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'Perfect Dark Zero' for Xbox 360 game falls far short of its hype
"Perfect Dark Zero" from Microsoft for the Xbox 360 game exposes all the contradictions about the first new console to claim, it will introduce the "next generation of video games".
It is a good game, but it falls short of being great. It certainly isn't the next "Halo", even though Microsoft originally billed it as the killer application for the Xbox 360. The game falls so far short of that mark, it makes me wonder about the Xbox 360, which Sony derisively nicknamed Xbox 1.5.
Is this really the best exclusive-launch game Microsoft itself could pull together to sell its new console? The nonexclusive "Call of Duty 2" from Activision is saving the Xbox 360 right now.
"Perfect Dark Zero" is the sequel to "Perfect Dark"; a modern-day shooting game that made its debut on the Nintendo 64 console five years ago and received a lot of praise as the best game to appear on that machine.
Microsoft picked up the rights to the franchise when it acquired Rare, one of Nintendo's best game developers, in the fall of 2002. The team converted the title from GameCube to Xbox and then to the Xbox 360.
After all that time and investment, I expected a lot. But that lineage also explains why this game has a hard time breaking free from last generation.
In the game, you play bounty hunter Joanna Dark from a first-person point of view. You have access to an array of super-spy weapons, and you get company on your missions from Joanna's father, Jack, as you do jobs and battle the evil corporation dataDyne. Joanna and Jack stumble onto a conspiracy that puts them face to face with the CEO of dataDyne, Zhang Li, and his daughter Mai Hem.
You get to try out 29 weapons in the 13 missions in single-player mode. If you go in guns blazing, you will fail. You have to be clever enough to shoot out video cameras or holster your weapons at times and walk right past unsuspecting guards. There's a certain joy in being sneaky. And while it is fun trying to master the game, the experience falls short of the next-generation label.
On the one hand, it has graphics that are stunning, with such environments as swamps, snow-covered palaces, jungle temples and waterfalls. If you stop and stare at the setting, you're likely to see a nice special effect that shows off the potential of the console. But walk around a waterfall, and you'll see a sheet of water falling vertically. It looks as faking as anything from the last generation.
You have to move in stealth mode to avoid being cornered by enemies who hunt you in packs. But those enemies can act unbelievably dumb. You can run right up to armed enemies who are shooting at you and knock them out with a rifle butt. When you walk on snow, it crunches under your feet.
But try to jump off a ledge and the game won't let you do it. The levels are huge, but that means you can run in the wrong direction for a long time. These problems make it hard to suspend disbelief.
The graphics flaws are a good example of the "uncanny valley", a theory by Japanese robot designer Masahiro Mori, who postulated that making robots more and more humanlike would hit a limit as they approached near-perfect imitation. Ken Lobb, studio manager at Microsoft's Rare, reminded me of that theory when he pointed to the challenge of making everything look believably realistic in the game. The better the graphics get, the more you notice the things that don't look good enough.
This game definitely has its moments. It takes a lot of skill to get through a mission dubbed Rooftops Escape, where Joanna has to take out snipers to allow Jack to make his escape on the ground. It's fun to glide down zip lines. I enjoyed quietly picking off guards with the PD9 pistol, a cool toy that comes with a sniper scope and a silencer. You have stealth tools like lock picks, code hackers, and heat-sensing goggles.
I finished the game, but it was an agonizing process, not challenging in a good way. Some missions are a breeze, but others stop you in your tracks over and over. If you make a fatal mistake, you have to reopen at the beginning of a very long mission or checkpoint.
In the Jungle Temple level, you have to take the right turn at an unmarked junction or you'll fail the mission entirely. Why do they even allow you to take the wrong turn at that spot? For the sake of time, I needed to use the cheat guide to finish. And the final mission involves a ridiculous plot development. These poor design points spoil an otherwise good game.
Lobb says the game really shines in multiplayer, where as many as 32 people can play together. It is fun, but there are other, better online games. I have no doubt Microsoft is going to sell more than a million copies of this game and make a handy profit on it. But let's call it, what it is. It's a good game that falls short of the hype. And it isn't enough to help the Xbox 360 beat rival consoles that are coming from Sony and Nintendo.
Source: BonusGambler.com Editors' Choice
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