Latest in my attack on (at least) one title from my 633 game backlog every day that the UK is in 'lock-down'.
I'm not planning on completing them, just playing them for long enough to know: A) What they're all about and B) If they're good enough to continue playing ASAP
The GBC is one of my favourite handhelds so I was intrigued when the randomiser chose...
Perfect Dark on the Game Boy Color
Made as a showcase of what the hardware could achieve, Perfect Dark has big, beautifully animated sprites, lots of in game speech, lots of colour, a rumble pack built in, support for infrared transfer and even content for the mighty Game Boy Printer.Sadly, the usually reliable folks a Rare were apparently so busy doing all this that they forgot to make an entertaining game.
Viewed from a weird kind-of-above, kind-of-side-on, not-quite-isometric view, the game tries to offer about four different types of gameplay. This is admirable, but only one of them is actually any fun - and one of them is game-breakingly bad.
Firstly, there's the run around killing guys sections. Thanks to the tiny screen and large sprites your only hope here is to stand toe-to-toe and trade bullets until someone dies (and hope it's them). The game tries to balance this out by letting you search the corpses for health and bullets, with which it is admittedly pretty generous, but which is also very slow and repetitive.
Secondly there are door 'puzzles' which are literally 4 colour, 'Simon says' efforts... should you forget the sequence the only way to quit and retry is to get it wrong another 2 times... every bit as enjoyable as you'd imagine.
Next there's the shooting galleries. It's the very definition of damning with feint praise to say that these are the most entertaining sections in the game. They are little Operation Wolf style affairs that mix up the pace nicely and work well.
Lastly, and most frustratingly of all, given the pedigree, we have what is laughable called the 'Stealth' mechanic. During the game you can walk and run. Walking is 'stealth', if you can walk up behind an enemy undetected they can be killed with one shot. Given this is the GBC the simplified concept is sound. However, given this is the GBC, the screen is so small (made smaller by a health bar covering the entire right side) that the stealth approach is like trying to sneak up on someone in a lift. Does that sound bad? How about if you add an insta-fail mechanic to the mix? Yeah? no.
Perfect Dark (GBC) - A great example of how all the polished presentation in the world can't save a very bad game.
Previously...
Day One was the excellent Luminees II on PSP
Day Two was the fun-but-probably-better-in-co-op Sanctum 2 on PC
Day Three was the pretty ropey but maybe worth a second chance on PS2 Dead to Rights 2 on Xbox
Day Four was the utterly stunning Pyre on PC
Day Five was the horribly aged but undeniably addictive skate it on the Wii
Day Six was the endearing and surprisingly competent Enduro Racer for the Sega Master System
Day Seven was the fun for a (very) quick burst Space Pirate Trainer in VR
Day Eight was the disappointingly awkward Draconus on ZX Spectrum
Day Nine was the idiosyncratic Ring of Red on PS2
Day Ten I lost half my text while trying to explain how Assassin's Creed: Syndicate on PC was a pleasant, if simplistic, surprise.
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