The problem is that she’s voiced by Mary Poppins. “Cute, very cute,” she quips when looking at a crate bomb. “I was ready half an hour ago, it’s you that’s making us late” goes another as she enters in an evening dress. They’re fairly banal lines, clichéd even, but typical of a heroine who manages to combine Pierce Brosnan and Julie Andrews yet still lacks charm.

The writing isn’t inspirational, making Joanna Dark not so much a character in search of an author as a cipher in search of a magazine cover. This extends to the supporting cast, most of whom can be found in the Carrington Institute, a brilliantly realised hub for the game that doubles up as one of the finest singleplayer levels.

Wandering around its rooms means meeting a succession of hideously camp British types who coo things such as “Welcome to hacker centrahl”, just falling short of saying “darling”.

Despite attempting to inject personality via a comedy sidekick (Elvis, an alien with a fondness for sticking his bulbous cranium into your firing line) and sardonic remarks from Joanna, Perfect Dark is otherwise po-faced, illustrating the duality at the game’s heart.

There’s order, in the form of the game’s story and mission structure, and the chaos of its interactions and weapon sets. So ignore the Carrington Institute and dataDyne, the groany story and the whole thing’s ponderously portentous name and typeface. Perfect Dark, as a game, is hilarious. It’s about drugging big-headed aliens until they can’t see, then strapping mines to their eyes. Setting elaborate traps with laptop guns and proximity mines, getting into slapfights and using n-bombs to make opponents run into walls.

This all comes from that weapon set and, oddly enough, its lack of balance. Restraint here would have made Perfect Dark a tighter, more focused experience, helped with those framerate issues, and removed almost all of the fun. Instead it overreaches itself with game-breaking tools just to show that it can. It gives you a gun that can shoot through walls, then adds an X-ray sight and autotargeting as standard.