Modern FPS games should try this one on for size: difficulty levels present different types of challenge rather than the standard upping of enemy AI, numbers and hitpoints. Play on the easiest, Agent, and you’ll face a relatively sedate experience with one or two objectives. But as the difficulty increases locations become circuitous with more objectives and new set-pieces to trigger: the first level, set in the dataDyne skyscraper, introduces an attack helicopter on Secret Agent, hovering outside and carpeting the lobbies with minigun bullets.

Even the way people played together was thrown up in the air. In 2000 a shooter that offered a co-operative campaign mode would be unusual, though hardly exceptional. But what about a counter-operative mode, where one player tries to complete the level while another takes control of the enemies in their path?

As with so many of Perfect Dark’s other big ideas, it falls just short of greatness in practice, but is good enough that your imagination can fill the gaps. And as with any big and brave innovation, there are happy flaws in the counteroperative mode you can exploit to infuriate goody two-shoes: when playing as the counter-operative, shooting guns from your fellow soldiers’ hands will make them draw out their secondary weapon and immediately begin seeking Joanna. Get four or five to attack with you on Perfect Agent difficulty and it’s all over bar a merry day’s hunting.

There’s real character in Perfect Dark, but it’s nothing to do with its heroine. Walking through levels, you’ll see little scripted sequences with people being shot, arguing or simply relaxing. Playing with friends, you’ll devise deathtraps of outstanding ingenuity, before being sniped through the wall from 300 metres away.

Ian Fleming himself could have been behind the little gentlemanly twinkle in the repurposing of the Facility level as Felicity. And when we really get down to brass tacks, how many games have Shigeru Miyamoto running around and hiding the weapons?

Perfect Dark may not be all that fun to play any more, but its currency of ideas and provocation, most of which still hasn’t been picked up by other genre works, remains sound.

Who knows what the future holds for Joanna Dark? Another novel? More appearances in men’s magazines? As far as the game goes, though, we don’t need to worry about Perfect Dark’s future. It’s already written most of it.