Perfect Dark has infiltrated Nintendo Switch Online in a surprise announcement that caught everyone off guard at this week’s Nintendo Direct which excited many a gamer, myself included. Perfect Dark back in the day seemingly did the impossible by standing shoulder to shoulder with Goldeneye, a game many didn’t think would be able to be matched, yet Rare pulled a rabbit out of their hat and here we are. Debuting under the new N64 “Mature” App, Perfect Dark allows players to embark on a Sci-fi espionage adventure as well as offering up online multiplayer. What’s It Like? Power up your shields, log into the Carrington Institute, and gear up as we review Perfect Dark for Nintendo Switch Online.
For those who haven’t experienced the game before, Perfect Dark sees you step into the role of Joanna Dark, an espionage operative from the Carrington Institute tasked with retrieving a scientist who wanted to defect from the evil DataDyne corporation. The story takes a lot of wild turns and has some impressive set pieces like infiltrating Air Force One, sabotaging an ocean research vessel, and storming Area 51. Perfect Dark was free from the constraints of the 007 license, allowing Rare to have a bit of fun with both character and mission design, upping the ante and scale compared to Goldeneye. The game has slick and refined shooting mechanics, adding secondary fire to weapons, as well as more outlandish gadgets and a refined hand-to-hand combat system. The game took full advantage of the N64 Expansion Pack, allowing everything to be bigger and better, and despite gamers’ seemingly insurmountable expectations, it managed to exceed them.
Graphically, Perfect Dark took a step up by adding new lighting effects, additional debris and tracers, and more detailed environments. Despite its age, it still looks great for what it is, cementing it as one of the best-looking Nintendo 64 titles available. Environments are detailed, characters are more fleshed out, and the variety of locales makes every mission exciting to explore. There are plenty of game modes to keep you busy on top of the campaign, with challenges to unlock multiplayer arenas and features, co-op play, and counter-operative, that see one player try to beat the campaign while another does everything in their power to stop them. These modes add to the longevity of the game as you’re rarely looking for something to do. Much like Goldeneye’s replayability with difficulty and mission structure, Perfect Dark ups the ante with each difficulty level, adding more objectives to complete. Challenge modes start off with fairly run-by-numbers modes, but open up to some incredibly difficult scenarios, offering amazing rewards like classic Goldeneye maps in Multiplayer.
Another standout feature of Perfect Dark was a continuation of the stellar Soundtrack by Grant Kirkhope and Graham Norgate who set a high bar with the likes of Goldeneye, as well as David Clynick, and managed to bring an epic sci-fi covert style score to set the mood. The score offers both calm and frantic scores that get the adrenaline pumping like when you’re quietly infiltrating a research lab, or frantically searching for a bomb while evacuating hostages. The sound design is well done with futuristic weapons and environmental ambiance, which is only slightly down by so-so voice acting and bad guys proclaiming “Why… Me?” every 15 seconds as you rampage through levels.
With NSO comes both online and local multiplayer that works exactly like Goldeneyes. There’s no online matchmaking, but you can invite 3 other friends to a session to duke it out in a range of online arenas. You will need to unlock more weapons, levels, and game modes by completing challenges to get the most out of your game but when you do, Multiplayer is still better than ever, offering frantic split-screen fun, as well as the options to add bots into the fray. Level design is balanced and well thought out, and includes some special throwbacks to Goldeneye for those with the patience to wade through the myriad of challenges that await. For this review, we tested both local and online play and found it to be a serviceable experience despite what I’ve read.
Co-op seemed to fare best, with both online and local play performing decently within the engine constraints. There were slowdown and performance issues that were present in the original release, but overall I found it to be playable despite this. Online multiplayer seemed to perform well with 2 players and 4 bots, offering the same frantic and fun gameplay I grew up with as a kid. Four-player multiplayer didn’t have a consistent framerate, but was playable and fun as well. Whether online or local, there didn’t seem to be any lagging issues during our session despite having a fairly average internet connection here in central Queensland. I have read a few reports of other people having an almost unplayable experience online, and maybe I was just lucky, but I was unable to replicate these issues, even deploying mines and trying to push the engine as much as I could. I’m not sure if this comes down to regions or the game or whatnot, and as much as I wish I could provide a more definite answer, I feel like it will be one of those things you will have to test for your own experience.
Unfortunately, it pains me to say that this emulated version of Perfect Dark, may in fact, be the worst version of the game to play due to some horrendous emulation issues. During my comprehensive playthrough, I experienced nauseating framerates while using night vision, the blur effect being overly aggressive to the point of breaking the game, repeated drops in frames (which may come down to the engine) and it fails to look as sharp as Goldeneye when compared side by side. Another weird issue I noticed is the pervasive light flares, which seem to be on top of everything, including going through your weapons. Aside from the graphical emulation issues, there were a few occasions when sound distorted during play, sounding like I was being unplugged from the matrix, and the speech audio was significantly quiet and washed out, making following story sequences difficult. We have seen similar issues before that were addressed rather quickly, so here’s hoping it gets patched up and given the love this game so rightly deserves.
As an offering under the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass membership, it’s great value for money to complement the existing back catalogue of N64 games. While OCD people like me would have preferred it under the one app, the N64 Mature app could be promising a new range of titles which is an exciting endeavor. It’s just a shame that this surprise announcement of one of the quintessential Nintendo 64 games arrived in the state it has. While a few bugs and port issues still didn’t dull my time with the game, it did make it less than perfect. Here’s hoping Nintendo is quick to patch and fix Perfect Dark and the N64 Mature app so this phenomenal game gets the love and attention it deserves.
So, What’s It Like? Perfect Dark is like Goldeneye, set in the future.