Summary
Earlier this week, Nintendo announced that it wasfinally adding mature games to its Online library, starting with classic N64 shootersPerfect Darkand Turok. While it was a surprising yet welcome move, the actual execution leaves a lot to be desired.
For one, mature games are separated from the main library. There’s no toggle to include or exclude them, making it less intuitive to navigate. Secondly—the more egregious issue—is the state of the Perfect Dark port itself.
As broken down in a thread by GoldenEye 007 champion and beta tester @Graslu00, it’s the “worst” way to play Perfect Dark right now. And if you’re planning to wait for patches and bug fixes, they point out that GoldenEye 007 was in a similar state whenit launched on Nintendo Switch last yearand still hasn’t been fixed.
Everything Wrong With The Perfect Dark Switch Port
One of the biggest problems with the Perfect Dark port is that the dizzy effect is so broken that it occasionally freezes the game, making it almost “impossible” to get through the first levels.
Even if you do, there’s another glaring problem with the shooting itself, which is hardly ideal given that Perfect Dark is a shooter. As @Graslu00 writes, “Guns emit smoke from the barrel after firing full auto or fast enough for a bit. This causes the Switch version to lag, while the N64 version was mostly unaffected”.
The volume is also “way too low”, but it’s not a problem with settings as explosions are “deafening”—the balance is completely off. To make matters worse, music tracks don’t always play when they should.
So, we have guns lagging the game, input delay, and a broken dizzy effect that freezes the screen, which is probably enough to put most people off. But it doesn’t end there. Perfect Dark supports online multiplayer on Nintendo Switch, but it’s “unusable” unless you’re in the same country.
There are also myriad visual problems. Light flare effects go through weapons (and even walls), explosions are transparent, debris is missing so objects just… disappear, and there are some strange texture issues similar to the ones in GoldenEye 007.
“There’s no point playing this version, it’s the worst. It’s like playing on a 2007 emulator”.
