It bothers me that Goldeneye is living on as a classic and yet Perfect Dark is fading into obscurity

[j_factor]

I thought Perfect Dark was way overhyped and overrated. The plot is retarded, the enemies and characters are uninteresting, and most of the levels are really dull. There's a good variety of weapons, but some of them are pretty eyeroll-inducing.

To be fair, I don't give a damn about multiplayer, so I judged it purely for the single-player experience. (And I played the main campaign, unlike Gameguy here.)

This is the #2 N64 game on Metacritic, with a score of 97. That just blows my mind. In comparison, Medal of Honor and System Shock 2 both have a 92, No One Lives Forever a 91, and Deus Ex has a 90. To me, Perfect Dark doesn't hold a candle to those games.

[Urzu402]

Back in the day me and my friends had a lot of fun playing Goldeneye to the point where we would get into physical confrontations over who was better but nothing serious just friendly quarrels. But then oh man then Perfect Dark came out me and my friends are like oh crap it's awesome. I really remember enjoying the co op story mode A LOT. That alone was what made me like the game better than Goldeneye. But that's not all they added to Perfect Dark they added new weapons. And the biggest besides the co op story is the bots in multiplayer that also improved the game a lot over Goldeneye. Another one of the updates I liked but wasn't too big was the ability to customize your character in multiplayer and the saving of your stats, which only went on to fuel our arguments about who was better. To end unlike some people I have a lot more good memories with Perfect Dark than Goldeneye but when it comes to storyline and characters Goldeneye doesn win against Perfect Dark hands down. I don't even think we paid too much attention to the story in those types of games anyway every thing was boom shoot bad guys explosions Hell Yeah! This is amazing! Also one last tidbit I was probably one of the lucky ones who originally played the game with the expansion pack because not only did I have one when I got Majora's Mask before Perfect Dark I was smart enough to read the box of the game to see that it was pretty much required.

[IHatedSega]

All its gonna take is for Mike Matei to do a top 10 N64 forgotten classics video (and this will be one of them), then youll see it going for $30 on ebay the next day. Ive heard from people in stores and online that it was a great game, so I think plenty of people remember it. Buy the thing cheap while you still can is what I say.

[Urzu402]

I was just thinking, back when the game was first released we had packaging to tell you you that you pretty much needed the expansion pack to play the game fully. Now thats not exactly clear anymore, so I see how now especially that the game is being sold cart only that people could not know that you need the expansion pack. Leading to someone buying the game for nostalgia and ultimately ending up disappointed.

[Urzu402]

This was a double post please delete or ignore

[Rob2600]

In 2000, Perfect Dark's multiplayer was lightyears ahead of any other console FPS at the time.

[Rob2600]

And CamSpy FTW.

[Gameguy]

I was just thinking, back when the game was first released we had packaging to tell you you that you pretty much needed the expansion pack to play the game fully. Now thats not exactly clear anymore, so I see how now especially that the game is being sold cart only that people could not know that you need the expansion pack. Leading to someone buying the game for nostalgia and ultimately ending up disappointed.

The front of the box says that you need an expansion pak for "Maximum Gameplay". That should be changed to "Basic Gameplay" to be more accurate. Maybe it's just me but I consider 1 Player mode to be something basic that should be included. I've done some digging and found something that would have been on the back of the box.





Maybe I have a copy still around so I'll try it again, I actually have an expansion pak on hand so I could try it as intended. That's if I can find that copy, which I might not even have. I'd rather play FPS games on a PC instead.

[FoxNtd]

I've done some digging and found something that would have been on the back of the box.

It is indeed on the box. (The NTSC-U version, anyway.)

[Greg2600]

Neither one is all that great compared to most first-person shooters available on PC at the time.
Golden Eye was a good console FPS at a time when there were no good console FPS's.

On 1-player some were fine, but they were usually just Doom clones or Duke Nukem. I loved the Dark Forces games, which were one of those. However, the multiplayer was absolutely horrendous on almost all of those. Forced to play on dialup, they were glitchy, choppy, and had barely any hit detection between players. In fact, my friend, who lived down the street, and I would take turns playing Dark Forces or Duke Nukem in each other's house, rather than try to play multiplayer on dialup. But I must say, in 1996-1997-1998 the PC FPS games were not better than Goldeneye in play fun. Yes maybe graphics, but that doesn't make a game better. I remember the first Rainbow Six games, they were horrible.

[ubersaurus]

Perfect Dark is excellent, but yeah, it came in late in the cycle. Plus, Nintendo produced a LOT of copies of the game... far more than originally were sold, I think. That commonness probably doesn't help the price at all.

[kedawa]

On 1-player some were fine, but they were usually just Doom clones or Duke Nukem. I loved the Dark Forces games, which were one of those. However, the multiplayer was absolutely horrendous on almost all of those. Forced to play on dialup, they were glitchy, choppy, and had barely any hit detection between players. In fact, my friend, who lived down the street, and I would take turns playing Dark Forces or Duke Nukem in each other's house, rather than try to play multiplayer on dialup. But I must say, in 1996-1997-1998 the PC FPS games were not better than Goldeneye in play fun. Yes maybe graphics, but that doesn't make a game better. I remember the first Rainbow Six games, they were horrible.

