What's So Great About Perfect Dark? - A Bright Future for First Person Shooters 

People often shower Goldeneye with praise, but Perfect Dark is just better. Goldeneye is like GTA 3, it laid the groundwork. Perfect Dark is like GTA Vice City, it capitalized on the previous groundwork and improved every aspect of it.

I appreciated the fact that in multiplayer, you could create computer controlled enemies with different fighting styles (e.g. vendetta sim, pacifist sim, etc.)

Can't talk about this game without also mentioning how incredible the soundtrack is!

People forget about the more subtle things that perfect dark achieved such as full reload animations for each gun, the ability to give multiplayer AI personalities, the ability to add up to 8 AI players along with 4 human players made multiplayer matches feel like online matches before that was even heard of, and the ability to customize your multiplayer avatar!

This is still my favorite console first person shooter. So ahead of it's time, and the objective based gameplay is still fresh to this day. I hope the new perfect dark captures what this game got right.

No FPS has surpassed Perfect Dark for its sheer wealth of options of ways to play.

listening to the soundtracks makes me instantly feel my childhood again

I think something that's not considered in the conversation is that GE/PD/TS2 form their own 'subgenre' of shooter. I call this subgenre a 'Gauntlet Shooter', and I feel it has a LOT of untapped potential as an idea. Allow me to explain: What makes a Gauntlet Shooter? On its face, the core feature of 'Gauntlet Shooter' is that of expanding levels based on difficulty. You are incentivized to play on higher difficulties by being given more raw things to do - the amount of places you can physically go increase, as do the goals, giving you more actual challenges. For example, in Timesplitters 2 the first level works as follows: Easy - Go from one side of the facility to the other, and leave Medium - Go from one side of the facility to the other, fight your way BACK through zombies, and leave Hard - Go from one side of the facility to the other, fight your way BACK through zombies, and fight a helicopter on the top of the dam, and leave. The Second feature, to help facilitate challenge, is that you DO NOT GAIN HEALTH BACK. Unlike games of yore where you could restore health, and later games where it just recharged, a 'Gauntlet Shooter' has constantly draining health as you get injured, with no way to restore it. You DO get armor, but unlike most games (where you still lose health, but fraction of the damage goes to the armor), armor in a Gauntlet Shooter acts as your health. This makes the game much more stringent about resource management and not getting shot. To balance this, you have a collection of other small features. 1 - as difficulty increases, more physical enemies appear (rather than just changing their numeric damage values), presenting more actual opportunities to be killed. Enemies don't get tougher, rather more enemies appear to fill out the expanded level. 2 -ALL weapons are projectile based, not hitscan. This allows both you and enemy alike, to successfully dodge anything shot at you. 3 - Weapon aiming is decoupled entirely from the camera - this allows the player to perform extremely tricky shots while maintaining maximum speed. 4 - Head and limbshots are special because of the decoupled gun aiming. Limbs cause the enemy (in most cases) to stagger, and headshots ALWAYS kill. 5 - Enemies stagger a bit upon noticing you, and on easier difficulties, before firing. **This was more of a balance feature for the low framerates back in the day**, but, it serves as a balance to orient the decoupled aiming camera. The core gameplay of the Gauntlet Shooter is thus a resource-management game that rewards good players with more things to do rather than trinkets. Levels become a 'gauntlet' in which you must manage your health and plan out how you will approach every room. Extremely skilled players turn each level into a dance of precision, pulling off incredibly difficult one-taps on enemies as they move around at the speed of Doomguy. This is an extinct subgenre that NEEDS to come back.

