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Goldeneye 007

Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo
25 August 1997
Goldeneye 007 - cover art
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1,032 Ratings / 4 Reviews
#988 All-time
#33 for 1997
In 1986 Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union, MI6 has uncovered a secret chemical weapons facility at the Byelomorye Dam. James Bond and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan are sent to infiltrate the facility and plant explosive charges. During the mission, Trevelyan is shot by General Arkady Ourumov, while Bond escapes by commandeering an aeroplane.
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still holds up in the mouse/keyboard mod
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yoitu 2023-10-11T15:52:15Z
2023-10-11T15:52:15Z
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The Pleasure Will Be All Mine
What a rush! GoldenEye’s long-awaited re-release provided me with the perfect excuse to finally revisit it, and you know what? It’s like I’m 13 all over again. One run through the first level and all my concerns that GoldenEye wouldn’t hold up to modern scrutiny were washed away.

The Saturday afternoon I spent blitzing through the game on Agent was some of the most gaming fun I’ve had in weeks. I can’t properly express how much I appreciate the brevity of these levels. The game’s third level, Runway, took me less than a minute! Karate chop a comrade, grab the key, run through turret fire, hop in the plane. Modern shooters have never replicated this frantic pace.

Playing on Xbox, the experience feels authentic – too authentic for some, I hear, but perfect for me. The frame rate has been vastly improved while still maintaining the slightly stuttering pace of the N64 version. While I don’t doubt that the cancelled Xbox 360 remaster would’ve felt more modern, I prefer my GoldenEye with the jank left in. (That being said, the shift to modern twin-stick shooter controls is a welcome update.)

Despite my childlike enthusiasm, I can’t overlook that there are a few rough spots. Some of the later levels are a bit tedious, thanks to unskippable conversations and a heavy reliance on escort missions. Watching Natalya be shot down by Russian soldiers again and again while hacking the terminal in Control was frustrating, and it put a damper on my desire to replay the whole game on the higher difficulty levels – to say nothing of unlocking all the cheats, like I did on my N64 copy.

But that’s just about my only complaint. There’s just so much to love here. The guns feel punchy. The enemy animations are amusing. The mission objectives, extremely innovative for their time (remember, this game came out before Thief: The Dark Project), still provide extra depth and challenge today. Even multiplayer is fun – Slapper’s Only! License to Kill is as hilarious as ever.

