29th November 2005, 10:01 AM
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3145846&did=1
I have to say this article seems a little unforgiving on a few things. First of all, for all the hype, we all have to admit the storyline in Perfect Dark really wasn't anything that spectacular, or original, or even terribily interesting. It did exactly what it needed to do though, and that was motivate you to proceed through the game and tie everything together. Just keep in mind, I have the same opinion of Goldeneye's story. Stereotypical spy stuff that only keeps the interest of boring men going through midlife crisis.
One question not answered in this review is one I really would like addressed: do the mission objectives dynamically update during missions? TWINE did NOT compare to GE or PD, but they did do that right. Rare may well have learned this themselves. It makes for a fun first time through when you read the objectives and the starting intel only to find that, once something has happened in the actual mission, there's a change of plans and you get a message indicating an objective has changed or been dropped. This should go across all "priority levels" of objectives. Basically, I'm saying there should be no spoilers hidden in the starting objectives for a mission.
They complain that the story isn't that interesting and the characters aren't lovable. Well, okay Elvis is absent (since this is before Joanna first found out about aliens), so I'll give them the latter. The former? That may be true too, but that's been the case in every FPS I've yet played. In what way is Halo's story all that compelling? I mean, the message about religion withstanding, it was pretty typical (and at this point that message is getting typical too). I have yet to play Half-Life, and apparently that's about the only FPS with a story worth anything. But, excepting that until later judgement, that still leaves the FPS genre with only one working storyline archetype. Some are a little more stealthy, but the general rule is you are alone and things have to either be killed or avoided, and there's an evil group of some kind with "the armies". You aren't going to find an evil chancellor wispering sweet nothings into an all too trusting king's ear, at least, not without having to shoot one of them while it's happening. There's not going to be a "you vs the environment" survival story short of the environment being wild beasts. The story is fairly locked, and also has to have good gameplay without taking up too much time, so it can never really do much more than tie levels together and provide objectives.
They complain that the objective lists disjoint the game. Well, okay. How would you do it? In a game like Halo, every level, if played directly and not selected from a list, leads directly to the next with little more than cinema between. You really have no idea when one level begins and the other ends until you exit the game and look at the menu. Perfect Dark tosses up an objective box for you to review between levels. It's very obvious where levels start and finish. This isn't really a bad thing actually. Many PC FPS games still do that.
If they want it changed, how about a fully fleshed out "world" experience? Not Metroid, but something like a "flow" from one event to the next. No "mission complete" would ever appear in such a game, but rather you would "cash in" on objectives when you decided to escape whatever level you last flew to. That would be the way of it. Flying around and invading areas causing direct changes. It would mix adventure and FPS in an interesting way that MP didn't (in the end, MP really was pretty much a Zelda game with Metroid abilities done in First Person, barely anything FPS about it). It's something Rare may do in the future, but for what it is the "old way" does the job just fine and I really don't think the average person is going to care.
I've heard nothing about a map maker... I suppose we'll need to wait on something like that...
How much you want to bet Rare tossed in a replacement for the DK cheat that instead replaces all the in-game characters with N64 level versions of them?
I have to say this article seems a little unforgiving on a few things. First of all, for all the hype, we all have to admit the storyline in Perfect Dark really wasn't anything that spectacular, or original, or even terribily interesting. It did exactly what it needed to do though, and that was motivate you to proceed through the game and tie everything together. Just keep in mind, I have the same opinion of Goldeneye's story. Stereotypical spy stuff that only keeps the interest of boring men going through midlife crisis.
One question not answered in this review is one I really would like addressed: do the mission objectives dynamically update during missions? TWINE did NOT compare to GE or PD, but they did do that right. Rare may well have learned this themselves. It makes for a fun first time through when you read the objectives and the starting intel only to find that, once something has happened in the actual mission, there's a change of plans and you get a message indicating an objective has changed or been dropped. This should go across all "priority levels" of objectives. Basically, I'm saying there should be no spoilers hidden in the starting objectives for a mission.
They complain that the story isn't that interesting and the characters aren't lovable. Well, okay Elvis is absent (since this is before Joanna first found out about aliens), so I'll give them the latter. The former? That may be true too, but that's been the case in every FPS I've yet played. In what way is Halo's story all that compelling? I mean, the message about religion withstanding, it was pretty typical (and at this point that message is getting typical too). I have yet to play Half-Life, and apparently that's about the only FPS with a story worth anything. But, excepting that until later judgement, that still leaves the FPS genre with only one working storyline archetype. Some are a little more stealthy, but the general rule is you are alone and things have to either be killed or avoided, and there's an evil group of some kind with "the armies". You aren't going to find an evil chancellor wispering sweet nothings into an all too trusting king's ear, at least, not without having to shoot one of them while it's happening. There's not going to be a "you vs the environment" survival story short of the environment being wild beasts. The story is fairly locked, and also has to have good gameplay without taking up too much time, so it can never really do much more than tie levels together and provide objectives.
They complain that the objective lists disjoint the game. Well, okay. How would you do it? In a game like Halo, every level, if played directly and not selected from a list, leads directly to the next with little more than cinema between. You really have no idea when one level begins and the other ends until you exit the game and look at the menu. Perfect Dark tosses up an objective box for you to review between levels. It's very obvious where levels start and finish. This isn't really a bad thing actually. Many PC FPS games still do that.
If they want it changed, how about a fully fleshed out "world" experience? Not Metroid, but something like a "flow" from one event to the next. No "mission complete" would ever appear in such a game, but rather you would "cash in" on objectives when you decided to escape whatever level you last flew to. That would be the way of it. Flying around and invading areas causing direct changes. It would mix adventure and FPS in an interesting way that MP didn't (in the end, MP really was pretty much a Zelda game with Metroid abilities done in First Person, barely anything FPS about it). It's something Rare may do in the future, but for what it is the "old way" does the job just fine and I really don't think the average person is going to care.
I've heard nothing about a map maker... I suppose we'll need to wait on something like that...
How much you want to bet Rare tossed in a replacement for the DK cheat that instead replaces all the in-game characters with N64 level versions of them?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)