REV 09 said:
Playing this makes me surprised that people hated on PDZ so much. Sure PDZ is somewhat janky and odd compared to the Halo's and COD's, but now I know why...Rare really kept the feel of many things PD in PDZ instead of making PDZ more current like a Halo or COD.
I didn't expand on this in my previous post, but I find playing PD again has helped clarify some of the issues with the sequel. Zero does a few things differently that radically alters the PD experience. So I'll expand.
The main things I see are that the levels are bigger and more straightforward in Zero, which does make it more like modern shooters in relation to PD. This occured to me while playing through Crash Site in PD. It's a small level, and you can proceed through it in a couple different significant ways. You basically start in the middle and move outwards in whatever direction you want. There are no checkpoints, no linear sense of beginning and end (the level ends when you complete the last of your objectives, not when you reach a destination), and objectives can even be completed in a non-linear fashion (I like to get Elvis protecting the president before I go into the caves for the clone, though there are faster ways to accomplish the same goals). There's nothing like this level in the sequel. Perfect Dark Zero does not have a level analogous to Crash Site.
This goes back to the element of freedom and player choice some of us have been discussing. PD does it well because the levels are small, which is my major point. The scope in Zero is larger and loses sight of some of these elements of design. It does still resemble PD in a number of ways, of course, such as the dynamic objectives in difficulty levels, and it retains a certain degree of choice - I remember there being a couple ways, stealh or aggression, through the Hong Kong club level, for example. But every level has a clear beginning and end, a sense of progression. The game is designed to move you through checkpoints. The game even has autosave checkpoints! Zero often feels more like you're being pushed through a shooting gallery. The game also has boss encounter scenarios throughout, like the cowboy assassins, or the flying ship on Rooftops. When you factor in the removal of checkpoints on increased difficulty levels with the overall increase in scope, levels that are larger and last longer (even though the amount of objectives per level is not much different than PD), it starts to feel like a drag.
Imagine: With Zero, a mission like the Area 51 infliltration and escape would be a single level with primary and secondary objectives, and a checkpoint in the middle (removed on Dark Agent). That it's explicitly split into different stages in PD, even though sections of the first level carry over to the next, is important in terms of the game's pacing and how the player experiences the game.
I don't hate Perfect Dark Zero. I did enjoy aspects of it upon release. But it's not Perfect Dark; that game is its own beast, and I don't think Rare is going to make another game like it.
I'm thoroughly enjoying Perfect Dark again, and the more age-y stuff ( like the faces with no expression or lip-movement ) just makes me smile.
