The inhabitants of the PDZ world look a bit too cartoon like, while the faces seem, well, drawn on. Rare has also used tone mapping to create HDR effects in the game, although it didn’t seem to be as apparent as the HDR seen in recent PC games.īut like I said, the graphics are a mixed bag – while some of the scenery looks amazing, the character models just don’t look very, well, next generation. This is a technique that ATI was making a big fuss about at the Radeon X1000 launch, and judging by the results seen in PDZ I can understand why. Rare confirmed that it had employed Paralax Occlusion Mapping to create the stunning textures on the walls. I had the pleasure of meeting up with the guys from Rare last week to have a chat about PDZ. There are levels and areas in PDZ where I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing and just stared at the amazing lighting or superb textures – mundane scenery such as brickwork had me stopping in my tracks it looks that good. However, in reality the visuals are a mixed bag – some of the graphics do look a bit lacklustre and retro, but some of the visuals are truly staggering. There’s been a lot of comment on the Web about the disappointing graphics in PDZ, and if you’re only going by the screenshots you could be forgiven for thinking this. The gameplay is essentially still linear, but having the option to fulfil or ignore the secondary objectives throws a bit of variety into the mix. Like the original Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, PDZ is split into different missions where specific objectives need to be completed – some of them primary, some secondary. Set before the original game, PDZ sees Joanna working as a freelance operative with her father – she hasn’t been recruited by the Carrington Institute yet but the storyline heads towards that end from the outset. Instead Microsoft bought Rare and Joanna Dark missed out on an entire generation of console hardware.īut now, with the launch of the Xbox 360 Rare has unleashed Joanna once more and produced one of the best launch titles in the shape of Perfect Dark Zero. When Nintendo launched the GameCube, Perfect Dark fans like myself couldn’t wait for Rare to set Joanna loose on the new platform, but it never happened. This drove you to play the game through several times and complete it on every difficulty level. Like Goldeneye before it, Perfect Dark employed a mission strategy whereby the harder the difficulty level the more objectives you needed to complete. The fact that you needed the N64 expansion pack to play it in the first place, meant that the visuals were certainly a cut above Mr Bond’s efforts. Perfect Dark was a superb first person shooter and in some respects it even eclipsed Goldeneye. The upshot of this was that Rare needed to create its own hero (or should I say heroine) – the result was Joanna Dark, a sultry and sexy secret agent who was more than a match for Lara Croft. You see after the phenomenal success of Goldeneye, James Bond became super-cool once more and Rare lost the licence to another developer. In fact Goldeneye was so good, that N64 owners practically counted down each day until Rare released another Bond classic, but unfortunately it never came. Now there’s bound to be loads of Halo fans out there who think I’m insane, but superb as Bungie’s masterpiece is, Goldeneye was, and still is the benchmark. Let me get something straight, Goldeneye on the N64 is the Daddy of all console based first person shooters.
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