I might have to come back and grind out Facility on 00 Agent in under 2:05, if only to prove I still have what it takes. Has it really been a quarter of a century since I did it the first time? It feels like it was yesterday.
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toadhjo 2023-02-07T07:45:14Z
2023-02-07T07:45:14Z
4.0
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Over 20 years later, I'm surprised how well this game's legacy holds up. Goldeneye shouldn't have been a success due to its unconventional development history, but the team behind it had a vision and let no controversy or internal politics sway them from reaching their end goal of making a great game. A lot of what makes Goldeneye so fun to come back to are the levels themselves; they're structured in a linear manner but feel very "lived in" so to speak as there are various areas and locations to explore that may not necessarily have a purpose, but add a bit of immersion to the levels and a sense of exploration. Despite these extra bits of detail and scale to the levels, I've never felt lost or completely confused at how to proceed through the levels, although this isn't in reference to the level objectives. Objectives are fairly straight forward enough on the easier difficulties, even a bit mind numbing in the early levels, but as the game continues the amount of objectives slightly increase or ask the player to do more than just simply heading straight to the end, whether that be tracking down important intel from certain NPCs, taking photos, or search and destroy objects like gun turrets. On the easiest difficulty, the game manages to put up quite a challenge to the very end and is a very enjoyable experience, although admittedly there are times where I have to pay a bit close attention to the debriefings before the missions start to make note if I need to make use of certain gadgets in order to progress through a level, a no brainer in hindsight but I'm all too used to the quality of life improvements games have made in order to keep me on track and lead me to the next point of interest in games today. All in all, the base Solo campaign of Goldeneye is classic and was innovative for the time for not being a pure run and gun in the vein of Doom or Turok. Even after beating the main campaign there's still much to partake in such as the high difficulties which change up the game quite a bit by adding more objectives to the levels in addition to increasing AI health and damage, this is where Goldeneye really tests your skills in level memorization and being able to outsmart the AI from cornering you and putting an end to your run. A checkpoint system would come in handy in this case, but the levels are short enough to where restarting from the beginning isn't the absolute worst thing. Accomplishing the incredible feat of beating 00 Agent unlocks two extra levels Aztec and Egyptian respectively along with a sandbox difficulty mode known as 007 that allows you to mess around with AI settings prior to starting a level. While a nice incentive to be known as a master of the game, beating all of the levels on 00 Agent is quite a hellish experience and that extra bit of content, while nice, never felt worthwhile to me in the end to try myself. Where Goldeneye shines however is the ever so legendary 4 player multiplayer, especially in a time where consoles were not so well known for shooters, let alone multiplayer shooters. From the classic selection of well designed maps, a wide cast of characters, and fun mode presets and weapon loadouts to play around with, Goldeneye still manages to be very fun with friends years after its initial release, although it might take a bit of a nostalgic eyes to appreciate the experience, where in line comes some of the title's various issues. Goldeneye isn't quite the looker, even for its time, and despite holding down a tolerable performance most of the time , there are often many times in both the late game and in multiplayer where the game's framerate chugs quite a bit to where many people today would consider unplayable. Considering the time period in which it released, it's easy to forgive Goldeneye of its various shortcomings, but what it does well, it exceeds very well in. The game has been able to keep its legacy of a cornerstone title in the progress of how first person shooters are designed today, even if other titles have since overshadowed its accomplishments. The game is still fun to play with friends in multiplayer, especially when messing with many of the games over-the-top and memorable cheats like DK mode, paintball guns, slow motion deaths, super fast running speeds, and so much more. The game has also managed to have a heavily dedicated speedrunning scene that have taken the game to insanely optimized levels of play that have only been taken down by matters of seconds throughout a long period of time. The game sees so much love and playtime but as the years pass, its legacy slowly fades in the eyes of the general gaming populace. This may have been averted had the HD port seen an official release, along with a planned release on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console, however the title faces many legal issues with its holding company of the James Bond IP which make it nearly impossible for Goldeneye to be properly appreciated in the modern age; very unfortunate but the game still manages to draw in attention over the years despite its age. Many of the games issues are very much tied to its platform and the era of release, but Goldeneye is still 'Golden' to this very day. Crap pun, but good game.
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JackTrickelson 2021-05-08T06:14:48Z
2021-05-08T06:14:48Z
4.0
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GoldenEye may forever be the best movie-to-game adaptation and remains one of the best and most innovative first-person shooters. Admittedly, it's showing its age in its AI, and the low frame rate affects gameplay at times, but the game's few flaws tend to pale against its brilliance.
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ColdVein 2021-02-17T21:03:23Z
2021-02-17T21:03:23Z
5.0
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In the past, there was one seeming truism that is still a pretty good rule of thumb today but was especially true in the past. That was that licensed games in general and movie tie in games, in particular, weren't that good. This was what everyone thought in their hearts and minds in the '90s on the playground and in gaming magazines. Like with all rules there were some exceptions and like with movie remakes even though everyone seemingly loathes them they always have some stock exceptions to start citing as a counterexample to the general rule that they're bad. But for license games, we have the Sunsoft Batman games, the Konami Ninja Turtle games, Maximum Carnage, and that one mythical Simpsons arcade game. I will also add Treasure's license stuff here. You might notice something about these titles if you have played them all and that is that they're beat-em-up games that have an easy tie in and connection with their source material. That being that as comic book characters beat'em ups fit the worlds they were trying to portray as best as could be imagined in a video game format at the time. And that Simspons arcade game was made by Konami which even though it didn't really fit the source material was a mindless romp of fun that let us explore Springfield and be some of the characters in the funniest way conceivable at the time. It was also already using a game engine that had proven to be fun before with their aforementioned Ninja Turtle titles. The problem with a lot of game tie in products is they would be put into genres and gaming trends that didn't necessarily fit or jive with their previously established settings and characters that well. I talk about this a lot in my Simpsons Wrestling review that the problem with it and most other Simpsons games is that the setting of Springfield doesn't necessarily lend itself easily to most game genres at the time. I also talk about Superman 64 a lot in that review and it is very relevant to this N64 game, but in regards to that review I say the same thing about it that I say about the Simpsons Wrestling, the genre conventions it tries to mold itself to aren't what you expect out of a game about Superman at the time which would have been more of a 3D beat'em up game with some amount of flight involved. You see the thing about movie tie in games and license products in general and this should be obvious to anyone from a business standpoint is that they weren't good because they were deliberately fast and cheaply made crap in order to turn a quick profit in relation to another product. So the cynical nature and lack of effort surrounding them shouldn't be a big surprise to most people. It's almost a miracle that we have any good licensed products and that all of them weren't bad when you consider why these were made. It's especially striking given these circumstances that a game made about a movie not only became more famous than that movie but is considered by most people one of the best games of its console generation. This wasn't an easy task and despite what people tell you if this game was truly as mediocre and uninspiring as they say it would have floundered as fast as Superman 64.