By 2000 there was loads of other great games out there but the design and music in PD is something else. often underrated title. Great video brother man

The best FPS of all time, even to this day! I am so glad I bought back in the day and dis so by accident after thinking some images inside a gaming magazine were from the game. Even if it was a mistake, it is one of my best mistakes ever, I love this game so much! I can't even begin writing about the amazing things it does, because they are too many! I STILL am amazed that in the second mission, in the first 2 difficulty levels, you start as a sniper trying to save the negotiator who is a hostage, but in the 3rd and hardest difficulty setting, you start AS the hostage and there is a voice line for this change on the game as well, mentioning that you knew it was a setup and you couldn't risk an innocent life! Such an amazing game, it stands entire LEAGUES above the rest of the FPS titles, even today! It is one of the very few games that I can easily and without any doubt say it is worthy of a 100/100 score, hell even a 1,000/1,000 score (even though it's not perfect). THIS is how magical this game is and it remains like that even to this day! I'd rather play PD64 than play amy of the Battlefields, Halos, CoDs, Armas, Deus Exs, etc... Oh, the memories!

Perfect Dark is a work of art!

I loved Goldeneye 007, but once Perfect Dark came out? It became my favorite N64 FPS. So much content on that one cartridge it puts many modern games to shame. The Xbox 360 Remaster for Perfect Dark was great too. Be nice if it came to pc and Switch too. I'd like to see a new AA/AAA FPS follow the design of Perfect Dark/Timesplitters. Maybe do a video on Black 2006 for PS2/Xbox. Pretty impressive for a late console release.

My fave N64 game I still play it to this day

All they did in the game should be a standard for FPS games. The amount of work Rare and their company put into it will never really be beat. It's worth a play, even today, with the de-compiled release for PC with native mouse and keyboard support - seriously, find it and play it. It's free to get now and reverse engineered for PC support. The game is still difficult on the highest difficulties and challenge 29 is still as much absolute hell as I remember it being as a kid lol But Rares' team in 2000 had done such a flawless job that... no company today will ever be able to remotely replicate the amount of worth and time put into a properly soul-infused project.

Aliens, sci-fi, area 51, spy espionage, shapeshifting reptilians, conspiracies. Fug I love that game so much.

My guess for how they did the reflections in the Institute's floor is by mirroring the geometry, softly tapering off its visibility and making the floor semi transparent. This effect can also be seen in puddles in Chicago. I was fascinated by graphical effects and creative solutions under technical limitations. It started my interest in 3D. Looks like they also added shadows in vertex information as well as a "grid" shadow texture in select places. At 6:36, the sharp vertex info shadows seem to respect the sun's position, but the grid texture on the wall looks like it's been shadowed from straight-on, rather than at the sun's angle.

This game had such an impact on me as a young teen. I was blown away by just how ahead of its time it was. My friends and I spent endless hours playing through every bit of content it had, from the co-op, counter op, to the amazing FFA multiplayer modes. This game sent the bar for my expectations to what an FPS should bring to the table. Sadly very few titles have measured up over the years. Halo feels like the best potential successor but it's had it's ups and downs.

"Perfect Dark is Forever."

Remember coming up with the strategy to close ny eyes and just listen to the sounds at the firing range. My mates went crazy when I did some of them blindfolded. Good times!

Damn... I've just found this channel which seems like a genuine treasure trove about some of the best 'retro' games that still fill me with nostalgia from playing in my childhood. Keep it up - you've found yourself a new subscriber (especially from a very avid gamer) 🙂

Loved this on n64 and recently replayed it on game pass, great video, love to see this underrated gem get more and more recognition

Goldeneye got all the fame and glory, but Perfect Dark was oh so much better. And then of course the team that made this then became Free Radical and gave us the first-person shooter perfection that is Timesplitters 😍

at the 6 min mark about shooting guns out of there hands. Im sad that you also did not mention that some enemies will draw a pistol and use that (that you also can disarm). or just straight up surrender and then dispersal as soon as they can (and they will not attack the player again).

This game was an immediate purchased back when it released on XBLA. Still have the cartridge for N64 as well, my brother was better at getting the times for cheats than i was.

Late N64 releases like Conker's Bad Fur Day pushed the system to the point of framerate losses, and Perfect Dark is no exception. But that is nothing compared to what Rare managed to do with this game.

