We have had fun playing in Golden Eye by messing with the guards, to see all the things they would do. Perfect Dark offers a whole new array of actions they may take, for example now if they get hit in the leg, they will limp around, and the blood effects are much better...!
Guards in missions can perform allot of stunts, and starting with the first type, handling a gun... They have different positions, either holding a weapon with one or two hands; bending down, standing up, leaning over. When using a pistol, guards will usually reach out to shoot, but some will perform quick draws, sharp twist, over hand and even cris-cross when armed with a double weapon. When in possession of a double handed weapon, soldiers will do two types of maneuvers. One, the most common, is an aimed shot, either sitting down or standing up, and another is, what I call, a sharp shot (the guard will stand his ground, place his weapon at the height of his waist and shoot stiffly). Finally, when a guard comes up from a roll, he might do a low shot (keeps the gun near the flour as he is in a low, low crouched position).
Perfect Dark didn't get a Mature rating for nothing...With all the blood it spits out at you, it sure claims it's violence rating. If we compare to Golden Eye, Perfect Dark sports red 100 times more than it's cousin. The worst Golden Eye would ever get is a few red spots that appear on the enemies and even then, at a very limited amount with very little red definition. But in Perfect Dark, buckets of blood splat out of the soldiers at a time! When guards are injured, they will limp around and say all kinds of things like: "Oh god! I'm bleeding!"... There is no gore in the game - which could be good for it's rating but not for blood and guts fanatics! So the most controversial image you could create is shooting a live person in the head with a Laptop gun with all the blood squirting out. As a matter of fact, the heads do move when shot, but that isn't far enough to get a gore rating. The next step would be to see flying arms and legs...
Guards can do plenty of things. When facing you, they will attempt several things. If they are near you, they will punch or kick you. If they are at a distance, they may shoot right away. They might decide to run behind a wall and ambush you there, or they may surprise you. When your facing one or a group, they will roll around you to try and dodge your shots, do some fancy jumping, reload their weapon if it runs out of ammo.
Rare has not only done an excellent job at animating their motions, but also at their
deaths! Yes - there is plenty of ways they might die. There is:
-the classic (crumbling straight down)
-regular front fall
-regular back fall
-back 180° spin
-front 180° spin
-groin pain
-neck pain
-leg pain
-arm pain
-unbalanced front fall
-unbalanced back fall
-wall fall
and my favorite - flinstone drop (falls on his knees, than drops dead altogether)
Also, if they are sitting in a chair, they will fall over with two new positions. Another
factor is when you blow them up. they turn all black and go flying. Funny!!!
A large improvement to Perfect Dark, is the puglisting and the guards, or even you
losing your weapon. There is three ways a guard (and you, as a matter of fact) can loose
his weapon: from somebody who punched him, his gun being shot out of his hand and N-Bombs.
They then will take one of the several options below:
-Attempt to punch you
-Pull out another gun
-Get backup
-Run around like a crazy fool
-Surrender
When the guard tries to punch you, he will use one of the following moves:
-Right hand jab
-Left hand swing
-Uppercut
-Internal slap
-Elbow
-Karate kick/chop
-Overhead kick
-Knee kick
Skedars always slash...But you can't disarm them.
The guards themselves can look different. Not only do they have a huge wardrobe, guards will have random heads (out of a hole wallop of heads), plus their size is also random.