Well, I understand now why Rare has been so quiet on the Xbox - and I applaud Microsoft's bold move to allow them the freedom to focus on creating not one, but two incredible launch titles for Xbox 360. It's time for their investment to pay dividends and it's fair to say that not only is Perfect Dark Zero a demonstration of Rare at their finest form, but it's undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of the launch line-up. If you're only buying one launch title, make it Perfect Dark Zero, because Joanna Dark is back with a bang big enough to blow your mind several times over.

I don't know about you, but I love watching the intro sequences for games - and rarely have I been more impressed with the unbelievably stylish and slick intro for PDZ. It's like a James Bond opening credits sequence, complete with shooting guns and sexy silhouettes, but futuristic and far cooler. As you watch the amazing visuals and listen to the awesome theme, any doubts you had that the Xbox 360 isn't going to be a class act from the word go will melt away.

You are Joanna Dark, hot-headed new recruit into a small freelance organisation headed by your father, Jack Dark, with mission co-ordinator Chandra completing the team. When you and your dad go on a routine mission to Hong Kong, complications lead to the discovery of a huge conspiracy and the adventure of a lifetime…

Diving straight into the single player campaign, you're broken in relatively gently with an exciting opening level that sees you infiltrating an underwater base to sabotage a data core and then get the hell out of there. This serves as a great tutorial that teaches you the gameplay basics, as well as showing off stunning visuals that are a huge leap beyond Xbox. Graphically, Perfect Dark Zero is divine, packed full of amazing detail to every texture, gorgeous dynamic lighting, gleaming reflective surfaces or all kinds and unprecedented detail down to the smallest elements of the scenery and environment. You can shoot and smack laptops off desks, knock over chairs, smash glass and destroy crates, all of it looking very next gen as you do so.

However, this is just a taster of things to come, and the variation in the locations you visit during the course of the exciting and action-packed single player mode is wonderful. Your next few missions take place in Hong Kong, and the urban landscape serves to impress tremendously. You speed into a harbour, watching a brilliantly directed, awesome looking cut scene, which like all the cut scenes is rendered using the game's graphics engine. Take a moment to look around before you progress - the surrounding buildings in the distance are packed with detail and as you sneak your way around the nightclub to identify certain suspects, you can hear the thumping beat of the music from within, with the harmonies audible as you get closer. Simply awesome. Inside the nightclub, things get even cooler and while it isn't as packed out as it could have been, it's enjoyable to listen to the music as you wander around checking out the men and women dancing around in various styles. The laser light show is very cool too, and it's a crying shame when you have to hit the fire alarm to evacuate the civilians, thus shutting off the pounding music.

Beyond this mission you take to the streets, working through an underground parking lot complete with totally realistic graffiti and plenty of cars to blow up, into a warehouse packed full of goons, then down into the subway system, through a wrecked train and out to safety - that is until you get ambushed, so the next mission sees you negotiating scaffolding and rooftops as you find sniping spots to cover your old man, as he makes his way through the streets below. Next up you're off to a snow-topped mountain in China, and again you're greeted by a host of brand new lovely visuals, such as crystal clear waterfalls and grand Oriental architecture, as you infiltrate a fortress and then take part in a virtual reality DeathMatch (it's a game within a game, great touch!) Things take a futuristic turn as you break into the labs for the next mission, then you make your escape on a hovercraft complete with mounted rocket launcher, speeding through watery channels and laying waste to all the enemies that attack you from the snowy surroundings.

After a much more detailed tour around the underwater base from the first mission, which is actually a massive sea platform, where you work your way around both the submerged and above water sections, you then head through the heart of the South American jungle, in an environment so lush and varied that it totally eclipses the lovely looking Far Cry, after which it's into a trap-riddled Incan temple for the next mission. I won't carry on describing all the settings, but suffice to say, each mission brings you something new, different and just as spectacular as what's come before, keeping your jaw on the floor throughout the entire game.

