Well, I gave my first impressions of the 360 (which continues to just shine and shine to me, especially demos and the Arcade) earlier this month. Thought I’d spend some time with the first exclusive game I’d bought, Perfect Dark Zero.

Now, I loved Perfect Dark on the N64. I also loved GoldenEye. But Perfect Dark took all the great bits of GoldenEye and made them nearly perfect. Not totally, but my friends and I spent a LOT of hours playing PD on the 64.

So it was with some nervousness that I decided to buy Perfect Dark Zero. In fact, so much nervousness that until last night I hadn’t really played it. Last night a mate came over and we did the first 3-5 missions (not sure exactly which).

The initial impression was WOW. The game is gorgeous. I mean, freaking awesome. The controls were a little hard to get used to, because there is so much you can do in the game. The prompts for things like taking cover are helpful, but there is still a lot you can do. Once got through the first level, though, we were doing pretty well.

After that we spent about 20 minutes playing with the rag doll physics (ie: beating people up and then tossing them in the water, and then shooting them until they were flat against the bottom). One of the missions took us about half a dozen tries to do, because it wasn’t clear that when playing 2 players we each had to ID a guy (ie: I couldn’t just do both). That sucked.

And then our last mission (when Player 2 plays as Mr. Dark) was incredibly, incredibly hard. Probably took 10-12 tries to finish it.

Overall, this is an absolutely fantastic game. We played for 3 hours, and besides the last half hour of frustration, it was fun the whole time. The gadgets rock. Grenades are freaking awesome. Some of the ways you do things in coop (ie: one person goes up the elevator, then helps the other person up) were great.

Jeff and I found ourselves constantly getting separated, and the arrows leading to your partner were very helpful. So far the weapons have been fairly basic, but are still crazy fun. The shotgun rocks. Just rocks.

So far, that’s the end of my experience. A 3 hour, crazy fun, session of coop with a friend. I’m sure I’ll have more. Suffice to say that any nervousness I had about the game is completely washed away. Perfect Dark Zero is an absolutely amazing sequel to Perfect Dark. And it’s a kickass game overall. No complaints.