Something I have noticed is people seem to want to rewrite history with Goldeneye 64 is that they want to make it seem like the only reason people enjoyed this game was the lack of other titles on the system in general. Well, I think the above example of Superman 64 shows that this game could have easily died if it really was terrible and despite it being on a system with a relatively limited amount of games. Some games still failed despite this inherent lack of titles, so something else has to explain this game's contemporary at the time and even present popularity. I think in fairness this is (a) factor in the game's popularity but I don't think it is the only reason why people liked this game. The main appeal of Goldeneye as a title was it's multiplayer potential and if there was one type of game the system didn't lack it was multiplayer games in general. So it had to do a few things more than the average to stand out to people.
Also, no this was not the first console FPS nor was it the first or only one on this console, that also doesn't explain why this game, in particular, is popular. The ID games and their ports on the system were considered the best console iterations on everything but sound and they remain the best of this generation, depending on whether you count the Dreamcast as a fifth-generation console instead of a sixth, but I have never really understood people who do that anyway.
I have always found it a weird argument that to say a better experience exists elsewhere that means that anything not completely aligned with the ideal is so completely lesser that it can't be enjoyed at all. Yes PC FPS games were ahead of console games at the time and the keyboard and mouse are more ideal for shooting games, but you can say the same for most genres that aren't fighting games or platformers, about the only games people will say a controller is absolutely necessary or at least a better experience than a keyboard and mouse. What is so special about FPS games in this regard that makes them particularly far lesser than other genres? If anything I would think this attitude towards a genre would encrust itself more around RTS, 4X strategy and point and click games as console ports of these are generally miserable whereas FPS games have slightly less accurate and less customizable controls but are still playable to an enjoyable level to most people. The difference between this genre and those is that this genre was and is the most popular and I think the reason people fixate on it, is its popularity rather than its functionality. You can't really flex on nubs and normies if they don't give a shit about the thing you're flexing on, but since most of them do like FPS games, that's where your flexing and elitist rants tend to gravitate to even if it isn't really the best genre to show the superiority of PC's and their capabilities over consoles.
Further, on this point, I don't think someone necessarily has to have an ideal experience to have an enjoyable one. If I have a car but it's not the highest tier most expensive custom made sports car, should I refuse to drive it until I can have that ideal experience even though a basic car can get me where I need? Should I only eat meals prepared by Michelin star chefs and refuse anything made by lesser cooks? My current computer only has about four thousand dollars sunk into it when I lump in my sound system and monitors, should I wait until I can buy a machine with 6 way SLI, a water-cooled system made by JayzTwoCents and a processor made for commercial space flight? Maybe my experience is slightly lesser than it could be but one 2080TI was luxury enough for me. Yes, an ideal experience exists, but that doesn't automatically negate the fun someone can have with a slightly lesser version of the same thing. In the case of Goldeneye, I don't think the ideal experience was that far off from what most console plebs were getting with the game at the time. Especially considering that most people's computers were trash and internet connections were about as flimsy and finicky as an American made space shuttle.
I don't want to give people a wrong impression here, I generally prefer the PC port of most games but I'm also not so blinded by elitism that I cant imagine people having fun with a console game despite it's slightly diminished experience in some regards. Especially in the past when the price of most PC's was more prohibitively expensive and out of reach for most people and games were still considered something for children and not something you should drop the downpayment on a car into to play to their fullest extent. I also know that even currently with much cheaper computers around, that a console is still an economically more viable choice for some people whose life unlike mine doesn't revolve around video games and organizing porn folders on massive hard drives. In the past, when the yangbucks weren't raining, I also sometimes settled for a console. So I know this isn't just a hypothetical, it's a reality for a lot of people.
Even without all that shit. I can totally imagine people getting together and playing this game even today and having fun with it for a few hours. I don't really get why this is hard for people to believe. Ask most small retail game shop owners and they will tell you people still buy N64's for this exact reason so they can have nostalgic romps playing a few multiplayer games with friends. I don't think any of them while doing this are having an existential crisis over the fact that they weren't playing a slightly superior PC game that came out at the same time.

