X05: Perfect Dark Zero: Hands-On
Joanna is looking very good.
by Charles Onyett
October 4, 2005 - Amid the pounding techno and caramel corn cones on the X05 show floor we located we managed to squeeze our way to a particularly crowded booth that held the almighty buzz-generator known as Perfect Dark Zero. The booth, which looked like an oversized ping pong ball cut in half, was running a multiplayer match of PDZ on its circular interior and the single player rooftop level in back.
We gravitated first to the multiplayer which was being played on an ice covered map called Tower. The environment was relatively small and full of snow covered spikes and terraces players were free to jump around on as well as a multistoried tower structure at one end that was positioned slightly lower than the surrounding landscape. Paths weaved through the snow drifts, and this is where the most action took place.
A wide range of Joanna's weaponry was available to pick up at certain points on the ground, including the RCP90, a shotgun, and a six shot revolver, and of course the standard scoped P9P. According to what was said at the press conference, Joanna's weapons will all have primary, secondary, and some even tertiary firing modes. With the P9P, which is a small pistol, we were able to screw on a silencer. The revolver shot one single shot and then automatically reloaded that bullet, allowing you to take a precise shot and then still have a full magazine should you need to fire off all six rounds. The RCP 90 and P9P both had extensive zoom functions, and the shotgun was devastating at short range.
One thing that immediately became apparent is that the reload animations are a beautiful thing to behold. The reload and weapon animations are irresistibly slick, like when Joanna flips up and screws on the P9P silencer or turns over the shotgun to lock in a shell then loads it with a satisfying hard clicking sound. The revolver had what we though to the most interesting firing animation, where your character's hand would rapidly slap the gun's hammer like in old Westerns. We found ourselves unloading ammunition when there weren't even any foes near just so we could reload as much as possible.
In terms of controls players could shoot with the right trigger, zoom with LT, LB makes your character do a barrel roll during which the game pans back to third person perspective. Y switches your weapons, RB is your alternate fire and the A button performs context sensitive actions like taking cover or hopping on a zipline. The game controlled relatively well for a console shooter, though at times the aiming felt a little too reactive.
The best part about the multiplayer was that there was absolutely no slowdown despite some frantic firing action. Granted, the graphics were stepped down from the single player mode; there weren't as many reflective surfaces, the gun models weren't as flashy, and the blurring effect that surrounds you when you turn or run wasn't as pronounced, but it still looked damn good. There were smooth shadows that perfectly reflected the different characters' body shapes and positions stretched across the snow.
Blasting enemies was a ton of fun, especially because as you fire away you'll see chunks of armor that correspond to where you hit them fly off and bounce to the ground. This armor isn't just cosmetic, you'll need to blast off a foe's helmet before you can headshot them.
After the round was over a stats screen popped up that showed all the kills and deaths of every player involved as well as some special stats like kills from behind and headshots. We then loaded up the single player and were immediately struck by how much more detailed the visuals were. The metropolitan rooftop level we were in stretched endlessly around us, full of glistening metal towers, flying cars, and gigantic translucent tubes. Again, despite the ridiculous amount of geometry and animation onscreen, we didn't notice any slowdown.
We got to use a few more weapons in single player as we took cover behind railings, used ziplines to cross from building to building, and smacked enemies in the face with our P9P melee attack. First was the Jackal sniper rifle which had a laser sight as an alternate fire that could be used in conjunction with the zoom for super accurate shots. Zooming with the sniper rifle was pressure sensitive. Depending on how far down you pressed RT, the scope would zoom from a factor of one to a factor of four. We also got a hold of the M60 machine gun. Firing this beast caused an amazingly high degree of screen shaking and accompanying blur effects, so we needed to have our targets lined up before we shot. It's alternate fire spat spiny proximity mines out the front of the gun.
A few other notable details include picture in picture plot events that pop up as you're progressing through a level and apparently improved enemy death physics. Enemies no longer pinball all over the place when shot and killed, but drop with a much more modest, realistic reaction to where they were shot. The bullets in PDZ carried a very satisfying sensation of weight.
Finally, at one point a few pigeons flew out from a section of scaffolding we were running across. We zoomed in on one and unloaded a few P9P rounds and were overjoyed to find the bird exploded in a bloody mess. Perfect Dark Zero was looking very impressive from what we got to play, we'll have more info as it comes in.
After getting some real hands on with the game, it sounds like they were much more impressed. Between this, and those PDZ videos, PDZ is looking MIGHTY impressive.
Little things like that make a SP game fun for me. HL2 had a lot of little details like that. Brings the world alive errr dead!
