As we celebrate the Xbox 360's 20th anniversary this week, I've been going back to one of its launch titles in the form of Perfect Dark Zero to see how it holds up and whether its mixed reaction over the years has been justified.
My personal history with Perfect Dark is a little muddled - the first memory I have of the N64 version is watching my friends play it and enthuse about how it was "like GoldenEye, but better". I obviously ended up playing the Xbox Live Arcade version years later and enjoyed it, but I think some of the impact from its launch was lost on me.
Perfect Dark Zero, meanwhile, has just been sitting on my shelf mostly untouched for the past 15 years-or-so. I'd always heard it was a disappointment compared to the original, and although I remember enjoying the multiplayer, I totally ignored the campaign. This week though, it was time to boot it up — through backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X in order to get the best possible experience — and see whether it's actually worth playing in 2025.
The first thing I'll say about Perfect Dark Zero is that it's such a time capsule of those early Xbox 360 days. There's a James Bond-esque intro that feels like it's desperately trying to appeal to the MTV generation (think Die Another Day), and a menu screen with flashy 2000s style presentation featuring an old-school Samsung logo in the top corner. You can totally see how this blended with the classic Xbox 360 "Blades" dashboard at the time.
Once the campaign began, I definitely felt how dated the game is as well. Movement is painfully slow at first, even in terms of how quickly the crosshair moves around the screen, while the gameplay feels like a mix of old-school FPS controls from the likes of Perfect Dark 1, GoldenEye and even TimeSplitters, as well as more modern takes on the formula that we'd seen in Halo 1 and 2. The cover system is clunky-at-best and would be perfected by the likes of Uncharted just a couple of years later, and the AI (particularly friendly AI) can act somewhat bizarrely at times.
So, yeah... in many ways, Perfect Dark Zero immediately feels like a game from 20 years ago. The way it plays out is reminiscent of 007: Agent Under Fire for me - the first James Bond title from the PS2 and original Xbox generation that did some ambitious things but ultimately didn't quite reach its potential (whereas 2002's 007: Nightfire definitely did).
And yet, despite all of that, I'm enjoying Perfect Dark Zero on my Xbox Series X right now. The campaign is muddled and I have little idea what's going on in the story (they don't tell you much), but the moment-to-moment FPS gameplay is at least decent and feels pretty good to play once you've got used to the pace and controls.
It's not uncommon for major console launch titles to carry a sense of "tech demo" with them instead of being fully fleshed-out releases (even Ryse: Son of Rome has that to a degree), and Perfect Dark Zero kinda feels like an example of this, but it does also try some ambitious things. There are numerous gadgets at your disposal, a healthy selection of weapons, some well-designed maps and objectives to complete, and even a vehicle-based section at one point.
These are levels that still remain legitimately enjoyable to play here in 2025, and carry with them a heavy sense of nostalgia for those early Xbox 360 days. It very much feels like travelling back in time to another generation when you're playing PDZ, but not to the point where you can't still have fun with it on a modern-day system.
I also really appreciate how it offers you the perfect amount of hand-holding. It's not a game that wants to guide you too much, but if you lose your way for whatever reason, it seems to quickly sense what's going on and begins providing you with subtle arrows and hints for where you need to go. A lot of today's titles could learn from this!
Speaking of a modern-day system, Perfect Dark Zero can look stunning at times on Xbox Series X. Some of the environments in particular are beautiful, and when you consider how games looked 20 years before PDZ came out (Super Mario Bros., Excitebike, etc.), it's quite incredible how technology advanced in such a short period of time. The Series X cleans everything up and allows Perfect Dark Zero to shine its brightest here in 2025.
The real shame is that Perfect Dark Zero's excellent and surprisingly in-depth multiplayer suite is seemingly dead these days. You've got tons of maps to choose from, a whole heap of customisation options, the ability to play with up to 16 bots, a ridiculous number of game modes including fan favourites like Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Infection, and yet there doesn't seem to be anyone playing anymore.
Why? Well, Halo 3's arrival in 2007 seemed to kill off the Perfect Dark Zero community, and that's probably no surprise considering how great that game's multiplayer ending up being. There was just no place for PDZ anymore as the years rolled on, but at least it's still playable to this day - maybe there could be a mini revival for it eventually?!
This has been a fun little nostalgia trip to celebrate the Xbox 360's 20th anniversary this week, and I'm far from finished with the campaign just yet, so I can see myself returning to try and complete it ASAP. The disc version works just fine on Series X, but keep in mind that it's included with Game Pass and is part of the Rare Replay collection.
If nothing else, it's a fascinating and quite bizarre walk down memory lane - a pre-Halo 3 era when the Xbox 360 was in its infancy and its eventual lineup of incredible games was only just starting to take shape.
It's such a shame that Perfect Dark Zero will remain the most recent entry in the series for seemingly a long to come, as there's clearly so much potential with it. The glimpses we saw of the Perfect Dark reboot hinted at something that could have been pretty special, and PDZ does make me long for a sequel, but perhaps it's never meant to be.