GoldenEye 007

The Good
In a world filled with bleak Doom rip-offs, one FPS shows through like a mile marker in FPS history. This game is Goldeneye 007, an Nintendo 64 console exclusive. In 1996, when video games were pretty much run, shoot, run, shoot game style, Goldeneye brought us a better experience in FPS.

The game is a video game make of the popular movie Goldeneye. You star James Bond obviously, and throughout 25 levels you get an elevated level of game play no one thought was possible before. I tried as hard as possible to make this review as short as possible and not to give it so much praise, but a few good words do not do this game justice. At all.

The first good thing about this game is the game play. Unlike traditional
FPS of those days, this one offered a one where you could do your missions how you wanted to. Doom's main purpose was to collect keys and get to the end of the level. Not this one. You had to take your time on this game. it wasn't blow your way through waves of enemies. You actually had to do missions based on the movie. These missions you could even fail, so your main focus was not only the guards but how to pull off these missions before you went off and shot everything that moved. The production values are amazing. Levels are open, allowing you to do your missions in any order possible. In fact, you can even finish the level without finishing your objectives and you can fail! There are briefings, excellently crafted in-game menus, stealth action. This title was simply revolutionary for its time.

The guns are better than most games. It has a selection of over 30 weapons and gadgets to complete your missions. These can range anything from a rocket launcher to mines to a fully automatic shotgun.

The level of difficulty selection added the most options to this game. On agent, secret agent, and 00 agent, new objectives were added for increasing the difficulty and enemies got much smarter, stronger, and faster. Beating the levels on a certain difficulty on a target time unlocks cool cheats, which especially make the game interesting. As well as this there’s 2 secret levels to unlock if you beat all of the levels on secret agent and 00 agent. Beating every level on 00 agent including the secret levels gives you 007 mode. This allows you to alter how quick, smart, tough, and accurate the games enemies are which adds even more game play. Unlocking every cheat and 007 mode game me a good 40+ hours of game play doing this without the Gameshark.

The AI is decent in the game. This is being extremely tough on it. Most of the AI in this Most enemies will shoot through windows to get to you. Others will shoot from a higher point of view such as the top of the stairs. To put it at best the AI is only decent, but pulls it through to make for a good experience anyway.

During the time it was made, it boasted the best graphics. Unlike the other FPS where the environment was 3D and the enemy was not, everything in this game is rendered 3D. The guns are made to precise detail. The outdoor levels are humungous! You can see far across the level without fogging that Turok brought. Not only that, but people fall over a different way depending on where you shot them. For example, if you shot a man in the crotch, he will hold it while he falls over and dies. Shot him in the arm and he will hold his arm. There are over 30 different guards in the game, and depending where you are, they will differ. Not only this, they all carry different weapons depending on who they work for (Russian infantry carry AKs, Spetznaz carry Klobbs). On top of this, all guards have different faces which are randomly cycled through 50 or more! How's that for detail!

Musical score is done fairly well in the game. Some of its a remixed version of the Bond theme, but other original scores are done extremely well such as the Surface music and the Bunker music. All of the music for this game is done very well, including the main menu music which seems to be just the ripped Bond theme these days.

The sound effects are pretty cool. There are different gun shot noises for every gun you use, and the soldiers grunts when you shoot them aren't the typical stuff you can rip off of a sound board. This shows how much work they put into making this game.

Lastly, multiplayer is entertaining with friends. It has a great level
of control, and you can unlock extra levels from one player to play in here which is extremely fun. You can set the gun set, there’s more than one style than just Deathmatch and each person can choose a handicap and a character. Though it seems like most games these days offer the same, its this game that started the trend.

The last reason to get this game is just because it revolutionized the FPS industry. You can't just read about it, you must play it to know how good it is. Once you play it you will know why. Remember this game out 1996. Most Bond games still aren't as good as this one. And this one was made 10 years ago.

The Bad
The AI in the game sometimes has holes in it. Sometimes they will run towards you and stop very close in order to get a good shot on a large open stage. This happens mostly on outdoor levels. However this is unnoticeable in most of the indoor levels so its not really a bother most of the time. The other problem is how horribly uncoordinated they seem to be. In especially tight levels filled with lots of guys, they can pile on top of each other like they are made of sand. 10 guys can be cramped into a tight space that it may just look like a huge blob of polygons with arms and guns. They can't shoot thought each other, but there is no friendly fire for them so they can plug a clip or two in their friends back and he won't notice a thing.

Another two minor problems come with graphics. Sometimes when the situation of 10 guys piled on the screen at once occurs as mentioned above, the frame rate can slow down. Also, there tends to be some clipping problems where guards can stick his arm through his friends chest and shoot at you and actually hit you. This can also happen with walls. However these defects seem to be more of weird coincidences than defects and you will probably not notice it most of the time since you are too busy plugging away at bad guys to care.

