I was lucky enough to attend a game developer's conference here in Toronto, Ontario and had a chance to personally tryout the new Sci-Fi FPS for Xbox 360 - Perfect Dark Zero. Not only that, I give the game a spin using the hardest difficulty mode - DARK AGENT!

1. Graphics & Animations

When the world first got a peek of Perfect Dark Zero back in May of this year, I was just as worried as most people about how this game's visuals would turn out. Being a huge fan of the original Perfect Dark, I did not want to see this game fail. Let’s be honest here, the first impression of Ms. Dark was very disappointing.

For months I sat there worried, only hearing snippets of information about how the press got to see it behind the scenes at E3. They were impressed…but I was still left worried. Then over the last couple of months we have received a myriad of stills and videos from various sources including right here at IGN. X05 gave us the first official preview video of the game that resulted in the infamous Joanna Dark – APE FACE.

Sitting through the Developers Conference and living through months of mixed reaction to good/bad stills of the game, I was eager to finally get my hands on Perfect Dark Zero…I was not disappointed.

Rare has delivered a visual powerhouse with Perfect Dark Zero that left me drooling for more. Playing on the now famous Samsung screens that Microsoft has been using at most of their events, and witnessing the visuals in 720p, it is hard not to love this Rare FPS prequel.

The biggest facets of the graphics that stand out are the textures on pretty much everything. I ran Joanna against a wall to take a look at the beautiful wet bricks and the lighting shimmered off them perfectly. The pavement of the parking lot is also very impressive. Once again it looked very damp, but the lighting mixed with good texture mapping gave it a very sexy look.

The one problem that the game's visuals did suffer from was plenty of shimmering. The guns and plenty of textures seemed to have a shimmering effect as Joanna would run. This is really disconcerting as it does take away from such a beautiful game. Kameo didn’t have any of this shimmering and I certainly hope it doesn’t make it into the final version, but it might be too late for that at this point.

The Joanna Dark character model has improved a lot and besides that infamous – APE FACE – sequence still being the same, most of the time the character is top notch. Definitely not on par with what we have seen in games like Gears of War, but definitely worthy of a first generation title. The enemy character models, while detailed, didn’t impress me nearly as much. Looking at them through my scope made me feel like I was playing Silent Scope. Very bland looking models, but I guess I can’t ask for everything.

Explosions looked very tight with excellent particle effects. While the environments are not completely destructible, there are usually plenty of items to blowup such as cars and canisters. Of course I only got to play the first two levels, so there could certainly be a lot more items to destroy later in the game.

From the videos I saw about a month ago, the rag-doll physics look to be turned down a slight bit. The enemies did not go flying like they did in those early videos, but they did still feel a bit exaggerated. At one point I decided to cover behind a wall and peck at a guys body parts to see what kind of movement he would make when I hit him. Started with his kneecaps and he would jerk to the side of the corresponding kneecap, but then get back up (I am playing on Dark Agent so the characters take a lot of hits to go down). Once both kneecaps are hit, he turned backwards and bent over at the waist…giving me a clear shot of his ass. So I capped his ass and then he just sort of leaned against the doorway he was in. It looked as if he was standing up, but I think he just sort of died and lay there. Don’t really know what to think about it, but I sure had fun.

Reload animations are sweet and unique for each weapon.

Also, I did notice one instance of pop-up during the first cut-scene of the game. A plane flying overhead doesn’t appear for the first few seconds, but suddenly pops-in out of nowhere.

2. Sound

I could barely hear anything in the room we were stuffed in, so I can’t comment that much on sound. The voice-over sounds horrible though. Why did they decide to make Joanna Americanized again? Too much Alias?

3. Gameplay

This game is extremely fun to play. First let me tell you that while everyone else there was playing on Agent mode, and pretty much all the videos I have seen have been on Agent mode, I decided to pick DARK AGENT. I am no prissy and take my licks like a man. The first time I tried the Rooftop level on Dark Agent I got my ass handed to me on a silver platter. I didn’t bother to pace myself and watch where I was going and who was around the corner; I just simply ran in guns blazing and the AI called me on it. I was dead before I could reach the first zip line.

