I Think I Lost My Headache
by natetodamax
So today I finished Perfect Dark, which I bought off the Xbox LIVE Marketplace shortly after it came out. Okay, well, I didn't completely finish it. But I think I'm on the last mission, and that's good enough for me because...... ...... Holy crap, this game is painful. Really, the only good thing I got out of it was the memories of Goldeneye 007 that came back to me as I played it. Now that I t...
So today I finished Perfect Dark, which I bought off the Xbox LIVE Marketplace shortly after it came out. Okay, well, I didn't completely finish it. But I think I'm on the last mission, and that's good enough for me because......
...... Holy crap, this game is painful.
Really, the only good thing I got out of it was the memories of Goldeneye 007 that came back to me as I played it. Now that I think about it, Perfect Dark also made me love today's first person shooters even more. It made me love the fact that developers aren't making games like it anymore.
Screw you Suit Dude. You don't make things better. Playing through the campaign, I couldn't stop myself from getting headaches as I played. When I think about it, it may be the aftereffect of the lightning fast movement speed combined with the 60 frames per second that made it seem like I was gliding across some ice equipped with a pair of skates that were propelled by sizable rockets. But really, I think the physical pain the game caused me was a result of the horrible missions structure. In present-day shooters you are given clear objectives, and most of the time it's easy to figure out where you need to be going. You see, Perfect Dark isn't anything like that. Or rather, modern day shooters aren't anything like Perfect Dark. You are given three objectives immediately before every mission, and the game does absolutely nothing to show you how to complete these. An objective as simple as "Disable the shields" can turn into a pathetic 20 minute long journey through the entire level trying to figure out how to disable said shields. There is no map or helpful waypoints of any kind. I find myself being strained to complete every mission in the game because it doesn't make clear what I need to be doing. The constant state of being lost has lead me to getting headaches nearly every time I've played, because running in circles through every part of a level is never a fun thing to do. And if, by chance, I wasn't getting a headache, I was getting enormously frustrated at the dumb level design that would place objectives in inconspicuous locations, or at Elvis who seems to enjoy falling behind and getting murdered.
I think Perfect Dark is the first game to cause me pain. That's not cool :(