So those are my responses to people who I think dislike this game for the wrong reasons, but there is also dumb reasons to like a game as well. I'm not against people making nostalgia or what I would call more accurately "personal importance" as a key reason for why they like something. It's not a very compelling third-person rational argument if I'm trying to convince someone else but most people who aren't robots which is everybody, have at least something they like for personal reasons that can't easily translate into a rational argument. I think a person should still admit outright that they like something despite it's flaws, but as long as they are being honest with themselves and me in a dialogue I'm ok with people liking shit for dumb reasons. I still like the story of Warcraft, I wanted Cleganebowl to happen and I get giddy when Nintendo makes the 53rd entry into a series meant for children, but my mentally stunted ass can't stop playing them. I like dumb things and I want dumb things to happen. On the other hand, I can imagine other people liking media I don't like and it having a big personal impact on their life.
Maybe when Goldeneye came out, you were eating home-baked cookies and then you jacked off for the first time. So now every time you think about this game, you think of it in a grand lustful association of sexual neuroticism and grandmas best chocolate chip goodness. This brings you back to the golden age before you had to give up your dream major in college to be an accountant and your significant other pretend they don't know you and they need to keep things "open." Or at least that's what my restraining order implied to me through force. Some shit I don't like can have an undo emotional impact on people for whatever reason. But unlike my restraining order, let us be crystal fucking clear, this is a dumb reason to like something, there isn't any "but" about it. It's acceptable to like things for purely personal emotional reasons, but you're willingly being a bit of a dumbass while doing so.
So with that said I get some people's exasperation with titles being praised that seemingly have little merit or don't measure up to some better games. It can be frustrating to think that something better went by the wayside while people were taking in garbage. What I would say to a person that thinks this about Goldeneye is while I don't think the game was the most groundbreaking title ever and that other FPS experiences were already superior to it, I don't think the game is completely without merit or that it's value is only reliant on "muh nostalgia."
The argument that all this is building up to is that Goldeneye wasn't just good it was as good as I can imagine it being given its console constraints and hardware limitations. I also don't see the big hangup with this game in particular and people having personal reasons for liking a game. There are a lot of games, albums, and films that I don't think should be well regarded in general or that should be in the top 100 charts here, but I don't think people are lying to themselves or have a conspiratorial need to fit in every time I don't agree with people's estimation of something. I didn't like Dark Soul's II but I think fans of the game actually liked it, they just have a different opinion and experience with the game than me. I don't like Attack on Titan that much, but the MAL charts tell me it's one of the greatest shows ever penned to a digital canvas. I don't think people are just doing this to bring down my estimation of the MAL charts in a grand conspiracy to piss me off and like thing's that I think are dumb I just think most peoples personal estimation of the show is out of sync with my own, for one reason or another. I don't think people are lying to themselves or holding onto it out of Nostalgia. Maybe you came home every day and you and your three brothers played this shit from dawn to dusk and it was your greatest gaming memory. I'm talking about Goldeneye here because it seems to have sparked this discussion but really this could be said about any piece of media.

