Review: Perfect Dark (XBLA)

I was pretty excited to find that Microsoft were releasing the original N64 version of Perfect Dark for XBLA. Having played Golden Eye relentlessly for the best part of a year back in 1999, the chance to finally have a playable version of its spiritual successor was too much to pass up, and an opportunity Rare should have taken advantage of a long time ago. Not least of all because the first Perfect Dark was a superior game to the 2005 sequel and 360 launch title - a game which felt barely like PD or Golden Eye at all - but also because it had so much potential, simply marred by an uncontrollable framerate held back by the constrains of the humble 64bit hardware it was running on.

You, know. I never actually played Perfect Dark when it first came out on the N64, instead sampling it’s flawed delights a few years later, after the Dreamcast had died and during a period in which I was hell bent on expanding my ‘retro’ collection, picking up titles I’d missed along the way. I first played PD around a friend’s house, and was left with distinct flavour of distaste in my mouth afterwards.

Although the game featured much larger level designs and more involving mission objectives, it was also almost completely unplayable for the most part. Slowdown seemed to occur within the slightest hint of more than two enemies appearing on screen, whilst at the same time, the developers though that it would be a great idea to include all kinds of nifty transparency and reflective effects, all to the determent of having a remotely smooth experience.

For the 2010 XBLA release, Perfect Dark has been given a full HD make over with a number of small graphical tweaks and upgrades. The game is rendered in 1080p and now runs at a solid 60fps, without incurring any slowdown or damaging framerate drops at all. It does this in all modes, including the rarely seen 4-player split-screen multiplayer mode lacking from most FPS’s of today.


Some of the game’s textures have seen a resolution upgrade, looking cleaner and clearer as a result, but not so much so as to take away from the slightly blurry look associated with N64 titles in general. The visual effects have also been given a small dose of polish, using more accurate shader effects for all the game’s reflective surfaces – real-time reflections and specualr highlights, rather than just the moving textures seen on the N64 game – whilst also adding in a few other subtle graphical touches. Like in the N64 original, lights can be shot out, gunfire and explosions illuminate areas dynamically, and lights can be shot out to create darkened areas.

What you have here is a fully authentic conversion of the original game, but with all the graphical improvements necessary to make it a completely playable experience – for the most part anyway. The framerate in particular, makes running around and gunning down baddies really good fun for the first time, whilst also bringing to your attention the sometimes dated game design, which has a real tendency to grate on you at various points through the game. This sometimes ruins all the hard work Rare have put into the title in creating a larger and more complex design, fearuring more thought provoking mission objectives, which require a greater degree of planning to overcome compared to those in their previous N64 FPS.


Perfect Dark’s gameplay is comfortably versed in the old-school nature of game design. There is a slightly open-end feel to the whole thing, leaving you free to roam around the levels making your own way to mission objectives, whilst at the same time, the game stubbornly refuses to tell you how they might be accomplished. You won’t find any hand-holding, instead often finding yourself meandering along various rooms and corridors either trying to find the item or person required to trigger the next objective, or just trying to actually find out how to complete said objective without mercilessly killing everyone who gets in your way – which leads to failure many a time I can assure you. Locked doors and dead ends are a plenty, which might leave anyone unfamiliar with the mechanics of decade old first-person-shooters rather lost and confused.

It’s not unusual for the game to require you to keep certain enemies alive in order to make progress through certain stages. However they are never pointed out to you, and in many cases you will probably kill one of the few people required to open a select door to progress, or who holds the item or information you might be after. Most of PD’s mission design is largely trial and error, requiring lots of repeat playthroughs in order to sometimes figure out what is going wrong, or how you should be approaching a certain situation. It is unforgiving and frustrating at the same time, but also slightly refreshing in the sense that it feels more realistic to be dropped inside a foreign complex without any sense of direction, having to track down you intended target based on pretty meagre intel.


Sometimes though, the game will fail your mission due to you accidentally blowing up an item needed to complete it, or because you failed to defend the right target from being assassinated, despite the fact that the target in question, nine times out of ten, is barely recognisable from all the other civilians.

It’s these things which frustrate, showing you how old and creaky the game’s tired and worn design has become. However when these sections are played through again, perhaps for the second or third times, it becomes a wholly more enjoyable experience. Like to a lesser extent with Golden Eye, once you know what to do, and how to do it, you can spend more time in having fun completing mission objectives than instead wondering around working out what they are and why you just failed them again for the third or forth time.

A lack of a directed nature hurts the game badly, but that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a lot of fun to be had from it. It just means that you are going to need a much greater amount of perseverance to get to that point. At the same time the varied mission structure – which changes the level significantly depending on what difficulty setting you choose – keeps things interesting, especially when an empty room on the ‘Agent’ setting becomes a secret laboratory on ‘Perfect Agent’, which you are then tasked with destroying.


