Perfect Dark/YMMV

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Both Trent and Cassandra get this treatment. Two Smug Snakes who were killed by the Skedar after failing for the last time and realizing Joanna was her best chance for revenge, respectively.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Are the Meat Sims really bad shots for missing constantly, or are they just fucking with you by shooting a perfect outline of you into the wall behind you?
• Crowning Music of Awesome:
  • The Arctic Crash Site level during the Air Force One mission has the most epic level music in the game.
  • "Mr. Blonde's Revenge" has awesome music. It's in 5/8 and sounds like the theme from The Terminator.
  • Don't forget "Livin In The Limelight" in the Nightclub Stakeout mission in Zero.
  • Or the SWAT 3 inspired music for "Defense" and the end credits, or the intro for Zero.
  • "Attack Ship" has pretty epic music as well.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The platoon of cloaking device-equipped, plasma rifle-wielding babes at the very end of Perfect Dark Zero that guard the path to the final boss. They can kill you in just a few shots, and dying to them drops you back all the way to the beginning of the bridge, forcing you to spend another 30 minutes fighting your way past the entire fricking dataDyne army.
  • The black-uniformed dataDyne guards from "Carrington Institute: Defense" are extremely frustrating, since they all have shields and wield Avengers. The only practical way to deal with them is to either empty an entire clip into their chests or use the Combat Boost and go for headshots. The RC-P120 is designed to cut through their shields quickly but it has limited ammo.
• Disappointing Last Level: The last two levels of the first game, especially the Shrine. There's one part where you have to extend a bridge with a block puzzle.
• Fan Dumb:
  • For the Xbox Live re-release, parts of the fan community were in outrage, because the game used a conventional, modern FPS setup (like Halo or Call of Duty, two of the options are even called Spartan and Duty Calls) instead of having the classic stick layout (where the stick moves turns and walks forward) and putting the look up/down and strafe on the buttons. This completely overlooks the fact that the only reason the N64 version used the buttons for look up/down and strafe was because the N64 controller only had one thumbstick (on the default 1.1 control configuration).
  • Apparently, they didn't realize that both Golden Eye 1997 and the original Perfect Dark had alternate control schemes. One of them (1.2) makes the analog stick look on both axes and both the D-Pad and C buttons move and strafe. Then there are the 2.x schemes usable in singleplayer, which use TWO gamepads for two analog sticks in a manner not much unlike later console FPSs, especially with 2.2, controller 2 in the left hand (movement/aim mode), and controller 1 (look/fire) in the right. Also, it should be noted that in the XBLA version's Advanced Control Options, "Legacy" swaps the look left/right and strafe axes, while another option can toggle the reticle in non-aim mode between floating and fixed.
  • Some Goldeneye fans were not happy about an Alien Invasion showing up in their Spiritual Successor. They refused to play past Area 51.
  • Perfect Dark Zero experienced some Hype Backlash (Microsoft really didn't know what to do about advertising it) and the fact that the genre the original helped revolutionize had innovated itself pretty far by the time Zero came out.
• Fashion Victim Villain: Trent. Those horrible maroon suits...
• Fridge Logic: In the first game Jo was portrayed as a British agent and a brunette. In Zero she was switched into a redheaded Canadian who, to add to the confusion, was voiced by an American actress based in England. This accent shift seems to have happened to every employee of the Carrington Institute except Carrington himself. Whether this is Executive Meddling or just plain weirdness, is hard to say. In the XBOX Live remake she was an Asian, with a British accent. The Initial Vector novelization attempts to Hand Wave this by citing the many countries she's been to, resulting in a fluctuating accent.
  • The Japanese release of the N64 version gave Joanna a very Asian face, but left most of everything else unchanged.
  • Word of God says she was always a redhead, the first game just had crappy graphics that made her hair look brown. That doesn't explain why she's still brunette in the XBLA remake, though.
  • Why do weapons like the Tranquilizer and Crossbow, both with an instant-kill alt-fire that does just that through chemical/poisonous means, take down an energy shield in one shot?
  • Why does the RC-P120's cloaking device use bullets as fuel, to the point of using the ones in the next clip right when the reload animation begins, all through the time you finish reloading?
  • Why does Joanna have to activate the autoguns herself in the Carrington Institute? There are guards placed all around the lower levels who could do it for her.
  • Joanna is surprised to see that Cassandra's been captured as well, to which she replies "there's no hiding from the Skedar". She was hidden so well in her office...
  • If the Skedar really are supposed to be mechas, as unlockable material implies, why do they bleed when shot?
