Remember GoldenEye?
Posted by 2Three
We do. Who could forget this gem? Back in the N64 days, GoldenEye 007 was THE game to play. In fact, for many people, it was the only game to play. Sure, you had other games in your N64 collection (Mario 64, Shadows of the Empire, Turok, Mario Kart, etc). But no matter what, N64 FPS players would always faithfully return to GoldenEye. Not only was this game a blast in general, it offered great replay value as well. Thanks to the non-linear game play, your favorite missions were always worth another look. Plus you could try beat the clock to earn cheats or take on your buddies in a heated 4-player death match. And this is where multiplayer mayhem has its true origins. To all you guys out there that think Halo is where this all started, take note.
It looks and feels somewhat dated now, sure. But in my honest opinion, I think it holds up. The graphics in some areas still look pretty nice. Guards look terrible up close, I’ll give you that. They’re not very smart either… the A.I. is poor. But it seemed poor back then as well, and none of us really cared because we were all too busy worrying about our itchy trigger finger. What’s most important about this game is that it’s FUN.
And us GoldenEye fans still haven’t had a more enjoyable Bond title to play since this game. EA took over the Bond license from Rare and released a whack load of average to below average titles. Everything or Nothing was pretty good though. The so called ‘new’ GoldenEye (Rogue Agent) was alright in spots, but it wasn’t GoldenEye 007. And this game took a beating from critics for that reason.
Now Treyarch is developing the next Bond game. Part of me thinks that it will be great to have a fresh developer making a next-gen game based on the Bond franchise. Of course, they’re going to do their best to emulate the experience we had on the N64 with GoldenEye 007. It’s going to have glossy HD visuals and elaborate cinematics, and will probably be a fun ‘throwback’ game. But it’s not going to have the same impact as the original N64 GoldenEye. It will bring back great gaming memories for sure, but I’m placing my bet now that it will not overthrow GoldenEye 007 as the greatest Bond title in gaming history.
In any case, GoldenEye 007 gets the nod from ClasVena as an influential and groundbreaking FPS game. It arguably paved the way for the FPS genre on consoles and definitely warrants another look by anyone out there who still has an N64 lying around.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 11:55 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.