The physics and overall gameplay mechanics whilst dated are still pretty cool to look at for the most part. When shooting enemies in the leg, they will limp around the level until you decide to pop them off; shooting someone in their arm will make them drop their weapon, sometimes putting their arms up and allowing you to give them a good smack around the head; shoulder hits will disable enemies, whilst a shot to the head yields an instant kill. They can also get staggered from being hit, clutching their wounds, or simply kneeling over and dying right in front of you.

In terms of Multiplayer options. Perfect Dark is loaded with modes for both Online and local action. Every mode that supports more than one player is also fully playable online, making the deal so much sweeter. In total there are 6 different game modes, 16 maps, and 43 weapons, with the option to include bots to make up additional players if there aren’t any around. This can be done for both online and local matches keeping things interesting and upping the intensity by having more players on the scene. Split-screen makes a triumphant comeback in XBLA PD, with up to four players battling it out on a single console and TV screen, all the while the framerate doesn’t drop from it’s original 60fps update.


Now if that sounded good, PD also goes further than most FPS’s today with its range of multiplayer options. Along you the campaign and a competitive modes, you also have a Counter-Op mode, which sees one person take control of the enemy characters as the other player attempts to complete the game. You also can play through the standard Campaign mode in two players co-operatively, which can make working out what to do in the missions easier, but also thinks harder at the same time, as if one of you makes a mistake it’s mission over for both of you.

Disappointingly online play comes with a hitch. In all game modes and matches I played online there was noticeable lag. Sometimes this wasn’t particularly bad, and in these cases it worked really well for the most part. However, I was unable to find a single match that didn’t have some form of lag attached to it, which is a bit of a let down considering that it’s by far the biggest draw with this updated version of perfect Dark.

For the most part, Perfect Dark is an antiquated shooter with some particularly clever level design, hindered by the trial and error nature of many of its objectives. Having said that, it is still a highly playable fast and frenetic shooter, tense and particularly involving, it just requires you to adjust and adapt to its decade old gameplay to properly enjoy what it has to offer. Still, this is the first time that the game has been in any kind of playable state – outside of emulation of course – and whilst it isn’t as solidly constructed a game as Golden Eye, particularly with regards to the single player campaign, it is a pretty competent shooter which excels greatly in the multiplayer stakes.


If you’ve been longing for some repeat action in the same vain as that N64 classic, Golden Eye, than look no further. But be warned. Parts of the game have aged badly, and the confusing nature of the level design and mission structure will seem off-putting at first, certainly to those with a rose tinted view on what these games were like. Despite this, Perfect Dark manages to be a better all round package than its 2005 sequel, with original mechanics which feel like they should do with the reworked dual analogue controls, and a still fantastic multiplayer mode. Whilst not perfect, it is perhaps one of the last flagship titles, along with Banjo Tooie, in which Rare still showcases some glimmer of greatness, before sliding down into mediocrity.

Overall, Perfect Dark is worth picking up for fans of the original N64 outing and their other FPS success story Golden Eye. However anyone without prior experience of those titles and their stubbornly old-style method of trial and error progression, should probably avoid as they are unlikely to enjoy what they find. Multiplayer aside, which for a great offline experience, is worth every one of those 800 Microsoft points.

VERDICT: 7/10

Could This Be 360 Slim?

There have been rumours about an eventual slim line version of the 360 for a few years now, with various sources and unsubstantiated reports sighting plans for an all-in-one CPU, GPU and EDRAM chip, coupled together in one massive internal revision of the 360 console. That revision was allegedly known as Valhalla, which would see both the main processing components of the 360, along with the EDRAM, shrunk down into one power-efficient little chip, bringing down the cost of production, and allowing for a complete design makeover.

At the time, it was impossible to expect such a revision to appear for at least a couple of years, given the slow and struggling process of being able to shrink down the EDRAM in line with both the CPU and GPU inside Microsoft’s console. So much so, that only last year were the fabrication plants at TSMC were able to significantly reduce the size of the 360’s GPU, resulting in the much more reliable ‘Jasper’ revision of the hardware.

Yesterday however, two leaked photos seemed to show that those initial problems have in fact been alleviated, now allowing a combined CPU, GPU and EDRAM on a single chip, or at least on one single die containing all three separate chips, albeit much smaller in size than before. It also shows what looks like a complete re-engineering of the 360 motherboard into a much more compact form, at least one third smaller than the current design, and a glimpse into the potential release of a slim 360 console.


The two images in question were released on a Chinese tech forum, A9VG, and shows what looks like a genuine reworking of the 360 motherboard, while also revealing various other changes inherent in the basic design of the new console. The first photo above, shows the actual shape of the motherboard it self, demonstrating the new small size, at the same time teasing us with an image of a smaller combined chip underneath a stock Coolermaster cooling fan.

