After years of hype, Perfect Dark Zero is finally with us. The prequel to Perfect Dark, this takes us back to the days when she was a mere trainee, following in her father Jack’s footsteps. Originally planned for the GameCube, then the Xbox and finally the Xbox 360, we’re glad we’ve had to wait, because we can’t imagine how it would have looked without the X360’s power behind it.

PDZ puts you in the shoes of Joanna three years before the original game’s story, as you work your way up the ladder in training to become the next great secret agent. At times you find yourself sucked into a world of intrigue, espionage and danger from every angle. There are forces at work intent on world domination. As usual for these criminal types, only you (and your dad) stand in the way of these shady schemes. As the game evolves, you delve deeper into the mystery, and your goal is to save the world – and yourselves in the process.

If this sounds like just another spy story, then that's because it is. PDZ follows your normal spy-game ideals, but with a thick coating of X360 gloss. Thankfully it also offers addictive, solid gameplay that though hardly new, is done with the usual Rare flourishes. For example, there are no FMV cutscenes. Instead, everything that you see in the game is rendered in realtime using the game’s engine. We’d been looking forward to playing final code of this game with ever increasing anticipation, but a whole new level of excitement took us over when we picked up the pad and armed ourselves, Dark style.

Wanting to get into Joanna’s past, we opted for the single-player story and things started off easily enough, as the Agent mode got under way. First impressions weren’t favourable though, as arrows popped up all over the screen, pointing out where we needed to go at every turn. Is this really next-gen gaming? After all, chances are if you’re picking up a copy of PDZ at launch, then you know the basics of First Person Shooters. Dumbing down the gameplay and being led through the levels like this isn’t a good starting point for a new console. That said, the odd subtle arrow pointing out where you need to go does beat getting lost and wasting your time searching for an exit in the wrong area. Anyway, as you move up the difficulty modes, things like this become less intrusive, though the arrows will still pop up.

After a couple of the levels, we reach one of the first standout parts of the game on the rooftops, where the mission aim is to protect Jack from the masses of gunmen and snipers inbetween him and his goal. This gave us a great chance to try out some of the firepower, including the fully auto RCP- 90, a handy pistol and of course, the sniper rifle itself. As the game unfolds, you get to play with a number of different weapons and gadgets both old and new; for example, there is a prototype of the Laptop gun found in the original game. There are also a variety of vehicles to get to grips with, including a hovercraft and a jetpack. The problem is, weapon-wise you have a limited amount of slots to fill. Four slots wide, a pistol takes one slot, whereas the RCP or a rifle may take two or three. Also, the weight of the weapon drawn will affect your movement speed. Pistols will give you minimal slow down, but rocket launchers will make you look like you’re out for a Sunday stroll through quicksand. All this means you have to consider what guns you’ll need, and how you plan to take on each level. This is more like it, further depth to familiar gameplay – those kindergarten arrows are drifting from memory already.

When you see gun-wielding villains dressed head-to-toe in shiny spandex hiding round the corner of the nearby rooftop, the game's Cover mode allows you to stand prone to the wall and aim at your assailants without taking a hit. This is a very useful move, which will save your ass on many an occasion. However, it’s also worth noting that while a slab of concrete protects Joanna, you can’t necessarily see everything happening around the corner. Basically, if Joanna can’t see it, then you can’t see it. A rhythm of popping from behind the wall, blazing away at the enemy and swinging back to reload and recoup soon became the norm.

However, on the lower difficulty settings we did notice that the AI wasn’t too clever when using this cover-fire tactic. They wouldn’t try and flank us, rush us or even duck for cover when coming under fire. Even on the lower settings you'd expect some more realistic responses, especially from a flagship game on the next-generation of consoles – even Halo managed this much.

Speaking of Halo, a review of a flagship launch game from Microsoft and an FPS to boot wouldn’t be complete without a few nods to Bungie’s classic. As with Halo, there are no health packs lying around the levels. Instead, you will need to use cover to give yourself time to regain what health you can. There are two types of damage: permanent and shock, but both can be regained when out of combat situations. The end result is a game that offers moments of frantic gunplay followed by short silences, as you and the enemy back off to recoup health and take a breather.