  • Why is it that when the Skedar aren't disguised as Mr. Blondes, they are almost impossible to knock unconscious with your fists, but when they are disguised, they get knocked out just like any actual human?
• Game Breaker: The FarSight XR-20, oh so very much. One-Hit Kill weapon that shoots through walls and has an alt-fire that slowly auto-tracks other players? If you're fighting someone with one of these, you'd better hope he's a bad shot.
  • The K7 Avenger had a reduced clip compared to other auto weapons, but its damage per bullet was off the rails. A 2 or 3 round burst anywhere was enough to kill an unshielded player in a game where 4 to 6 bodyshots is the norm. It also had toggle-able trap detection as a bonus.
  • The SuperDragon counts as well, considering how overpowered explosives were in the first place. It had way too much ammo (five per pickup) which lent itself well to Grenade Spam.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • A+B to blow remote mines without the detonator was kept from Golden Eye 1997.
  • Seeing as how the detonator is just the secondary fire for the mines, though, this has a lot less utility than in Golden Eye 1997.
  • The AI cannot see any kind of trap, whether it's mines, a Dragon set to proximity destruct, or a Laptop Gun. This can be exploited handily in multiplayer.
  • Ending a stage with the Infrared Googles or X-Ray Scope shows the ending scene in Infrared or X-Ray, respectively. So the cameraman is wearing Joanna's classified tech now? It also works with the RC-P120's cloaking device, so you can be invisible in cutscenes.
  • Shoot an ammo box up into the air in multiplayer, then pick it up. When it respawns, it'll be floating in mid-air!
  • Sometimes when the Dragon is thrown to engage its booby-trap setting, it will just bounce around instead of landing. This can be very entertaining when an enemy gets close to it.
  • Thanks to glitches, it's possible to skip over huge parts of certain levels, such as the extendable bridge in "Skedar Ruins", and the entire first level can be completed in about five seconds on Agent this way.
• Guide Dang It/Nintendo Hard: Especially on Perfect Agent.
  • The "Crowning Glory" achievement in the XBLA remake for earning all the Leaderboard Crowns. Each Crown requires you to do a specific thing on a specific level on a specific difficulty, and there's no description of what these might be in the game, other than a crown's name and icon. Some are almost impossible to complete in Solo because they require the player to be in two places at once.
  • The Area51: Escape level actually has two endings. While both endings lead to the same conclusion at the beginning of the next mission, the less immediate takes much less time to complete and is almost mandatory if you want to beat the timer needed for one of the cheat codes.
• Halfway Plot Switch: Okay, Law Enforcement, Inc. versus a Mega Corp. Pretty good stuff. Government Conspiracy with an Evil Chancellor, makes sense. What's next - hey! Where did this Alien Invasion plotline come from? And what's it doing in this game?
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The ending of the original has Joanna, Elvis and the Maian fleet blow up a sacred Skedar shrine being occupied by violent extremists. The implication being that destroying the holiest site of the entire Skedar species will be such a decisive blow on both a strategic and psychological level that it will all but end the war. A decade later this can be simplified as suggesting the best way to end The War on Terror would be to blow up Mecca. The main distinction that's often overlooked however is that all Skedar actually worship war as opposed to being extremists who ignore the peaceful aspects of their religion.
  • In the Air Force One mission, guards who spot you will yell "It's a terrorist!"... while you try to prevent the plane from crashing.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The President of the United States in the first game is said to be idealistic and relatively youthful. Oh, and he's black. Eight years later, guess who acquires the presidency with the same persona?
• Memetic Mutation: "You can't make accusations like that without evidence. I asshume that you have some?"
• Narm: Pretty much everything the guards say.

"NOOOOOOO!" She's a tricky one... Was that a bullet? You got me! Why. Me. Get herrr. (Runs in alone into the room) Cover me!

• • Even better is when you're playing as a male character and the script doesn't change, so the guards will still say things like "She's a tricky one..."
• Narm Charm: The voice acting sometimes slips into this, due to the developers hiring British talent.
  • Trent Easton's American accent is horrid. It's extremely clear every time he opens his mouth that his voice actor was not American, but was trying to force it anyway. He still slips into Britishisms left and right.
  • The President's actor is generally more convincing, but a pretty amusing faux pas pops up anyway when he says the word "assume" as if he were a Brit.
• Nintendo Hard:
  • Ask fans about "Crash Site" and they'll tell you of a level that is just brutal, after the difficult infiltration and counterterrorism missions.
    • Two of your objectives are in really awkward out-of-the-way areas, and the level itself is freaking huge. There are Elite Mooks everywhere, often in groups or hidden away where they can rush in as reinforcements or shoot from afar.
