THE GOOD:Challenging yet addicting and well executed first person shooting gameplay, objectives add a twist to the generic FPS games we see today, 3 different difficulty levels which adds to some replay value, really tight controls, mission location designs are all unique whilst being well designed to cater to objectives of the missions, visually pleasing to the eye, human groans sound excellent and realistic, realistic sound effects, pulse pounding soundtrack, multiplayer is well worth playing and adds more to the replay value and the replay value within this game is virtually endless!
THE BAD:
Some choppy frame rates here and there. Multiplayer in terms of customization may seem limited to some, especially those used to Call of Duty 4's style.
SUMMARY:
Created in 1997 by Rare, Goldeneye 007 (along with Doom 64, Quake and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) revolutionized the first person shooter genre by perfecting the shooting + aiming mechanics tried in games before the N64's time, refining the enemy AI so that you can't just quickly kill them without either getting yourself killed/badly wounded or so you actually have to be strategic about how and where to kill without getting yourself in danger, adding in some stealth mechanics so that it's not just "GET IN THERE AND KILL THEM ALL!!!", adding in some objectives to give you something to do rather than just mindlessly killing soldiers and, above all things, stuck to being what an FPS game should be; a game where you can shoot soldiers while completing mission objectives, without dying. The only thing it didn't do: Set up the controls. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter did that. But hey, with everything else it did to contribute to a growing genre, that's something we can overlook a bit.
The basic story is that James Bond, 007, and his good mate and fellow agent, Alec Trevalyan, 006, were on a mission to try and fix some gas bottle problem before it destroys Russia, but some communist looking guy named General Ouromov decided to interfere with the mission, so 007 has to kill him before the communist's plan to destroy the world happens. Eventually, he was backed into a corner at a silo and 007 blows it up to ensure that Ouromov dies. Well, a whole lot of people died in the explosion, but did Ouromov? And what happened to 007? 007 lived thankfully, but what about Ouromov? You have to wonder...anyway, fast forward a number of years, 007 learns of this new criminal organization called Janus and he has to stop them. The clincher: Their leader has something against 007, and wants him to die. I won't tell you who the leader is, but it's some ex-agent who quit being good and wanted to be bad. Either he had something against 007 or maybe he just wants chicks, who knows, but whatever the case, he's leading a criminal organization and they're all interested in one thing; a satellite which can rob money electronically and delete any and all records from the electronic banks, which is called the Goldeneye (I guess just going to a bank and pointing a gun at a teller isn't going to cut it with Janus). It's up to 007 and his computer programmer sidekick who he meets later on, Natalia Simonova, to prevent the Goldeneye from being taken over, and to prevent Bond's death.
I have to say, that is quite a saucy story, and much better than a lot of FPS stories and their "WW2" or "shoot such and such to advance" sorts which are all inferior to Goldeneye 007's. However, throughout history and even...well, I guess today as well, first person shooters were never known for their stories; just their gameplay (and nowadays, online multiplayer or "Xbox Live Features"), however, Goldeneye has a good story, so I guess that's what makes it stand out, right? Well, actually, a lot of things do, but Goldeneye's story was still good. Kind of unfair that it was of the movie to game sort therefore the story is already written, but kudos to Rare for making a very good movie adaptation...well, actually, one of the best if I'm not mistaken (afraid Sunsoft's Batman game for the NES has to share, since we found another successful movie adaptation). Rare and Sunsoft should share the crown with pride, both are able to make original classics (Donkey Kong and Blaster Master, respectively) while making classic movie adaptations. Kudos to both, Rare especially!
How is this successful outside of the story adaptation, you might ask? The simple fact that it's only one hell of a FPS game, as well as a classic among many people, but like Startropics, it was considered a very powerful game when it was released, though not nearly as powerful after release. No, people much prefer Gears of War and Halo 3. That's fair enough, I like those games too, but unfortunately, Goldeneye is far better. Outside of inferior graphics and online (or Goldeneye's lack of it), Goldeneye is just so much better than Gears of War.
