Pemalite said:
Perfect Dark did come out in the year 2000 and pushed the N64 to it's limits in many ways... PC games of the era were certainly a step up again though, no doubt about it. |
It was a very lucky period for PC gaming, during 1999 the first entry level GPU (more expensive than those we can buy now, but costing a half or less than its bigger sister) had become available and in 2000 RAM even on entry level gaming PCs was 8 to 16 times larger than in 1997, while Windows still was relatively frugal in RAM requirements, devs were free to make very ambitious games for their times, with complex stories, rich gameplay and interactivity and free roaming in large levels or even whole undivided worlds. Unfortunately a little time after XBox RAM smaller than initially predicted forced devs of PC/XB multiplats to accept compromises, for example in Morrowind they had to separate indoors parts from the luckily still undivided outside, while in Thief III Garrett "unlearned" to swim, and even levels smaller than the largest Thief I and II ones had to be split in two parts, breaking the immersion in most cases, only in the Cradle they managed, thanks to both level design and the level narrative, to split it without breaking the immersion.
Even comparing it to such PC golden age, what the older N64 could do when pushed to its limits was impressive.
