GoldenEye 007

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.