The Perfect Agent
At A Glance
- Perfect Dark Zero's Joanna is the classic superspy, refined for the twenty-first century.
The Xbox 360™ masterpiece Perfect Dark Zero from Rare® has got lots of moxie—how many games do you know that have the temerity to put "perfect" right in the title?—plenty of style, and a perfect agent heroine that is herself an instant classic of the genre. If you're a fan of espionage thrillers, James Bond movies, and ladies that are as stunning as they are deadly, you, sir or madam, have found your game.
Saving the world, one mission at a time.
Perfect Dark Zero is a perfect (I really have to stop using that word, but it is perfect) example of how to make a game about a secret agent as packed with action and genre style as possible.
Allies
All the best secret agents work alone whenever they can, but even Bond needed Felix Leiter and Moneypenny to help out on occasion. The PDZ co-op mode is no different -- one player takes charge of Joanna, while the other takes charge of a mission-specific ally who has a different set of goals and, sometimes, even a different starting point. Work together to fight your way through the danger and reach objectives that change depending on your actions and the difficulty.
Challenges
Perfect Dark Zero has four difficulty settings, and I'm not talking about mere differences in the number of enemies or smarter artificial intelligence (A.I.) settings. Objectives change depending on the difficulty as well. The higher the difficulty, the better your score—when it comes to your gamer profile achievements, that's what it's all about.
Move over, James Bond.
Make way, Jack Ryan. Sam Fisher, stand in awe.
Gadgets
Even as a bounty hunter who has yet to meet the Carrington Institute, Joanna has got a bag of technological tricks that would send Q back to the drawing board. You pick one gadget along with weapons at the top of each mission, so choose wisely.
There's the Locktopus, which (aside from having the best gadget name ever) is your all-purpose lockpick. Go with the Demo Pack, as in "demolition," because you can never blow too many things up. Finally, the Data Thief is a hacking tool that's mighty handy in some of the high-tech environments Joanna finds herself in.
Gear
In addition to a wide array of weapons with multiple methods of fire, you also use found gadgets on some levels. Looking to make like old-school sixgties Bond? Steal a jet pack and launch yourself into the near future. You can also use vehicles in multiplayer that will make it much easier to move your team around.
Levels are designed with multiple routes
and methods in mind, and weapons are unlockable.
Wisdom
The single-player game is designed with replay in mind. And just like Sean Connery remade Thunderball as Never Say Never Again, Joanna Dark can "remake" her earlier missions with a little more experience and more futuristic gear. Levels are designed with multiple routes and methods in mind, and weapons are unlockable.
That means you can revisit an earlier level at any time and improve your score by using a weapon that you didn't have unlocked the first time through, or try the "plan B" that you never got around to using the first time.
The Stakes
No superspy worth his or her shoe-phone is going to roll out of bed in the morning for anything less than the fate of the world in the balance. Joanna's prequel adventure is just as critical, epic, and challenging as anything Hank Scorpio ever devised, and then some.
The Sounds
PDZ's sound design is amazing. The normal sound effects are flawless, and in full digital surround sound, also keep you alerted to nearby foes that might be off the radar. The music is perfect for a futuristic superspy—a little bit techno, a little bit jazzy, and a whole lot of goodness.
The Moves
Even before she gets recruited by the Carrington Institute, Joanna Dark is one killer babe. She can press against cover and take aim against the bad guys. She handles zip lines or stolen jetpacks with equal aplomb. She'll take out a foe with her fists if she wants to stay sneaky, or snipe from afar with almost any weapon in her arsenal. Did I mention she looks great doing it, too?
All in a day's work for Joanna Dark.
Utter Perfection
Move over, James Bond. Make way, Jack Ryan. Sam Fisher, stand in awe. Joanna Dark is the ultimate perfect agent, and Perfect Dark Zero is the perfect (there I go again) game for fans of great games and great spy thrillers alike.
Article by Danny Chihdo
