This review was originally published in March 2010. We're updating and republishing it to mark the game's arrival in the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack N64 library . From its debut in 1997, developer Rare and the terrifying digital avatar of Pierce Brosnan ruled over the console shooter space with the Nintendo 64 tie-in of a then-two-year-old Bond movie, GoldenEye 007 .
Not only did it justify the genre on consoles while proving that movie games didn’t have to suck, it became one of the defining multiplayer experiences of its generation. Rare and Nintendo eventually seceded the Bond license to EA, which enabled the good folks in Twycross to flex their creative muscles without having to worry about fitting a licence (or paying royalties on game sales to the licence holder). Three years later, the team's new FPS emerged bigger, badder, and better than the old king, and that game was Perfect Dark .
Without the restrictions of a licence, and in the new context of a futuristic sci-fi world where alien technology was within grasp, Rare was able to implement whatever crazy idea the team and its vocal fanbase could come up with, exceptionally visible in the arsenal: a laptop that turned into an automatic weapon that could then be mounted as a sentry gun; a machine gun that could render you invisible for a short while; a one-hit-kill sniper rifle that could track through walls like that rail gun from Eraser ; pinball hand grenades. The story is part Blade Runner , part Ghos.