    • Each event in the stage triggers more of them, and because everything is on multiple platforms you keep having to be on your toes from snipers and NSA agents tucked away in nooks and crannys, especially when they spawn after you've cleared an area.
    • Most parts of the stage have hidden walls that keep you from falling, but several don't. Run over these and you're dead.
    • A couple of the objectives require either a trick such as knowing to detonate a mine where there is a certain group of enemies, or going a certain way. If you don't know the right way to sneak up on Trent, you're screwed.
  • One objective is to blow up a ship, and you'd think the explosives would be useful. No, they don't do anything, you're better off using a gun if you have the ammo for it. Shooting it causes by far the biggest explosion in the game so far, far bigger than you'd expect, and this of course summons more enemies charging in, enemies on ledges to snipe you, enemies around corners.
  • And guess what? After this...it gets worse.
  • The best way to complete this level, and several of the others, is through Sequence Breaking. Rescue the President first so that's out of the way, then let his clone wander over to where the Skedar craft is, then shoot it with the magnum you conveniently just disarmed Trent of. The clone will be killed by the explosion and the legions of Mr. Blondes that would normally spawn after it's destroyed won't have a chance to attack you because the ending cutscene is triggered.
• The Scrappy: Many people find Elvis annoying, especially for his tendency to get in the way of the player's shooting. He does make up for this by being extremely deadly with the FarSight (and shouts "I'll kick your ass!" at enemies while fighting for you).
• Scrappy Level: "Maian SOS" on Perfect Agent is the worst level ever programmed for the Golden Eye 1997 engine. It's boring (being nothing but "Area 51: Rescue" in reverse), long, and overly difficult, and you have no choice but to complete it with half your health missing. As well, it's a stealth mission and the only weapon worth a damn in the entire level is the extremely noisy Dragon. Good luck!
• Scrappy Weapon: The MagSec. Decent in burst mode up close, horrible everywhere else. When firing in single shot mode, you'd better hope you get headshots.
  • The game has so many guns it would have been impossible to balance them all. Another example would be the Cyclone, which would carve pretty human silhouettes, but would hardly hit anything. Unless you were crouching.
  • The Sniper Rifle wasn't an extremely bad weapon by itself, but it was overshadowed greatly by the FarSight. Besides, its model was too bulky and took half of the screen.
• Shocking Swerve: "You have failed, Easton. You are a flawed device, and we need you no-" HOLY SHIT MR. BLONDE IS A FUCKING ALIEN
• Special Effect Failure: A Plot Hole is created by a slightly patchy repair of a Special Effect Failure about halfway through the game. It seems the intent was that the player would see Trent on Air Force One flanked by two Mr. Blondes, and this would be the first indication there was more than one of them. Unfortunately, this being an N64-era shooter, playtesters didn't exactly cotton on to the idea of multiple identical characters being somehow unusual. Instead, Joanna says "and what about those blond guys?" at the start of the previous mission, despite only having seen a single Mr. Blonde prior to that mission.
• That One Level: "Carrington Institute: Defense" (infinitely spawning Demonic Spiders with shields wielding K7 Avengers) and "Attack Ship: Covert Assault" (Warring Without Weapons ahoy!) on Perfect Agent. Among the bonus levels, "Maian SOS", and "War!" is even harder.
• Unfortunate Implications:
  • Newcomers to Perfect Dark's HD remake may have seen the notion of destroying the holy shrine of a radical species of aliens in order to end their fanatical warmongering in a very different light than its original players. See Harsher in Hindsight above.
  • One of the big selling points when the game was being developed was the ability to take a photo with the Game Boy camera, load it into the game and use the photos as characters. When the game was released the option was left out. Rare eventually admitted that in light of Columbine and other school shootings the ability to take photos of schoolmates and teachers to shoot in game was removed.
  • The fact that some of the enemies cackle at killing women is a little... off.
  • Joanna comes out of unconsciousness in a prison cell on the Skedar mothership with her dress torn. Uhh... Does This Remind You of Anything?? Thankfully, this because of her Action Dress Rip during the unexpected Skedar attack of the last mission.
• What an Idiot!: Daniel, repeatedly. Taking Dr. Caroll to his lightly-defended villa rather than the heavily secured Carrington Institute? Check. Selling dataDyne the sniper rifles and handguns the force storming the building used? Check. Repeatedly ignoring the recommendations of his top agent and pointlessly endangering the life of the President of America? Check. And so on.
  • The President isn't much better. He knows enough to turn down Trent's recommendations, but why he doesn't simply fire such an Obviously Evil advisor is a mystery.