Some game companies are great because they make innovative games that break the mold, Rare was not great for that reason. I think of Rare as a company that made games that were the same as other companies and part of already established genres and gaming conventions, but what they did was make a really well-polished version of something that already existed. 3D platformers were already a thing before Rare they just decided to make one that incorporated and encapsulated most of what the genre accomplished up to that point but with tons more content and a lot of gameplay mechanics most companies wouldn't think to use in a game when they made Banjo-Kazooie and it's sequel. I think the only 3D platformer that competes with those at all is Mario 64 and really only in terms of its controls which were the only thing that I think Banjo didn't improve upon, but in every other category of gameplay I prefer the Banjo games to Mario 64. Kart Racing games existed and they directly worked for the king of the genre with Nintendo, they weren't breaking new ground with Diddy Kong Racing, they were just giving us the shinest most expansive and experimental take on the genre up to that point, with adding an adventure mode, unconventional vehicles and unorthodox routes to their tracks to incentivize these new vehicles and their use. DKR was the most polished take on its genre to a degree that I think it's only recently been topped in my opinion with Mario Kart 8. The N64 had a lot of multiplayer games and I played most of them extensively but aside from the game I'm reviewing I don't think I ever had more fun with the system and three other people than when I played Diddy Kong Racing. There was just so much variety and surprises with everything the multiplayer had that most of the other games on the system simply couldn't compete with. I think games like Sonic R and Crash Team Racing also tried to do what DKR did but they show us the shortcomings of trying to experiment at the cost of losing the core appeal of the game. Some of Sonic R's features were so non-functional and clunky that most people never noticed that it tried to do some of the things DKR did like multiple track routes and routes based for specific vehicles. CTR wasn't as bad, but it just lacked the generally tight controls and overall ambition that DKR had. If I want to show people two relatively good games but one that was made by clear professionals and one that was made by amateurs trying to ape something else, I would use these two as they illustrate perfectly the difference in the overall level of craft when creating a game. I think Goldeneye fit's in a similar vein to these games, it was not the most innovative game of its era, it didn't break the mold or give us a new genre, it just gave us the best possible, most polished version of an FPS game that was on a console at the time.