The level of graphical panache carries over to the enemies too; they're the most highly detailed, realistically animated humans you've ever seen in a game. The amount of facial characteristics is remarkable, the detail to their uniforms is amazing and the ragdoll physics for when they topple to the floor or get blown by the fiery explosion of a grenade or barrel, is top notch. Blood spurts with every shot, headshots on guards not wearing protective helmets kill instantly, and they even react to the body part you shoot them in, often crying out in pain or saying "You shot my leg!" in anger and terror. Shoot one in the ass a couple of times - that's hilarious!

The enemy AI is pretty impressive - they don't particularly work together to flank you or anything, but they're vicious and tenacious, strafing left and right, taking cover whenever possible and getting out of the firing line to reload. They also activate alarms, make good use of grenades and warn nearby comrades of your approach, as well as shouting out if you're injured, and even when you're reloading, to let everyone know that it's time to open fire! They're pretty wary too, and can spot you from quite a distance, so when attempting to be stealthy you'll need to crouch, make good use of cover and stick to the shadows whenever possible. Sneaking up and melee attacking from behind, it has to be said, is tremendous fun!

Despite all this graphical wonder, the stars of the show are undoubtedly the finest and most imaginative, gorgeous looking selection of weapons I've ever seen, all with a secondary function and some even with a tertiary function. Every weapon has been lovingly crafted and looks the business, with a real sheen that reflects the lighting, some of the smoothest reloading animations ever and great effects for projectiles and explosions. They're backed up with seriously meaty audio too, sounding just as convincing as they look.

You start off with your basic P9P pistol, complete with powerful zoom and attachable silencer and flashlight functions. It's a lovely weapon and you get can headshots from a huge distance, taking enemies out before they have even the slightest chance of spotting you. Other pistols include the Magnum, which is beastly powerful but requires a reload after each shot, and the very cool Psychosis gun, a tranquillising weapon that can also confuse enemies into shooting each other. Moving up a class and the sub-machine guns include the DW-P5, which like the P9P has a zoom, silencer and light. The UGL Liberator isn't that accurate but sprays the enemies with bullets and can be thrown down as a proximity bomb, the CMP 150 has a holographic projector that creates a second image of you, and the RCP-90 is indispensable in the jungle, as the threat detector mode turns everything grey except for enemies and allies, coloured in red and green respectively, plus it can also reprogram sentry guns, security cameras and mines.

The range of assault rifles is just as cool and imaginative too - like the FAC-16 with silencer and grenade launcher attached and the Superdragon with bouncing grenades and night vision. Lovely. The Jackal is the main sniper rifle, which is enough to take down any enemy with a single shot - it's also worth mentioning that the powerful zoom functions on all weapons that have them are varied by the amount you depress the left trigger, which makes a big difference in the heat of battle or when swiftly scanning around for enemies to kill.

On the heavy weapons front you've got the powerful M60, the rocket launcher, complete with guided rockets, and a plasma rifle that comes equipped with an effective cloaking device. Throw in grenades, flashbangs, mines (proximity or triggered as you wish) and a couple of other weapons like the DEF-12 shotgun, and you've got an incredible array of firepower. You've also got a few nifty gadgets too - a powerful pair of binoculars, the Locktopus for breaking and entering Splinter Cell style, a Demo Kit that you arm interactively with a brief puzzle, and the Datathief, which has one of the coolest interfaces ever and again takes a few seconds to use skilfully, whether hacking a computer or a door access panel. Suffice to say, each of these gadgets looks as nifty as all the weapons.

