GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

The Good
+ Fun run and gun combat...initially + Decent dual-wielding and power elements + Great graphics, sound and music + Surprisingly well-done multiplayer + Christopher Lee

The Bad
- Clunky controls - Utterly repetitious and dull gameplay - Not very James Bond-ey - Story is rather unoriginal - 3edgy5me

The Bottom Line
My first review of 2017. Taking length from a long an busy January, now was a good time to at least review some game...I was torn with Sniper Elite and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, but I ended up settling with the latter. Don't let the name fool you. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is not similar to the James Bond movie or even the excellent FPS game it spawned. No, GoldenEye is very much a spinoff product, featuring a darker, edgier and more violent take on the James Bond world...in this case, it's the Timothy Dalton out of the James Bond games.

The main story deals with a MI6 agent that was discharged after going gung-ho during a training simulation. Goldfinger requests his presence, and gets himself sucked into a war between him and Dr. No, who wants to acquire a new weapon designed by Goldfinger's organization. The plot itself is rather unoriginal, and not very James Bond-y...it plays like a crummy action movie. The good news is that there's plenty of Bond villains to go around - from Xenia Onatopp, Oddjob, Francisco Scaramanga and Pussy Galore, so there's a lot of fan service present...and yes, the late and great Christopher Lee reprises his role as Scaramanga, and it's good. Oh, don't forget Judi Dench too!

Gameplay wise, it's...Serious Sam meets James Bond. Every level is the same: run and gun every single baddie possible. Take them hostage if you want to, toss them as shields, dual wield guns to mow down more baddies, or use your eye abilities to gain a tactical advantage. The abilities range from seeing through cover, hacking computers and weapons, a shield and a force field that sends enemies flying to their deaths. But to hell with abilities, you cry, I just wanna shoot things! And yes, that's where much of the gameplay is. There's a few dozen guns on offer that allow you to mow enemies down, from traditional rifles and submachine guns to magazine fed miniguns and a remote mine gun. Many of the one-handed weapons can be dual-wielded, meaning that you can go all John Woo on Dr. No's goons. Yet, this is the most repetitious and dull part of the entire game. I compared this game to Serious Sam, and while Serious Sam had a lot of charm with it's dumb gameplay, GoldenEye is different. At least Serious Sam had variety in contrast to GoldenEye. On the other hand, the multiplayer is real fun, and I remember playing it with some family and friends (and myself because LONELINESS). They put more detail in the multiplayer than anything else, and that's saying something. As for the technical stuff, the graphics, sound and music are pretty good. The game is rather detailed for 2004, the sounds brutal and violent and the music pumping and technical (not the Trent Reznor type, no no). Enemies moan and groan violently and gun effects have a lot of serious 'oomph'. Controls, however, are clunky and muddled, and lead to some nasty confusion.

Of course, the game is very flawed - my biggest problem being with the tone and story. GoldenEye takes itself dead seriously to the point of absolute hilarity. It's so edgy and dark that it ends up killing off a couple beloved Bond characters in rather dumb ways. The game's sounds and graphics contribute to the mood, and the bloody concept art makes me wonder if this game was actually attempting to target an M rating. It's attitude is rather out of place, especially for something in the James Bond world - even though it had it's fair share of dark storytelling with the Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig side of movies. It's just that in GoldenEye's case, it's hilariously stupid and manages to give Shadow the Hedgehog a run for it's money in edginess. The story GoldenEye has is also rather weak, and possibly the weakest out of any James Bond game I ever seen.

Nevertheless, GoldenEye Rogue Agent is a special FPS...yeah, it's slightly buried deep into my heart but much of it's reception is spot on, citing the repetitiousness and sheer mediocrity of the game itself. Is it the worst James Bond game ever? Not really, though it isn't great. It's just a very middle of the road FPS that happens to have decent sound effects and multiplayer. If you're curious and want to pick the game up, just remember that the game is a testament to mediocrity and edginess, and nothing else.

The Good
I enjoyed the variety of weapons and the ability to dual-wield guns, as well as having the ability to use human shields, and toss people around by altering their magnetic fields... (what can I say? I'm a violent gamer!)

The Bad
The game had the traditional shooter's gameplay: shoot target A, move to point B, shoot target C...................