To that end, despite some of my misgivings with this game which I will bring up shortly, it does make up for a lot of those things in terms of its overall style and cohesive gameplay experience and to go back to the first paragraph of this review, it managed to bring it all together to give you a polished gameplay experience that made you feel like you were in the movie, more so than I would say any game before it. Even with putting the Goldeneye movie into a game and genre that was possibly the best fit for it at the time, Rare could have easily still fucked this game up by putting no effort into the game and merely just making generic levels with mediocre gameplay that barely fit the setting. Even if you're a PC elitist and were so at the time. You can still acknowledge that they put in a lot more effort and tried to do some fun things in this game that a lot of even PC FPS games at the time weren't trying. The easiest example of this is their attempts to make stealth a viable mechanic in the game. 007 is a spy, so if he was just a straight action star in these games like Duke Nukem, it would be an abject failure in the games overall design, but Rare actually tried to make stealth and spy gadgetry a key part of the game's campaign. One of my most vivid memories of this game is me and my cousin playing the part at the start of the second level where you save Dr. Doak. We both got really hung up on the fact that we were in an air duct and didn't want to leave it. Something about doing this was just cool in and of itself. The level also gives you the small explosives to destroy those tanks for the mission and I remember us fucking around with those even at the detriment of our mission status because the small mines were just such a fun game mechanic. Obviously other games improved upon 3D stealth rather quickly after this game like Thief and MGS, but I remember this being one of the appeals of Goldeneye and it's one of the ones that has been lost over time and that I don't think younger people would notice today.
I can say what I said about stealth with vehicle combat, bungee jumping, weather effects, unconventional weapons, damage to the environment and new forms of environmental interaction this game brought that previous first-person shooters might have employed to some extent but not to the polished and cohesive extent that this game did.
It also for the first time I can recall gave a person multiple objectives depending on the game's difficulty and other factors to complete in a level. A lot of which either built upon things that came from the source material or were seamless additions to the setting. This was one of the first games I can remember needing to carefully read a mission briefing to know what the bonus goals were and I remember me and my cousin writing them down so we wouldn't forget as we were playing the level. The story in this game is just the story of the film, but the missions do stray a little bit from that in terms of the aforementioned bonus objectives and I think it actually ends up being more engaging and fun than the film with these bonus objectives. Not that it is a super important accomplishment, because even among Bond films and one of the worst eras of them, Goldeneye was not a particularly great film.
One aspect of this game's gameplay that always kind of catches me off guard the longer I go without playing it is how smooth and fast the movements are. 3D FPS games of this era always feel way more clunky in their movement and have delays in a lot of your actions, but most things in this game happen instantly and I think this was a key appeal to both this and Perfect Dark afterward. For a game that only runs at thirty frames, it runs way smoother than it should. This is probably why both of those games are still really popular for speed-running when most FPS titles from the same generation are not. It was popular for this reason even before people knew about the looking at the floor trick, to smooth the framerate out even more. I think this smoothness and it's overall lack of clunkiness that a lot of other FPS games had on consoles was one of the reasons it became so loved.
The way I view games I think some things have to be contextually rated like with graphics, sound, and general presentation. I only expect the game to be as good with these things as they generally were at the time. I wouldn't play this game today and say it looks better than a modern-day first-person shooter, but I wouldn't be comparing it to a modern-day FPS's graphics I would be comparing it to other games that came out around the same time. Goldeneye feels the most dated graphically and I admit that almost nothing about it holds up that well in terms of its graphics and general aesthetics. One thing I do like about the game's graphics is that the UI tried to incorporate a lot of the general aesthetics of the Bond films. The way the game over screen has the blood run down and fade out in a way reminiscent of the black border fades out in the films is just an awesome detail. You know even at the time the graphics were crude enough that I remember the lads and I would call the AK47 the "pencil gun." If you know what it looks like in-game it isn't hard to understand why we gave it this nickname.
Compared to Rare and Nintendo's other games at the time this game does have a lot of blurry and out of focus textures and all the buildings are very squared off and look too abstract and not enough like a real place. Even when just compared to other console games. I also think Perfect Dark is a good point of comparison here, because only a few years later that games graphics were miles better in every way and with virtually the same engine.
The Nintendo 64 wasn't particularly good in terms of soundtracks outside of first-party titles. Goldeneye was second party and the music is still pretty average for the system. I like some of the renditions of the Bond themes and a few of the game's tracks are burned into my memory. Burned as in they violently made their way into my neurons as I didn't take them in passively. The N64 despite its rather limited audio capabilities mostly centered around the fact that audio files were too large for the cartridges internal storage, still managed to have a lot of games with much better music than this title. The music is only about average, but I think one thing this game excelled in was the sound effects. The guns use old-timey sound effects from the older bond movies. When you hit a wall or a body you viscerally hear the difference in the way the shot sounds. I don't remember a lot of games earlier than this managing that Dark Forces and of course a game I have to mention every other Review System Shock did, but that is some good company to be in for a console game. A lot of the supplemental audio and sound cues from the series manage to stay fresh and give the game a lot more style and personality than it otherwise would have.
This game has thousands of codes, extras, Easter eggs, etc a lot of which weren't discovered until decades after the game came out. This was true of most of Rare's titles and despite people still playing this game quite a bit even to this day, there is probably even more secrets and shit we don't know about. When a game company does extra shit like this, some of which they hide so well that it can't possibly be something they thought would help sell the title when it was contemporary. When they put in those extra hours to give players more options and more reasons to play the game without much reward for themselves. That counts for something with me and I think it counts as something for a lot of people who grew up with these games and look back fondly on this era of Rare titles. This wasn't a company that was just stamping their name on a piece of shit that they plopped out after two weeks, because it was attached to a famous movie license. All these extras and all this attention to detail show me, they were having fun creating this game, to the point they couldn't get enough with just making the game good enough to sell, they kept feeling the need to keep packing in more and more shit.

