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.