Perfect Dark XBLA Rare Retrospective

When it comes to the list of titles from Rare’s N64 days eligible for a hi-def modern relaunch through Xbox LIVE Arcade, Perfect Dark is always poised and ready near the top. And now, finally, its opportunity has arrived. Ten years on, Jo Dark is reliving the conspiracy.

   Boldly succeeding GoldenEye with a brand new franchise and lead character, PD introduced gamers of the year 2000 to Field Operative Joanna Dark, given the callsign ‘Perfect Dark’ for a record-breaking performance in training. She arrived with plenty of story-rich baggage in tow: a murky past, erratic relations with colleagues and superiors at the Carrington Institute, a plethora of guns and gadgets on hand and an increasingly intense – and violent – campaign for justice against the dataDyne Corporation.

   Closer scrutiny of Joanna’s early years and initiation into the life of a contracted Agent would come later, with the debut of prequel Perfect Dark Zero in 2005. But the original Perfect Dark saw the player dropped into the thick of the action with Joanna already hot on the trail of dataDyne and the much greater conspiracy spearheaded by the company.

   Agent Dark’s global crusade would see her face not just corporate predators and one knife-edge objective after another, but also the attentions of more than one alien race emerging from the shadows. The neon-washed streets of 2023 Chicago were only the beginning. And now both PDveterans and a new generation of gamers have another chance to experience the saga first-hand.

   At the helm of this revamped version are 4J Studios, who cut their teeth on recent Xbox LIVE Arcade versions of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie. All the core single-player and multiplayer features of the original PD release make the transition intact, with the addition of much-improved 1080p HD visuals, a boosted framerate, achievements, Avatar awards, the mysterious Crowns system and, in the biggest undertaking for Rare IP on XBLA yet, online functionality over Xbox LIVE including leaderboards and multiplayer action for up to eight combatants. And with hardware having moved on in recent years, you will no longer require an Expansion Pak for Maximum Gameplay. It’s all good, and it’s been available to download from Xbox LIVE Arcade since March 17th, 2010.