In the middle of it all is Joanna Dark, an agent for Carrington Institute tasked with uncovering dataDyne’s plots. The struggles between these two races have found their way to Earth, with the Maians finding allies in the Carrington Institute, a research and development facility and the Skedar serving as benefactors to the corrupt dataDyne corporation, who are using Skedar technology and weapons for nefarious means. The setting for Perfect Dark sees two alien races at war with each other the Maians, who resemble the typical gray alien archetype, and the Skedar, vicious reptilian creatures who can use holographic technology to disguise as humans. While Perfect Dark once felt like an all-time great, it now comes across as a merely decent FPS outing. The tonal shift allowed for some fun additions to what Goldeneye started (alien weapons!), and though the 360 release and an Xbox One controller make Perfect Dark more playable than Goldeneye by modern standards, it has still felt the effects of aging. The game in question ended up being the 2000 N64 title Perfect Dark, an original IP that combined Goldeneye’s gameplay with a new science fiction setting. It was inevitable that Rare would seek to create a sequel, but after losing the James Bond license, the developer had to start from scratch, opting for a spiritual successor to continue Goldeneye 007’s legacy. Based on the James Bond film released two years prior, the video game adaptation proved to be the far more influential entity, single-handedly reinventing the first-person shooter genre on home consoles, which remain the most prominent genre of video game on home platforms even today.

In 1997, Rare (then known as Rareware) released Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64. *Review based on Perfect Dark’s Xbox 360 re-release as part of Rare Replay*

Perfect dark multiplayer