From what we can see, it’s pretty obvious to us, that use of an off the shelf cooling fan isn’t likely to be part of the final retail unit of this 360 slim. Instead all signs point to these photos being of a test unit, still under development and in the last stages of trialing, before being cleared for a final production to start. However what’s interesting is that the second photo clearly shows us a single CPU and GPU package on what could be a single chip, along with changes to the motherboard showing perhaps what kind of hard drive they will be using for the unit, in addition to changes with regards to the type of audio outputs available on the machine in this latest model.


This second shot shows us all of the motherboard and its features in clear view, most noticeably confirming that the CPU, GPU and EDRAM sits together on either a single chip, or more likely a single die, with the each of the three chips being separate entities integrated onto it. My reasoning behind this is that integration of the EDRAM and GPU into a single chip would actually require a major redesign in order to fit into the shader core, whilst also having to be produced on the same process node. Basically it would have to be fabricated at the same size as the main GPU, something that is still a problem at the TSMC from what I’ve been hearing.

Another thing, is that due to the photographer’s lack of removing the heat spreader, we don’t really know for sure just what is lurking underneath, or what process node the chip is on. I’m pretty sure it would have to be at least 45nm, but then it would mean that the CPU, GPU and EDRAM are definitely still separate chips housed in one die, rather than a single chip. It’s highly unlikely that the EDRAM could be processed at a 45nm; instead more along the lines of 55nm, making this part separate at least from the CPU and GPU.

Interestingly the motherboard looks to contain parts required for additional features to be present on the slim 360. Now, these are pretty much a reworking on the things which the current machine already has, just done in a different way. The first thing that comes to mind is the extra SATA connector available for use on the board, bringing the count up to two. On the current 360 the board only has a single connector, used for the DVD Rom drive, whereas here on the slim, an inclusion of a second seems to hint at an internal hard drive storage solution, or at least a new type of external connecting HDD.

An internal drive is unlikely, as it would prevent an upgrade path for arcade users, whilst also preventing Microsoft from selling larger hard drives later on down the line. However, they could in theory break free, and make a fresh start with the slim, whilst still producing HDDs for existing 360 owners. In fact, that is probably the most obvious choice, as a clean break is the only way for them to achieve a cost effect new hardware design.

Also there’s no sign of the mounting holes used to fix the existing DVD drive into the unit, and at any rate, it would not fit into the new slim design, leading me to believe that either MS are planning to give us a shiny slot loading type drive, or are simply moving its position around a bit. Perhaps they will use some kind of top-loading system for the slim, although more likely is another version of the current slot-loading drive found in the fat 360s.

Memory card readers have also been cut down to one unit now, and there is no sign of any inbuilt wireless adaptor, which is disappointing. I guess MS are making too much of a killing by selling the existing Wireless N adaptor at 60 quid, and would rather continue with their lucrative margin on accessories. However, they have seen fit to at last include an optical output on the back of the new unit, meaning the end of buying the overpriced audio dongle for surround sound when using a HDMI cable without an HDMI compatible amplifier.

From what we gather, the power supply seems to be another external jobbie, unlike the tightly integrated PSU of the slim PS3, which although mildly disappointing, at least allows the machine to be potentially much smaller than the current design. In that respect we expect the overall size of this new 360 to be smaller and more representative of its unofficial ‘slim’ moniker than with the latest PS3. You could say that from the motherboard photos it could well end up looking a little bit like the Dreamcast, just with a stylish slot loading drive instead of an outdated top-loader design.

That’s pretty much all we know right now, not being able to shed anymore light on that interesting single chip/die CPU, GPU and EDRAM combination, or to ascertain whether this latest revision of the 360 hardware is in fact a slim console, or just another revision, albeit a massively more drastic one.

All signs do point to something major happening though, with Microsoft advertising for a Motherboard Design Engineer for the Xbox console, who is being described as being responsible for "aggressive cost reduction of the console throughout the life of the product”, and at the same time, past candid statements from company execs, which detailed plans for a brand new version of the 360 console due to release at the same time as Natal.

As per usual Microsoft declined to talk about the matter, issuing the same “we don't comment on rumour and speculation” line heard many times before, but this isn’t the first time such unofficial leaked information has provided the solid background for hardware confirmation. PS3 slim was revealed in much the same way many months before it was announced and released.

Ultimately we don’t know whether this is going to be a 360 slim for sure, though all signs do point that way, and in any case, Microsoft like Sony, wouldn’t want to reveal anything too soon as not to disrupt current sales of the existing 360 console, especially many months before the new machine is ready to go.

Either way, it won’t be long before we find out even more details, and we're willing to bet that unofficial leaks will be the leading source of information long before any official announcement takes place.