Playing the PC port, this game has a lot of content!

I liked how in the multiplayer mode, you could move the ammo spawns by shooting them into another location.

I love this game. I stood in line to get it at EB games

You should cover the splinter cell series. Seems like nobody ever gives it the attention it deserves

Cool to see more videos!

Wait, this takes place in 2023!?? I thought it was far more futuristic, flying cars already! Dont quite exist in our timeline :)

Interesting fact, Rare first used 'sourced lighting' (real time lighting) in Jet Force Gemini If you ever found the Big Bug Fun Club on the planet Ichor. Shoot the lights out on the dancefloor. Those reflections? Mizar's Palace.

Definitely on my top 5 video game

Perfect Dark, 007 Golden eye and World is not enough, are my child. But Perfect Dark I played often the game was so fun and I really enjoyed the coop options. I cant say enough about this game, the sound track was awesome. the levels , the animations . I would laugh at the death animations they were funny

Hmm, you're making want to stream this game! GG

Man I can’t wait to play this with other people this was and still is a great was one of top titles

we were 10 to 12 years old playing 4 player split screen on a 480p ancient box TV. everyone had a screen the size of a sheet of paper but we still loved it. good times. fk Im old :)

2 handed Mauler was my favourite guns... and Nbombs, laptop rifles and CMP150 akimbo.

I'm glad to see a video like this. For hiw wonderful it was Perfect Dark always seems to be strangely forgotten about. Even a RU-vid search yields shockingly low results regarding it.

I loved this game so much! I need to figure out how to play it on my modern PC

This game was so good.

What's so great about Perfect dark? Two words "Combat Simulator!

I wonder if the rumored new sequel will be more akin in Gameplay to modern FPS or stealth, Deus Ex-like

Great video, great game Btw i never saw Carrington walking like this in the 6:48 How do you do that ?

The XBLA remaster has me replaying the game so many times man. Not to mention the co-op mode is addicting especially when you have a co-op partner who's good at the game

And the OST is so good

Perfect Dark 64 has to be my all time favorite FPS and I'm not an FPS fan.

This remaster game needs to be released on Steam

The Joan of Ark reference has been refuted by the developers.

guys perfect dark just had a fan made pc port made but nothing will tell me how to download and play it any help T^T ??.....

This game was before it's time. I hope we get a movie. Everyone wants a female 007... Joanna Dark fits the bill with a sci-fi element.

On the N64 version of this game... the cheats were (at least for me) legitimately difficult to obtain. For that reason, it really irked me how when you completed a mission while using your hard earned cheats, the completion screen would say "DISHONORED" and "CHEATED" as if you did something wrong. And don't get me wrong! I'm not upset that you couldn't unlock more things *while* using cheats... but the cheats themselves were so hard for me to unlock that being berated for using them at all just left me scratching my head and had me thinking "if it's that bad to use them, then damn, why add them to the game at all?"

I know nothing about Perfect Dark, I hear more about Goldeneye 007 when it comes to Rare first-person shooters, but it's not like I'm unaware of how beloved Perfect Dark is either. Once again FPS's are a blind spot for me, though I'm sure this game is as good as everyone says it is.

11:02 yeah? did you forget Star Fox 64?

People thought 2023 was gonna be crazy

Perfect Dark story is set in 2023...Very ironic

yup it easily holds up and I often play it. Goldeneye is absolutely brilliant too but I'd give the nod to PD. The only game that for me comes close to holding my attention is Halo1

I thought it was cool you could use 2 controllers to get duel joysticks

Or: Aeon Flux meets The X-Files

FAR OFF FUTURE OF 2023

In Counter operatives, If you play as an NPC, does that still make it an NPC?? 🤔

They should release the Xbox 360 remaster on Switch

:)

Time splitters And Culdcept saga

Wait you can play co-op with an ai buddy? Why didn't i know this?

You forgot to mention that the player can give orders to AI bots in Combat Area… not to mention that music 🤌