Ladies and gentlemen, gamers of all ages, I introduce to you a new column. Hopefully it will become another staple of your beloved Video Game City literary cuisine. In this masterpiece, I will be displaying my enormous vocabulary and excellent usage of an electronic thesaurus to show what games need sequels and how it should be done. In this pilot article we will be discussing Perfect Dark. Unfortunately, since RareWare was bought out by Microsoft, Nintendo is no longer its home. As it stands, Perfect Dark 0 will be released on the X-box, but little to no information has been released about the game, so I will show you how I think it should be done.

    The thing that made Perfect Dark such a great game to begin with was primarily due to the great multi-player modes. Not only was there the standard multi-player versus modes, but there were co-operative and counter-operative modes also. I have always preferred the co- operative to the rest because of the great innovation needed to defeat harder and more complex areas then in the single player, but the counter-operative was always fun for simply playing around, spending hours (quite literally) blowing people up in the most inventive ways possible. On the other hand, the typical versus mode was far from typical.

    In the sequel I would be looking for a great variety of multi- player functions. I would especially like to see a huge range of AI personalities and difficulties. In the first, there are 4 or 5 sim difficulties, then a good amount of different personalities. Unfortunately, the difficulty didn't go high enough for a skilled team, and you were also unable to make, for example, a MeatSniperSim... it was either meat or sniper. I'd also like to see some kind of learning AI. Something a bit more complex and less stupid than the original. Finally, I'd want a heck of a lot more games and weapon settings. Capture the Briefcase can only be played so many hours before one must succumb to the sweet and sultry sounds of slumber.

    The second most important thing in a perfect, Perfect Dark sequel (as in any sequel) would have to be an amazing plot. Face it, the plot sucked as far as realism was concerned. What self respecting alien would choose to speak like Pee-Wee Herman?? I'd really like to see some mixing up of missions and such to incorporate some more tactical and stealth. Sometimes it just got to be monotonous and boring. Granted, it is a typical FPS, but does it really need to stay typical?

    Another thing that would keep the game entertaining for hours on end would be a highly interactive environment. I remember going through certain games and spending hours seeing if you could destroy everything in the adult bookstore (Duke Nukem 3D, and you can, btw). See, my dream would be to have a FPS where absolutely everything is realistically affected by gameplay. E.g. If you blast a room with a rocket, everything gets blown to smithereens and the actual structure of the world is affected... lights, walls, ceilings, furnishings, etc.

     As I said before, this is probably not the way Perfect Dark 0 will turn out, but we can still hope. If there was no wishing, hoping, and dreaming, this world would be a very dull place to live. So, this article is finished with a feeling of despair but some hope still. I know it may never happen, but it would be cool if it did.