it's single player being groundbreaking and highly immersive (and I think GoldenEye is one of the more overrated of Bond's outings anyway).

Go fuck yourself you little prick. PD is the better game, but it's patchwork of unfinished, thematically unlinked levels with difficulty all over the place is shit. When the hardest level in the game is the third level, there's a problem, and basing the levels of a shooter around stupid puzzles and 'find the President' is BAD. The challenges were better.

Stark wrote:Go fuck yourself you little prick. PD is the better game, but it's patchwork of unfinished, thematically unlinked levels with difficulty all over the place is shit. When the hardest level in the game is the third level, there's a problem, and basing the levels of a shooter around stupid puzzles and 'find the President' is BAD. The challenges were better.

You must've played a different game, I thought the missions linked up well enough in spite of the narrative cheese and I did not find the third mission to be the hardest.

Well basically perfect dark was goldeneye mark II. It used the same ideas but just used them to a new level. To me perfect dark was the pinaccle of N64s tehcnology, and the only reason it was held back was simply due to the fact that the N64 wasnt powerful enough. The multiplayer (which I think rivals some games today) would have to be its greatest merit.

Seriously, fully customizable Perfect Dark multiplayer was a joy to use. The only rival party games out there were Smash Bros and Mario Party 2, for me. GoldenEye is certainly great too, but from my experiences PD has a better overall product because the replayability and customization of its multiplayer is huge.

It's the greatest injustice that there's no PD for modern systems, whether console or PC. I still have my N64, solely to play Perfect Dark.

Orange: On my playthrough on hardest, the DD:extraction level gave me way more problems than any other. However, the SP game never lived up to the excellent multi, and Goldeneye benefits from having a story that's actually *better* than the movie it was based on. And the puzzles? Please. All the laptop guns and double cyclones in the world can't fix that.

PS, don't pull this 'zomg satrk hatezor ever1' bullshit right after a post full of glowing fucking praise. It's just stupid.

Stark wrote:Go fuck yourself you little prick. PD is the better game, but it's patchwork of unfinished, thematically unlinked levels with difficulty all over the place is shit. When the hardest level in the game is the third level, there's a problem, and basing the levels of a shooter around stupid puzzles and 'find the President' is BAD. The challenges were better.

The hardest level of the game was dataDyne: Extraction? Yeah, you're talking out of your ass.

I have to say, I liked Goldeneye better.
I wasn't a fan of PDs levels or its weapon selection (impressive and innovative though it was). those leements just didn't appeal to me, while Goldeneye's levels were (in my opinion) uniformly excellent and the weapon selection (while not too large, or espescially interesting) seemed just right.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:The hardest level of the game was dataDyne: Extraction? Yeah, you're talking out of your ass.

Yeah, there's no instant-fail condition that walks in front of gunfire... oh wait, there is. Not that this is restricted to this level of course: most of the SP levels had poor design. The rest of the game is just a cakewalk - in Goldeneye I never got the time unlocks on my first go.

ThatGuyFromThatPlace wrote:I have to say, I liked Goldeneye better.
I wasn't a fan of PDs levels or its weapon selection (impressive and innovative though it was). those leements just didn't appeal to me, while Goldeneye's levels were (in my opinion) uniformly excellent and the weapon selection (while not too large, or espescially interesting) seemed just right.

There were like four different templates that they built two dozen levels out of. There was nothing to get excited about with GoldenEyes's level selection.

Not only did Perfect Dark have a better levels, it had better weapons. And if you were particularly enamored with GoldenEye's choices, it had all the classic Bond guns right in there. Just swap them in and it's like you're back in the old days, except with better graphics, levels, and you can drop a couple of the neat new weapons in at your leisure.

That's the real killer for PD. It included all the best shit from GoldenEye, but added heaps of more stuff, modes, customisation, etc. It even had two of the most popular GE levels.

I bought Perfect Dark and found out that you have to have the goddamned fucking Expanison Pack to play single player solo missions. I was fucking pissed. So, because of that, I choose Goldeneye.

Perfect Dark, no question, in all respects.

I was a huge fan of Goldeneye, didn't own it, but often played it at friend's houses. The thing that most impressed me about PD when I got it was the AI. The enemies I was fighting felt more real than those in Goldeneye. They ducked behind obstacles, tried to sidestep you fire, would hand-to-hand your ass if you got too close, and they even had to reload. Okay, a lot of it was scripting, particularly the enemies taking cover, but it was so impressive compared to Goldeneye's enemies.

The guns are a lot more fun, what with the alt-fire and stuff. PD also has the Falcon 2, the most awesome handgun in the history of videogaming. A skilled operator with that weapon can waste a guy using nearly anything else. Oh sure, the bullets of the Phoenix go boom, but it's rate of fire blows so much that a Falconeer will be half-way through his second clip by the time you're done firing your second shot (at the wall, since you'd be dying by then).