For one, Goldeneye is a first-person shooter unlike those two just mentioned. You cannot just rush through rooms, holding down the fire button (Z, in this case) and expect to complete a mission...unless you call dying completion. See, Goldeneye have guards whose AI are all smart. Not scientist-smart, but common sense-smart, like they have the common sense to hunt you down if they find you. I mean, you can shoot them easily with your machine gun, but A) You'll run out of bullets and B) Alert more guards thus getting you closer to your death. Don't screw with the guards for too long or failure and, inevitably, death will shortly come after.
So anyway, let's explain your side of the gameplay.
Before you even begin a mission, you get your mission objectives, like disabling bombs, destroying alarms, destroying cameras, getting a certain device(s) and blowing up an entire silo, among other secret agent-like things. Unlike certain other games where they're there for the hell of it, Goldeneye have objectives which make sense to the mission, location and setting. Kidnapped? Steal the information regarding your existence at that place. Blowing up an entire silo? Better set the explosives! Hostage situation? Rescue the hostages and shoot the guards to ensure hostage escape! Yes, it all makes sense to the situation you're in. There's some filler in the briefing, although its better you read the briefing pages anyway to get an idea of what you're doing (though with many objectives, it's self-explanatory). Done reading? Cool! Let's do this!
Upon getting to the location to do your mission, you have with you a pistol (or in some cases, an uzi, a sniper rifle, or no weapon!) and some gadgets (like a magnet watch, a camera, a bomb defuser, explosives and/or a datathief [which steals data], among others) which will help you complete your objectives more efficiently. Cool! Just like a secret agent! Along the way, you kill guards with your own guns (before they kill you) and when they die, your trophy is...their gun! Well, that and/or some ammo for the guns. Woopee! Not enough fun? Sometimes, you get to fight "boss" battles, where you continually shoot them until they die, and they can take quite a large amount of hits, so it's best to go for headshots to conserve ammo.
Speaking of headshots, that's one thing Goldeneye bought to the table; location-dependant damage, where if you get a headshot in, they're dead basically, but shooting guards' arms and legs isn't going to be of much help, and the torso gets in decent amounts of damage. This adds to a sense of realism, though at times, torsoshots will have to come in huge barrages while a few headshots would do. What sucks is that the auto-aim always aims for the torso and since you're always on the run while shooting, you'll be wasting many bullets. Quickly hold the aim button, get the crosshair to the head and shoot, do them quickly or you will be wasting bullets. There are times where you can aim, sidestep a bit while they're firing then sidestep back when they stop firing so you can get in a headshot, so take advantage of them. If you're rushing, you better take auto-aim off so a whole bunch of headshots can roll in and you can conserve ammo better. The slight downside is that, unless it's to the head, you're not affected by this. If you get shot on the legs, arms or torso, you take a decent amount of damage, while a headshot (I think) does slightly more damage. Fair enough...I guess...
Like I said, you can't just rush in holding Z and expect to complete the mission. You need to complete objectives and you must make sure enemies don't spot you and eventually kill you. Among that, some objectives include camera destroying. No, not the camera you carry around for a couple of missions; I mean the security cameras, which, if they spot you for a couple of seconds (or even 1), an alarm will sound and you'll be bombarded by guards for a long time. It'll actually take a long time before the guards stop coming, but unless you're smart and hide and take them out a few at a time, you'll be dead way before you can even hide at times, let alone before they all stop coming. Destroying these cameras is quite easy, though; approach from the side, aim for the lens and shoot. Don't let it see you, or you'll die!
Oh yeah, you have a health bar, and if you get shot too much, well...you die. There is some body armor laying around some parts of missions which will give you (basically, at least) an extra life (well...sometimes you'll be cheated with just half an extra life, but half is better than none). Trust me, these are life savers on the hard difficulty, as it's quite hard to do an entire mission without body armor unless it's not in the mission at all. Rudimentary stuff, really. At least it's pulled off well and doesn't end in any cheap victories or anything; actually levels the playing ground on some missions.
