Here’s a bit of a nice surprise. A gameplay trailer for the upcoming Perfect Dark reboot was shown during the Xbox Games Showcase at Summer Game Fest 2024.
The long-awaited reboot of the classic Rare franchise, now being developed by Crystal Dynamics, was initially teased a few years ago. Now, the game seems to have pivoted from its first-person shooter roots to more of an immersive sim type of experience, and I’m all here for it. Still, the objective-based gameplay and open-ended environments still seem to be intact.
Players will still take control of iconic protagonist Joanna Dark as she finds herself on a planet Earth riddled with natural (and potentially artificial) disasters. Her goal in this game is to hunt down a criminal by the name of Daniel Carrington, who shares a name with her boss from the Nintendo 64 original. Whether it’s the same character or not remains to be seen.
Level design seems to be decently vertical, and we see Joanna using parkour to clamber over obstacles, wall run and climb up and down pipes. Much like the original, stealth seems to be highly encouraged. But we do see Joanna engage in combat with guns, gadgets and close-quarters combat. She can also perform takedowns on unaware enemies, it seems.
Unfortunately, there’s still no release date for Perfect Dark, but next year is a likely outcome for the first-person shooter. And it’s most likely coming to Xbox Game Pass on day one, too.
The original Perfect Dark launched in 2000 for the Nintendo 64, as something of a spiritual successor to Goldeneye 007. It was followed up with a sequel, Perfect Dark Zero, in 2005 after Microsoft‘s acquisition of Rare. However, this sequel wasn’t nearly as well received. Both games were made playable in 2015’s Rare Replay, a collection of classic Rare titles that spanned the company’s long history.