PDZ somehow manages to sound as good as it looks, with attention given again down to the smallest detail - the sound of snow crunching underfoot, the smashing of glass, the unique sound of each and every weapon (after a while you can tell what weapons are shooting at you just from their sound), and the effect of viciously melee attacking someone, either with the butt of your weapon or with your fists, both of which make a satisfying smack. Then there's the voice acting, which some have criticised as being daft and over the top. Personally, I love it - it's not as bad as people have made out and the slightly larger than life characterisations fit the James Bond feel of the proceedings nicely. So what if there's a thick Scottish accent, amongst others, it adds something that you don't often find in games and it's refreshing, plus all of the voice actors go a great job and deliver their lines with enthusiasm and style. Speaking of James Bond, the simply incredible music soundtrack makes use of a number of distinctive and catchy themes that always evoke that superspy feel, whether it's the tense, minimalist accompaniment to sneaking around or an all-out theme blasting away during, well, all-out blasting! It's utterly superb and varies well as you progress through the game, building on previous themes and coming up with many different tunes. It's not as dramatic or haunting as Halo, but it's up there for pure quality and just like Kameo: Elements Of Power, this soundtrack could happily accompany a big budget movie. It's that good.

However, while we're hoping to get next gen visuals, we want next gen gameplay too, and although PDZ doesn't particularly do anything groundbreaking or new, it combines so many classic shooter elements and puts it all together in such a stylish and unique way, that it really does feel very next generation. The missions are both well paced and nicely varied, to the point that you never even slightly feel that they're repetitive (except when you keep dying and repeating a mission, that is!) One minute you're sneaking stealthily into somewhere, then before you know it you've been spotted, the reinforcements arrive and you're in a brutal shooting match with your life on the line. Objectives include destroying equipment, stealing information or devices, wiping out enemy forces - all the usual spy stuff, but they're combined in a manner that keeps things fresh for every mission and, as with any decent action game, problems crop up along the way, leading to extra objectives being added, some of them essential and some of them secondary.

Each level is very well laid out and where possible you're given choices in how to proceed, with multiple routes available, with plenty of obstacles to negotiate like security cameras, guards, laser detection systems, gun turrets, spider bots and more. A nifty touch is that if you start to get lost, whoever's guiding you back at base figures out your route and you get a path of blue arrows pointing you back on course. So you won't get too lost, yet still have that sense of freedom to explore and find alternate routes. The one criticism I will raise against the gameplay, however, is that some missions can be frustratingly annoying - like the mission where you have to protect Jack from sniper fire (which has a very tough boss encounter at the end) and another level where you're racing against time to descend an Incan temple (that one drove me more than a little crazy!) I enjoy having a challenge, but the gameplay can be a bit trial and error, forcing you to learn by error and retry until you get it right. Still, this is forgivable and those few annoying moments are at least very different! Also one other quibble - your health keeps regenerating with no explanation as to why, making you feel a bit like a cheat when you charge in, soak up the bullets, then dive behind cover to wait for your health to come back. I mean, it's not like you're Master Chief!

The control system is spot on (apart from an inability to jump, or even vault over crates) and you can take cover behind pretty much anything, lining up your cursor over the bad guys and then only moving out from safety when you pull the trigger. This is a great feature and will save your life on many occasions! The rest of the controls are mapped to your gorgeous new 360 controller in an intuitive fashion and you'll get to grips with them straight away. A quick mention needs to go to the excellent online aspects of 50 game achievements to complete, of varying difficulties, and comprehensive stat breakdowns for each mission, charting everything from stealth kills to shots fired, plus a final score (boosted by a multiplier dependent on the difficulty setting) and you can instantly see the world's best for the mission and wonder how the hell he got such a high score! Brilliant.

I'd now like to hand over to Dex, who's covering the multiplayer aspect of this truly awesome game. Take it away, Dex!

Firstly, I would like to thank Rare. I have had faith in Rare over these last few years, even though they haven't produced much just recently. People argue that Grabbed By The Ghoulies wasn't up to scratch; I argue that it was one of the most detailed action games I have ever played. Conker: Live & Reloaded was one of my favourite Xbox titles too. Ever since Perfect Dark made its debut N64 though, I've looked forward to a sequel. Or even a prequel. The thing is, back in the day, the only element of the old Perfect Dark that had me hooked was the multiplayer. Unsurprisingly, the multiplayer elements in PDZ are so outstanding that I've almost lost a week thanks to the DeathMatch modes and of course, the online Co-Op - happy moments shared with Geoff there.