Though we have some gripes with the lower difficulty settings when playing the single-player campaign, there are some interesting ideas being implemented to level out the experience. Each level is expected to take you half an hour to complete in Agent mode. However, this rises when blasting through Secret Agent, and Perfect Agent, with the hardest level (Dark Agent) expected to take you up to two hours to complete. That’s two hours of solid gunplay for every single level. This is a result of the level design changing with each setting. Dependent on your difficulty setting, different routes with more objectives, puzzles and AI to contend with will present themselves. With such variety you could play through each difficulty without getting bored, and with 14 levels per mode, this could add up to 70 hours gameplay in total.

Of course, we couldn’t go any further without mentioning the amazing graphics and how it adds to the game. As you’re no doubt starting to figure out, X360 screenshots do not do the games anywhere near enough justice. Until you see the game in action for yourself, you are only getting a glimpse of the detail, and just how beautiful it looks in-game. In the subway level, after destroying a team of deadly assassins in a murky indoor parking lot, we spent the next five minutes checking out the walls, flooring, lights… everything.

On first glance the graphics are jaw dropping. Graphically, games usually tend to use a technique called Bump Mapping, however, PDZ uses an advanced technique called Parallax Mapping alongside Normal Mapping, which makes a flat object appear to be a 3D one. So instead of a wall with a brick image layered on, it will have a wall with bricks that look like they physically stand out. In fact, they stand out so much, that your brain thinks that if you touch them, you’ll be able to feel the bumps and textures. The trick is that there are no extra polygons involved, but instead the lighting develops the effect by adding how much light should be on a brick from a certain direction in real life. The only downfall to this technique is that dull objects sometimes appear shiny; like a tree, for example. The end result is an impressively smooth game that can seem a little fake at times, a little too plastic. However, as a stylish, unique-looking and solid game world, PDZ definitely hits all the markers.

The extra memory in the X360 also enables stylish advances in presentation. One example of this is the in-game animation. Movement of arms, legs and falling animations are all fluidly merged – a character’s movement will flow from one animation to another without jumping from one frame to the next. Again, the overall feeling is of a highly stylised, solid and believable world. The increased animation and fluidity adds a greater depth to the action. A headshot now feels like it’s really hitting home hard. Also, PDZ’s engine allows them a high level of detail. Get in close for a bit of melee action and you will see eye patches on suited enemies and others will frown as they take the hits. Taking its cues from old coin-ops, as you blast away at enemies, their body armour will splinter off, flicker and disappear.

Rare has gone into the same amount of detail with the sound. As well as 5.1 channel surround, and a ‘rawking’ Bondesque soundtrack, each object you hit makes a specific noise. Bullets hitting metal will sound different from bullets hitting concrete or wood, for example. The same if you hit a light; you’ll hear the glass shatter and hit the ground in a realistic manner.

Talking of environments, from birds on the rooftops to heat hazes, intricate detail and random events will have you pausing just to gawp at the scenery. Also worth noting is the use of Z buffering when it comes to using your sniper rifle. Squeeze that L trigger, don't just hit it, as the zoom is sensitive to your touch. Once you’ve mastered that, you’ll be able to notice that the Z buffering enables you to look at anything far away in unrivalled quality and detail.

We’ve only really given you an insight into the single-player experience, but there's more. Perfect Dark was a great multiplayer game, yet it wasn't online. PDZ brings that great gameplay up to date, so the whole game is available online via co-op and multiplayer.

Deathmatch maps is where PDZ will shine. The cover-fire technique works better than expected, while the size of the maps can be adjusted to suit the number of players and game type. With the X360’s always-online capabilities, we expect to see PDZ become the mostplayed game on Live this Christmas, and we don’t doubt that it’s likely to stay on or near the top for much of 2006.

Perfect Dark Zero is intense and stylish, providing a unique world and at times, a sense of atmosphere. We do have quibbles over the dumb AI and generic plotting, but there’s still plenty of replay value thanks to the extra sections and objectives between levels. While it's no next-gen Halo, PDZ is still a thoroughly charming, though flawed, title in its own right.

Keri Allan