GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

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
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
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."