Dark Data Review

"N64 Shooter Evolved"

Multiplayer

September 16, 2019 at 4:08am
By Jason Stettner

This is an interesting throwback style of shooter. With this title they aim to emulate the N64 style of the shooter genre from that time. That means you get a strictly local multiplayer setup, with designs that aim to bring the era alive once again. If you’re familiar with games such as Goldeneye, you’ll likely feel at home while enjoying some modern upgrades which is nice.

You’re able to play locally against bots, or even have splitscreen going on. It’s designed for controller play as well, so if that’s the input you want it’ll handle that natively. There’s no campaign to this, or any other modes. It’s a straight up competitive multiplayer title, just so you know. That’s also fine, as that’s what they aim to sell you on. I still would have really liked an online multiplayer option, as that might be rather fun to see in action with this style of retro play.

There are a number of modes to choose from, and a fine selection of maps. You have traditional deathmatch options whether that’s alone or with teams. There’s also a fun, capture the Floppy disc sort of setup. The game modes have many options for tweaking the settings, and it’s easy to prepare your ideal match prior to playing.

Gameplay

As a shooter it handles quite well, there are multiple gun options present within this. You find them on the ground, and like the visuals it emulates the look of the time. Speaking of emulation, you can play this in a console setting or an emulation one from the options menu. There’s a character customization area which is quite in-depth in terms of options.

The maps offer a variety of environments to battle within, and they’re certainly creative. They all have that old school N64 feeling to them, but with some modern tweaks. There’s some physics applied to objects, and there’s a lot of density. You’ll find posters, and objects stacked in most sections. The maps did flow fine, some were odd, though that is reminiscent of that time. At least, from what I recall.

The AI was generally alright, with difficulty options. I found that higher bot counts in capture the floppy did make some of the bots get frozen which was odd. In deathmatch modes they ran around fine, didn’t notice any errors there.

The Conclusion

Dark Data is a fine local multiplayer title that emulates the typical N64 shooter in a way that I remember it feeling. There is a good selection of maps present, some weird looking characters and it’s just rather neat to see in action. It runs fine, the modes offer some variation and if you’re looking for something to capture this time period than this is a good option for that.

It plays how you remember the games of that time playing, as opposed to if you revisited them on native hardware today. There some things that could be improved upon here, but it does have a solid amount of content and options for play. It would be cool to see online multiplayer, I know it’s not their goal here but it would still be a neat addition.

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Dark Data Review on PC
Review Code Provided by theIncubatorNC

Rating Overall: 7.0