I don't think this game is a masterpiece, that isn't my argument here, I'm merely saying there are reasons this game was and is still well regarded, despite claims to the contrary. If you disagree with me and you think the game is still horrible you can take solace in the fact, that since I gave this a positive review, people will instinctively start hate rating it out of spite to offset my positive opinion as they did with FFT and RE1. My endorsement of anything is essentially an anti-endorsement. Like FDR, I welcome your hatred.
My actual final argument, I was literally a clump of cells that was aborted into a toilet on prom night yesterday and I still enjoy this game and the music not of my generation.
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Title
"GoldenEye" is one of my favourite James Bond movies of all time. It made the franchise become wilder than ever (Which means there were more explosives and so on) but fortunately it didn't forget its dry, dodgy camp humour from the past days. But, is the camp humour really that necessary in the 007 movies? Well, i'd say yes and no but mostly yes. I mean "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace" were actually serious but i still think that they both lack that special, childish moments to be fully entertaining. Never mind that, "GoldenEye 007" is one of the very few license games that actually are GOOD games. The movie came out in 1995 but the game was out in 1997. Despite of being approximately two years late the game is much better than the movie ever was. In fact, the game revolutionized the entire (console) first person shooter genre, updating it in a way nobody didn't see that time. Very noticeable fact is that Rareware didn't just follow the entire movie, they actually expanded the plot, giving more chance to play scenes that weren't possible in the movie. Rare also added lots of their own material and even used some of different elements from other older Bond movies.

Unlike any other early 90's shooters such as "Doom", "Duke Nukem 3D", "Turok: Dinosaur Hunter", "Quake" etc. "GoldenEye 007" offers more mission orientated objectives and less straight shooting. It depends how much necessary action Bond really needs to do in order to complete a level. Usually stealthing and saving ammo are the main ideas to survive but sometimes Bond has to use fire power to reach his goal. Each level has three different difficulties. The harder the difficulty level, the bigger the task. Every difficulty level adds more mission objectives that needs to be done to complete a level. What makes it even more challenging is that Bond can't find any health at all to cure his wounds. The only way to prevent death is to collect bullet proof vests or simply dodge bullets as much as possible. If Bond dies, it's game over. If something important mission objective is being spent/destroyed/killed/not complete within chosen timeline during a mission then it's game over.

Even though "GoldenEye 007" is mostly a stealth 1st person shooter, the designers of Rareware have added lots of nice bonus stuff to make the game feel more entertaining. Just like in the movies, Bond can use his good old gadgets and gizmos during his missions, although they vary in every mission he chooses. That's not all, the game offers lots of different guns and weapons, which the best ones might be the tank and the golden gun from the "The Man With the Golden Gun" movie. When Bond has completed all the levels on the hardest difficulty, a couple of extra levels are then available. There are also hidden guest multiplayer characters to be played: Oddjob, May Day, Baron Samedi and Jaws. If using Game Genie codes player can open new characters to use other Bond actors in the multiplayer mode! Why were they deleted from the final version? Maybe Sean Connery didn't want to use his Bond model to be used in a shooting game, i don't know. However Connery and his fellow agent collagues are still inside the game's code so they can still be unlocked. Hidden secrets... There are some other funny stuff and hidden secrets as well. To unlock certain cheat codes Bond has to complete a mission as fast as possible plus it depends which difficulty he chooses. Some of them are pretty challenging to unlock but there also is an alternate way to unlock them. If using very secret complex button combinations during the game the codes can be opened. A fun fact is that the game's designers have scanned their faces on the enemy heads. I find it very absurd but the entirety is actually fun. I can actually recognize some of the team members such as Grant Kirkhope (one of the game's music composers) and David Doak.

Despite of the reputation of "GoldenEye 007" the game feels surprisingly outdated these days. The graphics are very grey and ugly, resolution is rather terrible but the game's worst thing is the framerate because it makes the game go very slow. Even if a minor object explodes during the game the smoke effects affect the framerate majorly. Very annoying. The second worst thing is the cheating enemy AI. Enemies can fire through solid objects (sometimes), throw grenades (which makes the framerate automatically go down), respawn almost in every possible level and so on. If an enemy is wearing a bullet proof vest and Bond decides to shoot the bad guy in the head area, the game says it is a torso hit. This means the enemy can stand lots of headshots which feels both unfair and unrealistic. I really don't like the multiplayer deathmatch mode either because i find it old and limited. Compared to "Perfect Dark" the differences are massive. Speaking of "Perfect Dark" it is more appealing and more polished (even though it also has some minor framerate problems). However "GoldenEye 007" isn't a bad game at all. I believe that only a British person can understand James Bond movies as a whole so it's not a surprise Rareware managed to do something like this.