If you've come from Halo 2 expecting a shooter just like it then you're going to be disappointed. This game isn't a Halo beater. That doesn't mean it's not as good as Halo 2; in my eyes, it's better. It is in a different league to Halo 2, so comparing them is wrong. In Perfect Dark Zero there are lots of things that separate the two titles. You cannot jump in the air, for a start. Instead, things are here to make the multiplayer really stand out from the crowd. It's no good having a shooter that's just like that other shooter you used to play - in this day and age, diversity is crucial.

PDZ is a classic first person shooter. Like I said, you cannot jump. So it's like Goldeneye, TimeSplitters and the Perfect Dark before this one. But rather than draw the line there, we have elements that work so well in a game like this and enrich any multiplayer experience. I'm typically talking about DeathMatch modes here, just for the record. The first manoeuvre you will use a lot is the cover move. You can take cover behind practically any large item or environmental object. Walls, crates, sand bags, balconies - you name it, you can cover behind it. Get your gun at the ready, pop out and shoot when the other player crosses your deadly aim. But there's more tact to this move than simply covering and firing; if you're clever, you will make sure you take cover in an area that people can't access from behind. There's nothing worse than covering, only for somebody to slap you on the back of the head. When you have everything set up and you get kill after kill because you're using clever tactics, you become overwhelmed with that spine chillingly good rewarding feeling that only great games can evoke.

It really is classic when you're on the run from a foe and you lose her (or him) by covering behind a wall. When they then walk past and you pop up to shout "surprise, bitch" and pop a cap in that finely formed figure of an ass - well, what could be better? Geoff could probably mix that sentence up to actually create a better scenario, but we'll leave that to your dirty imagination!

Let's not digress. The other move you have command over is the roll. The roll can really be put to good use if you know how powerful the roll can be. Most morons use the roll and reload technique - but fortunately it doesn't work like that. By rolling while reloading, you're only prolonging the reload. Take that, moron. However, I like to introduce some more rewarding and wholly satisfying tactics into my rolls. I like to roll from the front of the enemy to behind the enemy, and then stand tall before taking my gun shaft to the back of their head. When you use that roll to its full potential, like for stealthing about, or for dodging bullets, you can get another one of those spine-chilling moments.

The weapons in this game are bloody fantastic. Each weapon has at least two functions, some have even three if you class the gun's scope as another function - but every weapon has been thought out so well; even the reloading sequence is a joy to look at. I can't possibly go through every weapon on offer (and besides, Geoff's already done that!) but I'll name a few of my favourites. If you ever had Perfect Dark on the N64 then the Laptop Gun will mean a great deal to you. Compact and deadly, the Laptop Gun has a rapid and powerful primary fire, but its secondary function allows you to deploy an auto turret that shoots enemies down as soon as it sees them. It's a lot of fun to put one of these down in a popular area and watch your gun go to work. Cruel, harsh, low - but a lot of fun all the same. Hey, and the M60 machine gun has a secondary function of being able to fire mines that, on impact, knocks or slows your enemy down.

Taking a leaf out of Halo's book, you can only carry a couple of weapons, although you choose via a four-slot inventory, so pistols and grenades only take up one slot (unless you're dual wielding your pistols!), SMGs and rifles take up two, while heavy weapons and the sniper take three, adding a nice strategic element in - you can of course switch weapons with any fallen enemy as you go, and this will often be necessary if you need to change tactics during a mission. Acquiring ammo for all your different guns is easy too; instead of picking up weapon specific ammo, you just pick up weapon category ammo (pistols, assault, SMG, etc) - and I'm sure you can see the advantages of this already.

There are only six maps in this game, but these six maps can be scaled down, or expanded at the push of a button. This is handy if you just fancy a small eight-player game, so you can have a smaller variation of your favourite map. While there may only be six maps in total, you can have about three variations of each one. So you can do the math there. Expanding the map opens up new areas to accommodate more players. You can also bet your finely formed figure of an ass that new maps will be released to (buy) download from the Marketplace at a later date too. They're even adding (free) multiplayer modes in the near future too - such as the mode that is completely opposite to Co-Op. One of you takes the form of all the enemies, while the other plays through on their own. Think Agents in the Matrix. You're all those Agents, and your mate is poor old Joe Dark. She doesn't stand a chance!

