Perfect Dark Upgraded for Xbox Live | andrew-blog - Nerdballoon.com - Lunchpail Platoon Podcast, Game Reviews and Oldschool Gaming

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Perfect Dark Upgraded for Xbox Live

· Written by Andrew · Thursday, 27 August 2009 11:00 ·

News has been swirling since June that Perfect Dark was going to get a face lift and be released on the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace, and this week we've seen some screenshots finally emerge. With full 1080p resolution and 60fps refresh rate, this will certainly add some eye candy and stability to the old school shooter, but is this really going to be enough to get people to buy a decade old game again? Read on for my take of PD on XBL.

Let me preface by saying I was hugely into Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark was the hugely hyped sequel to that epic multiplayer adventure for the N64. Unfortunately, Perfect Dark sucked. It had a lot of cool upgrades, however the things they got wrong overshadowed the things they got right, to the point where it wasn't fun to play. At the foremost of the problems with Perfect Dark on the 64 was graphics and framerates. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a graphics whore, I mean Cruis'n World is one of my favourite games, but the textures in Perfect Dark were far less appealing than in Goldeneye, the models looked more aliased and the lighting always seemed off. These are all things I can look past if the gameplay is there, but it wasn't, and the main reason was because the framerate was so bad there were largely unplayable portions, especially in a competitive 4 player match. For all the wonderful features that they added, it all means nothing if you can't actually play the game. I tried as I could, but Joanna and I were simply not compatible, so we took a break and I never looked back.

But now it appears my major gripe has been addressed in this re-release as they are selling it to be full HD and with a decent constant framerate. perfect_dark_n64

On top of that, Xbox Live support has been added, which is awesome, not only so you can find more games, but also so your friends can't screen watch you anymore while you're trying to pin them down with the Farsight. Now the screenshots that have emerged make it appear that no model work was done, or very little. All the textures were completely overhauled, which gives it kind of an odd look, but still keeps it in the same style, which is nice. I think new models would have ruined that nostalgic feel, which is at least half of their sales pitch. Playing with sims again, using the laptop gun, checking out every weapon's second function again is going to be pretty sweet. Probably the best upgrade though is simply the fact that you'll be able to use a double thumbstick controller for this oldschool shooter, cause using those yellow C buttons on the 64 controller didn't help your aiming so much. Hell, strafing was pretty much all they were good for.

So short story long, the re-release of PD might well be far superior to the original version, and not only in the aesthetics but actually in gameplay. Now if only they could get past the licensing problems and remake Goldeneye! (Play it for Source until then). And while I'm dreaming, I'll ask for an upgrade of Halo 1 to support Xbox Live as well.

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