Perfect Dark XBLA: A Reflection on the Years of Yore

I know I haven't blogged in some time, a fact which I blame squarely on the insanity of the end of term rush that always happens around this time every year, but today I would like to talk about a subject of a geekier tone. Specifically, why it is that gamers old enough to count themselves as university students, if not professionals in the workforce, clamour for older vintage games, while the younger crowd often scoffs at us for liking what they refer to as a "piece of shit game" and ridicule us for being less gamers because of it?

In case you wanted to know, the reason I feel strongly enough about this issue to make it the subject of my blog, even in the face of more important topics with actual relevance to society is quite simple. Yesterday, on Wednesday, March 17th, Microsoft and Rare Ltd. released a cleaned up, high-def, high framerate version of what many console gamers consider to be one of the classics of the first person shooter genre. Perfect Dark, the spiritual successor to the classic N64 title Goldeneye 007, is widely considered among those old enough to remember to be one of the defining games of that console generation, and certainly led the charge into the console FPS craze later popularized by games like Halo: Combat Evolved and Call of Duty. Given this, I was understandably excited to learn that Microsoft planned to re-release this game on Live Arcade with enhanced visuals and online multiplayer options. Finally, a reason to play on Xbox Live again! I downloaded it and was very pleased by what Rare had done with the game and how well it played even to this day, but it seemed not all were as enthralled as I.

Logging onto the internet this morning, I was disappointed to learn that Gamespot had given the game a mere 7.5, claiming it was a good game but felt dated by modern standards and lacked several elements of a more modern game, which meant it would not appeal to the more hardcore modern FPS enthusiasts who routinely dominate Live. Reading this, I felt like saying "no crap!" After all, it ISN'T a modern FPS, therefore should it not have been judged as a romp through nostalgia instead of as a modern game destined to compete with the Call of Dutys and Halos of the world? Is the fact that I played this game at 14 years of age somehow making me see it through rose-coloured glasses, or are modern gamers really so spoiled by their high-def visuals and mission objective waypoints that they cannot tolerate anything that came out when they were still in diapers?

Thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that it is a little bit of both. After all, the fact that I, like many gamers, played this and other classic gems as children means that we by nature look at them with fond and nostalgic sentiments. Most of our best memories of our nerdy childhoods come from gathering with friends and playing videogames against each other. This kindof experience is bound to make anyone who lived through it biased towards the "good ol' days", and in ten years, any modern gamer in his or her early teens will probably look back on Call of Duty favourably and nostalgically as well. At the same time, however, the game industry, like the movie industry, has seen a gradual shift towards high-fidelity visual effects and 1080p visual resolutions, and in so doing has lost sight of the value of story and gameplay. The fact remains that most modern gamers would not care at all to download what they probably see as an antequated game from another era, and yet most of us in the older crowd rushed to our local store to get Microsoft Points just to add Perfect Dark to our Live Arcade game libraries. Its sad to say that to most young people, the calibur of a game's graphics equates with its quality on the whole. By this logic, anything from the 16-bit era should suck since its 2D, not to mention the original Metal Gear Solid should be garbage due to its low-res textures, and yet these remain classics to this day. Is it fair to judge a game by modern standards and write it off simply due to the limitations caused by its age? No, and this holds true in any media.

At the end of the day, games like Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazooie on Xbox Live are very much released for us old-school fans more than for any other gamer demographic, but even given that, it should not be written off. Anyone who suggests modernizing the gameplay and graphics to represent the modern trend in first person action games is missing the point--its not about stripping a game of its soul just to conform, but rather enjoying it as a relic from the time it came out. I've ranted before about how high-end visuals detract from storytelling, and I think it holds true here too. Any modern gamer who considers him/herself worth their salt and yet have never played the classics because "the graphics suck" has no right to call himself a gamer, much as any literature enthusiast who refuses to read Shakespeare should never be granted a degree in the subject. Do I look at vintage games through rose-coloured glasses? Maybe, but then again these games, when rereleased should not be judged by modern standards, but rather enjoyed for showing us how far the industry has come.