The Bottom Line
This game is OK, but it should be kept aside for multiplayer matches only.

The Good
Its Bond. Who doesn't love Bond? If you do there is no need to say more but if you don't it doesn't matter because this whole game revolves around a "Rogue Agent" cast out of MI6 for reckless and violent behavior. The games graphics aren't bad, there not great but there not bad either. The game features two control schemes "Classic" which is basically the Goldeneye 64 controls and "Precision" which is pretty much a direct take on the Halo controls. Being an evil character you get to take hostages and use them as human shields as well as many evil deeds. The game features a number of special abilities using the "Goldeneye". Decent rag doll effects as well. The single player might be short but this game has full Xbox Live features to fulfill anyone evil needs. Even though it's a direct rip off of Halo 2 the duel wielding is great fun. The games A.I is amazing. It uses a new system called E.V.I.L.

The Bad
First thing this game has NOTHING to do with Goldeneye on N64. Its a cheap effort to mooch off the success of one of the greatest FPS games ever made. Although the graphics are decent they are a step down from Everything Or Nothing. The controls are very sluggish and moving the guns around is excruciatingly slow. Any Bond fan will tell you that the plot is all over the place. For starters according to the movies ALL of the villains should be dead. Not to mention they are all from different Bond era's. The back ground of the main character is never explained which is a bummer considering the games idea was very interesting and could have gone farther with the plot.

The Bottom Line
It's decent but is a blatant cash in on Goldeneye 64. It's good enough to buy but not before the price goes down. 6/10

The Good
Christopher Lee's voice acting is great as his voice is unbeatable. The dual firing system is pretty well executed. Multiplayer is pretty well done too.

The Bad
It seems so rushed, the gunfights all feel the same, (GoldenEye 64 didn't seem nearly as repetitive), and the eye powers just seem tacked on. The sound effects aren't anything special, and the rocket fights with helicopter things feel very fake and plastic. It is very linear as well, really after 10 hours play there hasn't been one choice of direction.

The Bottom Line
A fairly poor attempt at creating a shooter that would rival GoldenEye on 64. It doesn't have any of the charm and feels very flat most of the time. You can't even be that evil despite the fact that you're a rogue agent... A lack of variety really leaves this game in the lurch. Glad I only paid $26AU for it.

The Good
There aren't a lot of positive things to say about this game. The graphics, sounds and music are tolerable, and some of the weapons, like the railgun that shoots through walls, are fun. The best thing about the game is the titular GoldenEye. It has nothing to do with the classic N64 game or any of the movies, but it's an interesting gizmo with four different features: you can see through walls, hack some devices, create a protective shield around you and launch a shockwave that instantly kills most enemies. The ability to hack into some of the traps makes the gunfights more interesting. You can also grab enemies and use them as shields, which would be cool if it worked properly.

Also, it was refreshing to play as a rogue MI6 agent instead of Bond, since it at least makes Rogue Agent different from other James Bond games.

Oh, and Christopher Lee is Scaramanga! Just listening to his voice makes you forget about the game's flaws for a while.

The Bad
Despite the points I mentioned above, Rogue Agent is just mediocre. The idea of bringing a whole bunch of James Bond characters sounded cool, but they didn't get anything out if it. The "plot", if you can call it that, consists of a few barely coherent five-second FMV's, and nothing seems to be logical. Why was the main character fired from MI6? Why is Scaramanga a scientist? The plot isn't anything to write fan fiction about.

Most of the gameplay is just dull. Without the GoldenEye, it's basically just shooting thousands of nameless goons out of your way. Sometimes they have protective shields, which basically just means you have to shoot them at them more. Like in Halo, you can usually carry two different guns, but that doesn't apply to things like assault rifles or sniper rifles. Speaking of the sniper, it's cool to use, but it NEVER has enough ammo.

The pacing is horrible in this game, it's just shoot shoot shoot all the time. There's barely enough time to draw a breath, and there's nothing to bring more variety outside of the GoldenEye. No puzzles, no vehicle sequences, nothing. In the last level, there are some AI-controlled buddies helping you out, but they're rather useless and they die easily, since they're even worse about using cover than the enemies.

