Perfect Dark Zero & Online Updates: Xbox 360 Roundup

By Guy Cocker on 30 December 2005, 11:31am

For Crave the week between Christmas and New Year has to be spent in front of the TV, selfishly getting into our favourite videogames and ignoring the outside world. In between the gluttonous Christmas period and the inevitable letdown of New Year, it's the only thing that feels right.

And lucky old Crave: we managed to score an Xbox 360 Premium Package with Perfect Dark Zero on Christmas Eve, meaning we're one of the lucky few to actually be playing the game in all its high definition glory.

The public expectation for Perfect Dark Zero was for it to be nothing short of Halo 3, and while it doesn't reach Bungie's level of perfection, Perfect Dark Zero is still a showcase for the new console. This is a game that puts hi-tech combat first -- weapons are futuristic but realistic, and most of them have a secondary or even tertiary fire mode. There are even defensive gun turrets, one gun that projects a holographic version of yourself (a female version of James Bond in skintight clothing), and one pistol that makes enemies go crazy and start firing at each other.

While the single player game is good, the multiplayer features make this a must-buy if you have Xbox Live Gold membership. This is a game that gets better the more players you add to it, and the main story is even better when played though co-operatively. The best thing is that you can even do this online, teaming up with someone else from around the world, communicating via the headset and not having to share your screen with them. The multiplayer online game lets you throw bots into the action, and there's even a Counter-Strike mode called Dark Ops where you earn money to spend on armour and weapons. The Limited Collector's Edition may be expensive at £50, but this is one expansive package -- check out our full review here and then compare it with the rest of the Xbox 360 lineup.

In other Xbox 360-related news, Microsoft has just uploaded a host of new goodies onto the Live servers. If you're signed using the free Xbox 360 online service, you can now treat yourself to demos of Condemned and Quake 4, although at around 600MB each, they'll take a while to fit down your broadband pipe. Even on Crave's super-fast internet connection, it took over two hours to download Quake 4 this morning. Hopefully we'll see demos of Dead or Alive 4 and Ridge Racer 6 to keep us going before they're released in the UK in January. -GC