The only thing I don't like about PD is that you don't get that much of a chance to use the hover-bike (it can only cover a section of Crash Site) and there's no tank equivalent. Man, did I love the Streets level in GE: running over cars and people, dodging RPGs, blasting shit. Oh and no infinitely spawning wave of enemies like in Facility, it was fun to see how many enemies you could kill before you got bored. I raked over 200 kills, a friend of mine twice that. But that's just two levels, the overall experience in PD is far more exiting. The escape from jail in Goldeneye's Control II does not compare to trying to fight the Skedar with a fucking knife in PD's Skedar Ship (especially in the hardest difficulty, *shudders*). And the Ctan ship, those baby skedar lurking in the dark still scare the shit out of me.

Oh and Stark? I've never had Dr. Carrol get in my line of fire, wereas I can't count the times I've shot Natalia full of holes in the second Control level. Though to be fair, Ms. Magnum Revolver redeems herself in Jungle.

Big Orange wrote:And how does Rare's latest FPS, Perfect Dark Zero, measure up with it's more famous predecessors?

PDZ is pretty damn average, visual effects make it hard to see, controls feel "weird", and the visual style doesn't mesh that well with the setting. I dropped PDZ the moment DOA4 came out (and I dropped DOA4 the moment Chromehounds came out).

Perfect Dark was vastly better across all areas of game play, and that's saying a bunch. Golden Eye CREATED new standards for a console shooter, and PD raised that mark in all categories. I suppose you could credit GE with developing new genres, and say that PD added little while borrowing liberally. You'd be right, but missing the fact that PD is a better game, with an array of excellent missions, levels, weapons (Farsight, RCP-120, Super Dragon are among the best weapons ever), and an extraordinarily solid multiplayer game that holds up to this day--the bots, in particular, were a welcome and needed upgrade over GE.

JLTucker wrote:I bought Perfect Dark and found out that you have to have the goddamned fucking Expanison Pack to play single player solo missions. I was fucking pissed. So, because of that, I choose Goldeneye.

The bigass sticker and multiple warnings on the box and cartridge didn't tip you off?

Any game with the 'whoops, have my gun' bomb, or the fantastic 'pick up Dragon, set mine, put Dragon back down in the spawn point' fakeout kill winz all. Oh, the memories.

I dunno, I was never impressed by Perfect Dark's additions over Goldeneye. Like a lot of late games, PD's graphics appeared to make too much of a push on the N64's texture and framerate capabilities, and the gameplay wasn't as polished as Goldeneye, which I feel was a good example of concise options. I couldn't get into Perfect Dark's MP game at all.

Goldeneye for me was always a gem of quick & dirty multiplayer gaming.

Stark wrote: Goldeneye benefits from having a story that's actually *better* than the movie it was based on.

That is not hard to do, since the movie version of GoldenEye had a nonsense plot as well. And while Perfect Dark's storyline was not anything special either, at least it gave Rare a good chance to do something different and original.

Not that this is restricted to this level of course: most of the SP levels had poor design.

Eh? What are you gibbering on about? I thought the enemy complex for Area 51 was laid out very well and was practically cinematic, the dataDyne skyscraper was a cool corporate HQ with lots of air traffic and I really liked the Carrington estate where you are picking off bad guys from the rooftops. I also liked the Carrignton Institute with it's own brand of corporate architecture and MI6-style workshops, plus Air Force One was laid out in a convincing manner. The only level I would class as genuinely mediocre was Pellagic II.

But I really liked GoldenEye's single player missions as well; the Dam is one of the most iconic FSP levels ever and the Seveyana complex is almost as iconic, what with the control room and the CCTV cameras.

Bounty wrote:

JLTucker wrote:I bought Perfect Dark and found out that you have to have the goddamned fucking Expanison Pack to play single player solo missions. I was fucking pissed. So, because of that, I choose Goldeneye.

The bigass sticker and multiple warnings on the box and cartridge didn't tip you off?

I ordered it from Ebay. There were no pictures.

JLTucker wrote:

Bounty wrote:

JLTucker wrote:I bought Perfect Dark and found out that you have to have the goddamned fucking Expanison Pack to play single player solo missions. I was fucking pissed. So, because of that, I choose Goldeneye.

The bigass sticker and multiple warnings on the box and cartridge didn't tip you off?

I ordered it from Ebay. There were no pictures.

Ah, used copy. That's more understandeable. My apologies for snapping.

You know, if I didn't own an accessory and therefore prevented from playing certain games on my system, I'd make a habit of researching to make sure games I was purchasing didn't require said item.

Utsanomiko wrote:You know, if I didn't own an accessory and therefore prevented from playing certain games on my system, I'd make a habit of researching to make sure games I was purchasing didn't require said item.

Only three games, plus the DD, needed the expansion pack. I'm not surprised there's still people who don't know this - almost everyone assumes it's just there for higher resolutions.