Due to the bad pacing, the game is difficult and frustrating. There aren't enough checkpoints and dying will send you miles backwards. If you want to quit the game to resume it later, the save points are even less frequent. Towards the end, the levels get infuriatingly long, and contain enemies with weapons that kill with one shot. The GoldenEye's shield is useful, but runs out of power very quickly.

The Bottom Line
Despite the GoldenEye name, my advice is to avoid this first-person shooter. The game is tedious and mediocre in every respect and it fails to offer anything unique.

The Good
Goldeneye: Rogue Agent was a kind of welcome change from most other games that I have played; most of the 007 games, for example. Don't get me wrong, but it is refreshing to get to play the bad guy once in a while. I enjoyed the Goldeneye as well. It is actually better than some of the other EA Games as well. I don't think that EA tried to cash in on the name Goldeneye. If that's the case, the same argument could be made for Microsoft cashing in on the game Perfect Dark.

The Bad
The Bad: When I first heard about this game, I figured you would be playing as a free agent who was getting revenge on MI-6 for giving him the axe. Obviously, this isn't the case. Basically, all you are is an agent for another group. It's basically a James Bond game, without James Bond. I mean, all the elements are there; Q (Fransisco Scaramanga), M (Goldfinger), the villain (Dr. No)

The Bottom Line
If someone were to ask me if they should buy Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, I would ask them if they really enjoy James Bond games or FPS, if they said the former, I'd say "No", if they said the latter, I'd say "yes."

The Good
Being the bad guy for once was an interesting touch. Working for the villain (Auric Goldfinger) was an interesting touch as well.

The Bad
This game is quite possibly the worst Bond game out there. Well, A View to a Kill is probably the worst so this is #2. Being the villain sounds like an interesting touch at first but after I beat the first mission of the game (Which is the MI6 training simulator mentioned in the plot outline) I felt like a critical element was missing from the game. A critical element that makes the game...fun. But, sadly, this game does not seem to have it. Throwing enemies off cliffs and taking them hostage to use against other enemies seems like an interesting concept at first but here - it basically...fails horribly. The missions have very little variety in them - they're all the same colors - just a dull gray and sometimes brown if you're lucky.

The Bottom Line
The game is basically just a run-and-gun shooter. Usually, you just open a door, kill everyone inside with the weapon you have, go inside another door, and do the exact same thing. Occasionally, you are given the chance to use your Goldeneye which comes with a feature that will allow you to toss enemies around, be invincible temporarily, hack into computers, and look through cover. The game feels like it could have been an interesting feature to play the bad guy, but here, the game play of the previous Bond game (Everything or Nothing) is missing. Compared to previous Bond games such as Nightfire or Everything or Nothing, this game is poor...and I'm being generous about my score!

The Good
In GoldenEye: Rouge Agent,you are a MI6 agent working with James Bond. In the first level you infiltrate Goldfinger's Fort Knox. Your helicopter crashes into Fort Knox and somehow you manage to escape the helicopter but Bond stays in the helicopter. When you begin the actual level Bond is hanging on to the helicopters right wing. You try to save him but the helicopter falls and Bond comes to a brutal end. After this Goldfinger hires you to work for him. Your purpose, to kill Dr.No. No shoots your eye out and Scramanga gives you the goldeneye. As you progress through the game your eyes upgrades and can be used as a deadly weapon. The art in the game is beautiful and colorful. The sound quality is great(this is because THX helped in this game). Unique levels and the storyline is good. This game also had a great soundtrack. The soundtrack is all thanks to Paul Oakenfold.

The Bad
The enemies in this game were way to aggressive. This game was very hard in my opinion. The games levels are way to freaking long. There are only 8 levels in all but the levels are like an hour long. The makers of this game should have put way more guns in this game. You'll find your self using the Jackal 50. and P-90 all through the game. a larger weapon selection would make this game a whole lot better. Some times players will find themselves bored out of their skull trying to finish a level. I prefer you play the game on easy because this game could make you lose your mind on medium or hard mode.

The Bottom Line
This is a tragedy. GoldenEye: Rouge Agent had a lot more potential to be a great game. Due to the crappy ratings and reviews the sequel has been canceled. Lets hope in the future Electronic Arts can resurrect GoldenEye and make some adjustments. A kinda fun game overall. Good luck with this game......