This is more of an annoyance than a defect, but Bond makes this weird breathing noise when he is shot. Seems like he should say "F, that really fing hurt!" rather than just act as though he is hyperventilating. Nice try at deception Bond, but the bad guys are still shooting.

Even with these minor defects, it still adds to the whole Goldeneye experience.

The Bottom Line
If you are a fan of the Bond video game series, then this is a must buy. This is the game that started it all. All other sequels tend to be compared with this one when it comes to originality and game play. Most people still consider this the best one of the series. So if you own a Nintendo 64 and haven't played it yet, I highly recommend that next time you’re at a game store or on eBay that you check it out. It's guaranteed to blow you away.

The Good
Since the beginning of the first person shooter genre, games like Wolfenstein and Doom dominated and basically everybody else just copied off of these two or reinvented them for just about every system available to where it got to a point that the genre had gotten into a rut and became stale. Enter Goldeneye.

Goldeneye reinvigorated the genre thanks to Nintendo, Rare and the Nintendo 64. The graphics are top-notch for a 64 game, the backgrounds, foregrounds, vehicles, enemies all beautifully done. The sounds of the weapons firing off and the music straight from the movie gave it the feel of a movie and following the scenes from the movie with some added environments (the missile silo is still my favorite to this day).

The controls work perfectly for the game considering the clumsiness of the 64 controller. Moving, switching weapons and firing them can be done in one fluid motion which gives it a plus in my book. Basically, this game is damn near perfect. Rare did a great job in bringing the feel of the movie straight to the game and added some extra flair with the choice of weapons and the ability to drive the tank (I love to run over the Russian soldiers on the factory stage).

The Bad
Well, it's hard to find any faults with this game that can really hurt it, the only things I can really think of is the weird mapping of the faces of the enemies. To me they look like someone punched someone in the back of the head and caused their faces to push out, it keeps reminding me of a Tim Burton claymation movie for some reason.

Really, this is the only thing I can really put my finger on, it's just the game is technically and graphically superior to the many of its predecessors and the eventually imitators afterwards.

The Bottom Line
This game did to the genre what its movie counterpart did to the James Bond franchise, it brought it back to the forefront with style and pizazz that many others besides games like Halo can compete with, indeed this game should actually belong up in the ranks of games like Halo if not above it on the list.

Indeed there have been many imitators afterwards such as Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (which I will get to next time), but this game to this day still stands the test of time as one of the best FPS even after its initial run.

If you have never experienced this game yet, I suggest you go out a get a Nintendo 64 system and find this game (they are actually pretty easy to get a hold of) since you probably will never get to see this game, even if it is released on a virtual console (if Nintendo and Microsoft can ever get the problem with it settled), it still doesn't feel right unless you have the classic Nintendo 64 controller in your hand.

The Good
Consoles have never really been about first person shooters. Gamepads don't make the greatest of shooter controls, and multiplayer shooters are best played on a network of PCs instead of a split-screen TV.

Goldeneye 007 had the interesting distinction of being the greatest first person shooter on any console, and also an average (at best) game in the genre.

Goldeneye 007 has two strengths: a well-designed single player campaign, and a multitude of clever multiplayer modes. However, fundamental failings in the game hamper both from being all they could be.

The mission-based single-player mode is well designed. Objectives are varied and interesting, and while the gameplay doesn't go far beyond shooting, good design keeps things compelling.

Multiplayer is also loaded with many different game modes. From different weapons to team play to You Only Live Twice (get killed twice, and you're eliminated), there's no shortage of things to do to keep multiplayer games fresh.

The Bad
The graphics are atrociously fuzzy. Many Nintendo 64 titles suffered from this. The visuals look pretty decent otherwise, but it's like viewing everything through a haze. Nothing looks sharp. The game also suffers from slowdown frequently, especially in multiplayer shootouts.

Multiplayer is accomplished via split-screen view. The first person shooter genre loses a lot in multiplayer mode when you can see exactly what each player is doing. The fuzzy graphics are many times worse when each person's view is limited to a fragment of the screen. Some of the multiplayer levels are too large - even with 4 players.

Play control is abysmal. Just being able to aim your gun well takes far more effort than it should, and the slow moving speed doesn't work well in gunfights. Again, this is something that gets far worse when trying to manipulate the game from a small quarter-screen view in multiplayer mode. A second joystick would've helped, as the C-buttons are just too unwieldy.

The Bottom Line
So, why is this game so popular if it's so bad? Well, it's not a bad game. It's a pretty good game that is mostly ruined by some bad flaws. Anyone that has played some first person shooters on the PC will not be impressed. Compared to a mouse-and-keyboard, the Nintendo 64 controller is horrid. 4-player split screen multiplayer simply doesn't compare to the kind of online Quake II play that was going on at the time as well.

But, some gamers don't know the joys of PC shooters, and Goldeneye 007 was as good as it got for console first person shooters. Still, when all is said and done, it is an average game - and one of the most overrated games ever released.