The modes on offer cover all your usual multiplayer types. KillCount and Team KillCount, which are pretty self-exploratory, there's also a capture the flag mode in there too, as well as more pick up and play modes. If you chose to play a Darkops game, you are presented with different modes, such as defend the base or a viral infection game. Team play is key with Darkops and the level of difficulty increases, as you pretty much die with one shot. The good thing about Darkops though, is that you have an certain amount of credits and you can buy new weapons with them before you start the game (think Counter-Strike) - so if you like your close combat weapons, why not buy a sword and a shotgun. Best combination in the game? Maybe…

Something has to be said though. There are only six skins available for multiplayer. While TimeSplitters has hundreds of skins, both serious and comical, and the first Perfect Dark had a system where you could mix and match heads and bodies to create your ultimate character, PDZ has a measly six character skins and no more can be unlocked. I seriously hope new skins become available for download, because one day, I want to actually play as a man or that ugly bastard with pipes coming out of his head!

Before I hand you back to Geoff for the conclusion, let me talk about the Co-Op. Oh my God. I would say icing on the cake, but this mode deserves mode than a sweet cliché. This game comes into its own when you have a friend to play Co-Op online (or offline) - it simply is amazing. You can play through the whole single player game with a friend and you don't even have to play the single player on your own before being allowed to play through with a mate. I haven't played a single mission on my own. However, Geoff has. He tells me that the Co-Op actually takes some different paths unique to the Co-Op play.

I quickly discovered what he meant. On the fourth level Geoff took the role of sexy Joanna, while I played as her father. Geoff had to make his way from the top of this building, along various balconies and zip lines and cover me, while I had to make my way along to a rendezvous point, while helping Geoff on his way too. After a lot of team communication (you really feel like you're in the midst of an operation, with your high-tech communication devices. Are you okay?! Come in, over!) we finally met up, only to be greeted with one of the hardest boss battles we've ever come across. A dropship complete with machine guns and rockets, which focused on Geoff while I had to take on endless goons coming out of the alleyways. Eventually we worked out what had to be done, after getting killed numerous (and equally as humorous) times I might add, and we finally took the bugger down.

That level alone really did it for me. That sense of achievement shared with a friend - there is no better feeling. But the game keeps on giving. You have to work together to work lifts. Send your friend up, and when he gets up, he might have to kick a ladder down to you - and some levels even go as far as adding new doors and new keypads so you might both have to find a keycard to get past a part that originally needed one key. What a game.

In all this excitement, I have neglected to say that, if you don't have Live, you can add bots to satisfy your killing needs. You can have a few offline mates around and wirelessly enjoy teaming up against quite an intelligent team of bots. These bots can't be added to every multiplayer mode there is, but the basic KillCount ones certainly can have bots. You can even add bots to online games and have them drop out as new online players join. Ah, Rare, you have done us proud.

I'm a multiplayer man. There are no two ways about it. While some people live for a single player adventure, I love a good sociable game. The multiplayer side of Perfect Dark Zero will keep anyone busy for a good long time. With the promise of new content added soon, and all of this to keep you occupied in the meantime, this will be the best £40-£50 you ever spend, even if you just are getting it for the multiplayer. It will take something special for another title to be a 'Perfect Dark Zero beater' on Xbox 360.

Dex, I couldn't agree with you more! Perfect Dark Zero has set the bar very high for the standard of Xbox 360 dedicated shooters, in every respect - its triumphant visuals, amazing sound and music, tense and engaging storyline, gripping and varied gameplay, fabulous array of weapons and gadgets, lengthy single player campaign (complete with full online Co-Op for every level) and array of brilliantly crafted multiplayer modes and maps, all combine to make this arguably Rare's best ever game and certainly the Xbox 360's best launch game. It's taken us four and half thousand words to tell you what we could have said in five: You must buy this game!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland & Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).