GoldenEye 007

The Good
Goldeneye, although crammed with features, is essentially a gimmick-free game. There are many scenes in the film that game developers could have felt compelled to use. Enter an airplane in free fall. Count how often Boris pressed that ball pen. Use a spy satellite to locate the secret control station in Severnaya.

Basically, the kind of gimmicky gameplay that was later done with "007: The World is Not Enough".

Instead, Rare focused entirely on features that fit the first person perspective of the game perfectly: Rigorous action, suspense-packed stealth sequences and the occasional wristwatch gadget. Which is probably the reason this game works so incredibly well. The plot was rewritten to fit the FPS genre with Bond visiting places that he never saw in the film. And it's so much fun!

There's so much that I simply haven't seen in any other game before (nor after, in many cases). The legendary 4-player splitscreen multiplayer mode I spent countless hours playing with friends. The fact that you can shoot guards in the butt and see an appropriate animation. The beautiful, beautiful explosions. The procedurally generated remnants after you blew up entire rooms in the game world. The fact that cheats have to be unlocked via in-game challenges rather than button-codes (until the infamous "lost cheat codes" were released years later). The great soundtrack. Proximity mines! Sniper rifles! Drivable tanks! The stylish wristwatch pause menu!

I have to stop now...

The Bad
Goldeneye isn't perfect in the absolute sense of the word. There's plenty to complain about: The flickery bullet holes on walls can be distracting from the otherwise near-photorealistic graphics. Guards aren't always as smart as they could be. There is an annoying delay before the pause menu pops up.

Many people missed voice acting, a coop mode for singleplayer, more detailed game settings for the multiplayer or lights actually going out when you shoot them.

Nearly all of this has been solved with Rare's "spiritual successor", Perfect Dark. A secret agent game that changes the Bond-licensed setting by a more futuristic one but otherwise has all the things that made Goldeneye a great game. In fact, if you're looking for perfection rather than classic appeal, Perfect Dark might very well be the better game.

The Bottom Line
Goldeneye proved that both console FPSs and movie-licensed titles cannot only be good, but excellent games. It is a classic of the genre that doesn't rely on a central feature but rather gives the player near unlimited freedom of how to play. For me, this game is one of the, if not the best reason to own a Nintendo 64. Rare's masterpiece from the company's golden ages.