Goldeneye provides us with a lot of replay value in the form of multiple difficulty levels (Agent being easy, Secret Agent being medium and 00 Agent being hard, with an unlockable very hard difficulty which you can get if you beat every mission in 00 Agent, alas I've forgotten the in-game name) and mission-difficulty specific cheats, which can be obtained by beating a mission on a certain difficulty under a specific time limit. Its fun screwing around with the game and levels using the cheats you obtain by doing specific missions under specific difficulty levels under a specific amount of time. I just love painting levels rainbow colors with the paintball cheat, and I love to have my uzi be the paintball gun, but that wouldn't be possible without the unlimited ammo cheat. There are 25 cheats in total, and the difficulty to get them varies; the ones gained on 00 Agent difficulty setting (aside from Egypt) are going to be tough, and most of the ones on Agent difficulty aren't going to be too hard (some WILL though, don't let your guard down just because it's on the easy setting). Don't worry; these cheats are just to fun around. You can't actually complete an uncompleted level with cheats on. You have to have no cheats on to do that, but that just adds to the fun of it all.
Still not enough? Try the multiplayer! Get three of your friends (or 2/3) and have fun shooting each other split screen. The way to set out play modes (what weapons you'll have, characters, health handicaps and whatnot) seems a bit limited by today's standards, but for the time, it all seemed inventive and...honestly, did it matter? There was no online, it was all about being together on the couch just to kill each other with uzis and shiny pistols (in game, not literally – imagine the hospital bill!). Aside from two characters' sizes, there aren't really any differences between characters (aside from appearance quite obviously). Oh well, it's always fun to play as Bond blowing Natalya up (two of the multiplayer characters – there are way more) with a rocket launcher without failing entire missions (Natalya is in a few missions in the second half of the game, and is vital to completing missions), so you can't really complain about feeling limited by today's standards, though IMO that's not the main issue. The main issue would be some of the level designs. Not, not all of the designs are bad, I quite like Temple and Complex (a couple of others are decent at best though), but its stages like Library, Basement and Stacks that really annoy me – Library is pointless. I can understand the top and bottom floors of Library being good individual maps, but the combination is just a pointless addition. Plus some of the maps which got transferred from single player mode got the crap nerfed out of them. Some of them only allow 3 or even 2 players to play, not 4 player action! Egypt got it the worst! You can only play 2 players here, even though it'd be awesome having 4 players killing each other on that map. ARGH!
The game wouldn't be as awesome without the soundtrack! I don't think many other N64 games have a soundtrack this catchy, powerful and well designed, unlike Goldeneye. I always find myself humming these tunes at random times or whenever I play the levels. Put together with amazing graphics, nice level designs and cool sounding sound effects, the game's presentation among gameplay is one you wouldn't want to mess with. Speaking of level designs, the designs compliment what James Bond is; a secret agent. Places to hide, enemy locations in attempts to stop you, camera locations which attempts to stop you and get you killed, and all suitable to the environment you're in, albeit a bit linear in some levels, but that's alright too, some facilities are linear like they are in the game. You may expect some slowdown at times, but that's because there's too many enemies and gunfire at once and the N64 isn't powerful enough to take any of that without slowing down a bit, but it's not too much of a nuisance thankfully, so you can manage.
So...fun, action packed gameplay, amazing graphics, spectacular soundtrack, incredible controls (too many control schemes and really, it's self-explanatory when you play it yourself) and...Just wow. Not too many N64 shooters, hell, not too many shooters in general can make this claim and actually go through with it. As much as I like Gears Of War, it doesn't have the same sort of charm Goldeneye has. Good work Rare. Wish you got back to making games like this.
Gameplay – 9.5/10 – Excellent first person shooting gameplay with respectable AI and tough as guts difficulty level. Multiplayer hasn't aged too well unfortunately due to how limited it feels, especially compared to today's games.
Graphics – 4.5/5 – It's very visually pleasing to the eye, some of the best graphics on the N64. Sucks that the frame-rate is choppy when there's too many enemies on screen at once.
Sound – 5/5 – Catchy soundtrack that works among realistic sound effects, both of which are executed finely. You'll be hard pressed to find a better version of these on the N64.
Control – 5/5 – Hosts an easy to learn control scheme, many different schemes to suit players in fact, and is quite responsive.
Overall – 4.8/5.0 – Suffers from a couple of minor issues, but they are extremely minor and worth purchasing for your 64.
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