To tell you the truth, the theme of James Bond has always sounded very nice. I'd say it is one of the most beloved and the most recognizable movie themes of all time. The questionable fact is that "GoldenEye 007" doesn't include Tina Turner's theme song "GoldenEye" at all which is a brave thing to be left behind. Maybe Rareware didn't have the rights to use the song, i don't know. Fortunately Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope have managed to compose surprisingly enjoyable video game soundtrack. Even though the main theme keeps repeating during the game every now and then the mood suits somewhat perfectly. It actually tries to mimic Éric Serra's style who happened to be the main composer in the original movie. Robin Beanland made the cheesy elevator music for the elevators. When Bond is using elevators, muzak is starting to play.
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RaggaR 2016-04-14T11:43:42Z
2016-04-14T11:43:42Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
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Catalog

rokcman Goldeneye 007 2024-03-29T01:33:34Z
2024-03-29T01:33:34Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
MF_IGUIN Goldeneye 007 2024-03-26T18:41:32Z
N64 • XNA
2024-03-26T18:41:32Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
dotnds Goldeneye 007 2024-03-22T19:53:48Z
2024-03-22T19:53:48Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Kluwenblauw Goldeneye 007 2024-03-21T12:24:34Z
2024-03-21T12:24:34Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
saltyshive Goldeneye 007 2024-03-20T08:35:35Z
2024-03-20T08:35:35Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Crentist852 Goldeneye 007 2024-03-16T15:50:38Z
2024-03-16T15:50:38Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
lukewithoutu Goldeneye 007 2024-03-14T01:50:50Z
2024-03-14T01:50:50Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
worstcaseontario Goldeneye 007 2024-03-13T10:15:31Z
N64 • XNA
2024-03-13T10:15:31Z
7.0 /10
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Action52 Goldeneye 007 2024-03-11T02:55:47Z
2024-03-11T02:55:47Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
eliottstaten Goldeneye 007 2024-03-11T01:44:19Z
2024-03-11T01:44:19Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ShadowGambino Goldeneye 007 2024-03-06T00:47:23Z
2024-03-06T00:47:23Z
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
murkynines Goldeneye 007 2024-03-05T18:32:24Z
2024-03-05T18:32:24Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Content rating
ESRB: T
Player modes
1-4 players
Media
1x Cartridge
Multiplayer modes
Deathmatch / FFA, Team play
Multiplayer options
Local
Franchises

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  • Previous comments (38) Loading...
  • lightgrenades 2023-03-22 19:14:15.575159+00
    I recently played it again on Emulator with a mouse and keyboard and goddamn, it feels so good, man! as it was supposed to be!
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  • renegadexavier06 2023-04-19 06:29:10.657343+00
    The greatest first person shooter, and greatest licensed game ever made... according to Encyclopedia Dramatica
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  • wallrooseyes 2023-07-17 01:05:41.057429+00
    RIGHT WHEN HE STARTS FIRING TO TRY TO BACKBOOST ME?

    THE DOUBLE.

    BODY ARMOR.

    TWO QUICK ONES I ALREADY KNOW I'M GETTIN THERE ON THE PERFECT LINE
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  • ZEROHOOTSSON 2023-08-31 05:16:29.998446+00
    honestly this game aged well if you play this on pc with mouse and keyboard
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  • thereitis 2023-11-06 18:35:51.370504+00
    likely a low rating because this game is a horrible mess on an actual 64
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  • figurehead 2024-01-20 03:17:09.020651+00
    didn't age well but it was all we had back then :(
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  • daydream_set 2024-02-17 12:24:04.131041+00
    I can't imagine playing this with anything other than an N64 controller. Thankfully my N64 still works
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