Round 2. As soon as I started again bullets were whizzing by my head. I turn to use the scope to line up the enemy and with one shot to the head the bogy is down. I move down a plank way along the rooftops and see a guy shooting at my father with a sniper rifle. I keep my distance and snipe him with my pistol again. This almost seems too easy at this point. I make my way up a ladder and down another walkway with a wall on my right side…turn the corner and multiple bogeys are on me. If you try to run and gun these guys you will most likely die…why?? It seems that Dark Agent mode works a lot like Legendary mode in Halo. You need to preserve ammo. This makes gameplay extremely skill oriented as it can take quite a bit of bullets to get these guys down if you are just blindly firing. You need to use as few bullets as possible, so I used the cover option, took my time and fired away when I thought it was best.

Dark Agent Mode probably wont be as difficult as Halo’s Legendary mode, but I certainly think that it will be fun and the AI seemed to be adequate on this setting. Personally, I don’t see myself playing on any other level besides Dark or Perfect Agent Mode.

Also, for those of you who are wonder about the roll vs. jump… I had no problems with the roll and didn’t miss a jump function at all. Rolling away from gunfire and into cover felt very natural and my movement didn’t feel constricted at all.

Load times were killer though. Loading up either the Rooftop or Parking Lot took about 45 seconds and this was off of the hard drive. This is something they need to tighten up before launch.

4. Multiplayer

I debated writing about multiplayer considering that I barely had a chance to touch it. Didn’t even get to play co-op, but I did get to play some deathmatch on some sort of snow level. It was only one-on-one, but we did have some fun. If the levels are supposed to scale down depending on how many people you have on the map…I didn’t feel it. This snow map felt huge and we only found each other twice. The roll and cover moves came in handy during both of my encounters, which allowed me to evade death. After playing this with only one other person I am excited to see how it plays with 32 people on a map.

Sadly, I couldn’t figure out how to get any “Simulants” working, so I cannot comment on that. One of my favorite modes in the original Perfect Dark was the ability to develop your own “Sim” and pick their type of AI. If they implement this in the new game I will be most pleased.

5. Overall Impressions

The amount of people playing at the Perfect Dark Zero kiosks outweighed those at the other 3 games (Kameo, PGR3 and Full Auto). Everyone was enjoying Rare’s new first person shooter and it was incredibly difficult to get some playtime with it. My impressions are based off of roughly 20 minutes of gameplay. I tried to get everything in that I could in such a short period of time, but at the same time I couldn’t help but be immersed in the game I was playing.

Perfect Dark Zero successfully creates an exciting and immersive experience that I can see myself enjoying for some time. While it might not be the Triple A title everyone is looking for, I can certainly say it is close to it and will do its part to carry the weight of the Xbox 360 into the new year. You wont be disappointed by this sexy FPS that has glitz, action and more.

Xbox Live marketplace points: 80 per USD



Online retailers are now taking pre-orders on “Xbox 360 Live Marketplace Points.” 1600 points will cost $20 USD, which works out to an exchange rate of 80 points per dollar. Points will be used to purchase items in the Xbox Live Marketplace, including (but certainly not limited to) decals, special rims, and other image-enhancers for your racing cars; clothing for your avatars; additional episodes or levels for a game that you already own, and maybe even special swords and armor for your RPG characters. Heck, you might one day be able to skip that whole “grind” thing and purchase a tricked-out level 60 character in the Xbox 360 version of World of Warcraft (merely rumored at this point, but surely under consideration). Most of these items are expected to cost well under a dollar, which is why they’re commonly called “microtransactions.”

In short, companies are going to do their best to extract additional money out of gamers. They argue that they’re providing fun new ways for gamers to interact with their content, so why shouldn’t they charge for that? Gamers might argue that the $50- to $60-dollar price on most games is payment enough. No matter: add-on transactions via the Xbox Live Marketplace will be here in under a month.

On November 22nd, games will move much closer to the “software-as-service” model that the traditional software industry has been advocating for a decade and that MMOG makers have down to a science.