And how was the networked multiplayer on GoldenEye?
I remember playing Quake and Duke Nukem 3D over a LAN in 1995 and having my mind blown. GoldenEye was fun, too, but it paled in comparison to its PC counterparts.

[Leo_A]

Hopefully they do a Timesplitters HD Trilogy one of these days. Not many gems from the last gen that had a series of releases available left that would be obvious candidates these days for such a thing outside of some Nintendo GCN/Wii franchises.

I never did beat the final boss in Perfect Dark. So I'll have to do that eventually and also try out the higher difficulty's. But I thought the single player was pretty entertaining overall. Several interesting levels that remain favorites to this day and I had fun enough with it despite having been a PC gamer that had played games like Half-Life.

I wish they had overhauled the controls for the XBLA release. You have both sticks that you can use, but the aiming cursor still operates like it always did as I recall from the demo. Full modern controls would've been a nice option I think.

But I must say, in 1996-1997-1998 the PC FPS games were not better than Goldeneye in play fun. Yes maybe graphics, but that doesn't make a game better. I remember the first Rainbow Six games, they were horrible.

Half-Life was released in 1998.

All its gonna take is for Mike Matei to do a top 10 N64 forgotten classics video (and this will be one of them), then youll see it going for $30 on ebay the next day. Ive heard from people in stores and online that it was a great game, so I think plenty of people remember it. Buy the thing cheap while you still can is what I say.

And just who is Mike Matei?

[IHatedSega]

And just who is Mike Matei?

He helps James to make the AVGN videos.

[treismac]

There were two amazing [read: cheap yet fun] guns that really made Perfect Dark for me: the Laptop Gun and especially the Slayer, which fired fly-by-wire remote controlled rockets. Those two weapons on multiplayer were great fun.

Honestly, since you need the expansion pack to play Perfect Dark, isn't it merciful that the game isn't as acclaimed as James Bond making it $20 or so plus whatever the expansion pack goes for? With video game recognition driving up the prices, I am more than happy to discuss obscure and affordable favorites with ya'll here on DP rather than to bemoan the ridiculous prices of widely acclaimed favorites.

[alec006]

And how was the networked multiplayer on GoldenEye?
I remember playing Quake and Duke Nukem 3D over a LAN in 1995 and having my mind blown. GoldenEye was fun, too, but it paled in comparison to its PC counterparts.

Actually it's great if you have an emulator, but it would have been cool if the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive would have had a modem built in so you could play some N64 games over a network or dial up. Ah the possibilitys....Mario Party over a network...blisters and all.

[otaku]

yeah it should be considered a classic you'd think it could be revived on 360 or on wii via the vc on the n64 section. Perhaps the less than awesome 360 sequel is to blame?

[danawhitaker]

I really really wanted to like Perfect Dark, but I had a major problem with it - it literally made me ill. I played for several hours (2-3 at most, and one of those was spent just watching friends play) the day it came out, and I developed a terrible headache, I got really warm, and just started to feel very unwell. I didn't have those problems when I played GoldenEye. I haven't actually had that problem with any game since either. Curiosity has me sort of wanting to try it again to see if the same thing would happen, but I long since got rid of it and don't really want to pay money to find out that it does the same thing. I remember being very excited before it came out too, so I was disappointed when I had that reaction to it but was hesitant to try it again at all.

[jonebone]

All it takes is one look on ebay to see this is happening prices for Goldeneye are rather high like 20 dollars for a loose cart. Perfect Dark is under 10 dollars for a loose cart.
Perfect Dark took almost everything Goldeneye did good and improved upon it a lot. It's either that or people have raging hard-ons for James Bond

What do prices have to do with being a classic? Perfect Dark was available sealed by the boatload at $1 a piece as recently as 2002/2003 in Toys R Us overstock.

Even by 2009 you could still get sealed copies about $7/$8 (our own DreamTR was blowing out hundreds of copies at those prices).

And now in 2012 it's a $10 cart? That's one hell of a success story that speaks volumes about the longevity of the game...

I beat Goldeneye and Perfect Dark both all the way through on 00 Agent difficulty and unlocked all cheats for each. Goldeneye will always be my favorite but even I concede that Perfect Dark was the more refined game. Additions of bots in multiplayer, a centralized interactive hub with weapon training, guns with dual usage modes, etc. However, Goldeneye still has a more natural story and always will remain my favorite game of all time, ever.

But.... I also admit neither game has aged well. I could see how a kid growing up on X360/PS3 FPS games could find them unplayable.

[djshok]

I think the problem with Perfect Dark is how stupid the story and characters are. Silly gray aliens and little pew pew laser guns don't really compare to the time honored cool of James Bond. If they made PD without the aliens and just kept it to a tactical espionage game, I think it would've been much more memorable.