His name is Bond , James Bond a Secret Agent for MI6 and king of the Nintendo 64. Truly, the pinnacle of games on the Nintendo 64 has been Goldeneye perhaps the most well regarded game ever released for the system. As of this writing it's been four years since the games release and despite the game being behind in technology terms the games gameplay is still as perfect as it was when it was released.
Graphics (9 out of 10): Goldeneye was released in 1997 so it was a second generation title for the system I bought the game a few days after it's release and back then the graphics were truly spectacular the levels all resembled the places that were in the film.The character models albeit blocky were still very good looking you could definitely tell James Bond apart from the rest of the character even when not wearing his suit due to the great texture mapping. The two characters that were truly remarkable were Boris and Alec Trevelyn the texture mapped faces truly looked like their human counterparts. All models for guns looked like the guns they were imitating as well as having effects when fired a pistol would leave a hole in the wall and if you got close enough you could see smoke rising up from the hole . But that of course was back then so how does all of this fair now? Well the character models are really showing their age due to systems like Dreamcast and Playstation 2 with more human like models not to mention PC's (but PC's were ahead of bond even back then). But despite the fact they look blocky they still look good for a four year old game. Also the death animations make the characters look more lifelike despite their age. The game really has held up pretty well if I were to rate it now with recent games which would be unfair I'd give it about a 6 or 7 but the score I gave it is based on what it was like when it was released it was a graphic marvel back then so I gave a truly deserved 9.
Gameplay (10 of 10): To this day I haven't found a game on Console or PC with better gameplay than Goldeneye the controls are spot on using the control stick to walk forward and look left and right while using the Z trigger to fire it was like a controller gun. Not to mention the levels were amazing they looked like the film counterparts but had enough extra stuff it is like you really are James Bond. The Single player levels each have three difficulty levels Agent , Secret Agent, or 007. There of course is a reason for that with the harder the difficulty the more mission objectives you have and it is also part of a cheats system for the game depending on if you beat a level in a preset amount of time and on the correct difficulty level you can unlock cheats ranging from extra guns to Invisibility. It makes for an interesting challenge to try and earn all the cheats. Then there's the gadgets and weapons all work as you'd expect them to and Rare decided that a game like this needed a way to aim better so they implemented a way where when you press the right shoulder button sight appears on screen while you can't move while doing this you can aim precisely at any body part on an enemy or a camera in place that's not straight ahead like most First Person Shooters at the time it was released sites like this have been implemented in almost every game on a console ever since that was an FPS. Speaking of death animations back then this was amazing instead of blasting something and it just slumping over if you shoot a gaurd in the arm for example he stops and holds his arm in agony not to mention you get a different animation depending on where you shoot a gaurd before he dies if you shoot them in the neck they'll die gasping and holding their throat it still is pretty remarkable technology. Finally, there is the multiplayer which i'm betting a lot of people if they don't own Perfect Dark (which is also reviewed on this site) are still playing Goldeneye's multiplayer. The Multiplayer gameplay in Goldeneye was revolutionary it set a landmark for multiplayer console gaming it has quite a few levels some based off of levels that are in the Single player missions other that are made specifically for multiplay all the levels are perfect sizes depending on the approaches of fighting you want to play if you want all out war with no place to hide go to the temple if sniping or distance fighing is more your thing go to Stack no matter which you pick it's a perfectly designed level. (NEXT PAGE 2) |