Goldeneye (N64)

...point in the franchise history) Goldeneye saw the Bond legacy try to survive in the post Cold War era. The long opposing pesky Ruskies we're no long there to be fed as the evil doers a new enemy had to be found, and here (in the movie anyway) it was a form of cyber terrorism and war by electronic manipulation. The game is set along a similar story line and fan of the movie will almost certainly spot the reference through out the single player game.
...as the movie, the Dam level which acts as an easy entry into the game sees the players mission mirror that of the movie. Bungee jump into the chemical facility underneath the dam (though on harder difficulties other missions are added to the level, like they are pretty much through the game). The level set the tone for the game and better yet, set the tone for a generation of shooting games that had to follow in it's foot steps and it wasn't until ... more

There was a time about 10 years ago where you either had a Playstation or an N64 (or, if you were a bit of an idiot, a Sega Saturn or one of the more obscure consoles that seemed to die a swift death like the 3DO, Atari Jaguar and the Amiga CD32 which are better forgotten about). And whilst the two consoles waged war on each other for the vast part of the mid-late 1990's with each console having games the other could only wish to equal. Games such as Gran Tourismo (PS) and Mario Kart 64 (N64), FFVII (PS) and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64), Crash Bandicoot (PS) and Mario 64 (N64) we're the killer apps that on the vast part of the gaming community wished they could have. Though there was only one game that seemed to have been accepted by both sides as one of the games that was the best out there, there was no claim from the Playstation gamers of a similar game on their console, they admitted it was a one off, a bit of gaming genius that was a reason to go to a friends and play the disgusting rival console. Goldeneye.

Based of the returning James Bond movie of the same name (released 7 years after the previous one, the longest gap at any point in the franchise history) Goldeneye saw the Bond legacy try to survive in the post Cold War era. The long opposing pesky Ruskies we're no long there to be fed as the evil doers a new enemy had to be found, and here (in the movie anyway) it was a form of cyber terrorism and war by electronic manipulation. The game is set along a similar story line and fan of the movie will almost certainly spot the reference through out the single player game.

The film starts in the same place as the movie, the Dam level which acts as an easy entry into the game sees the players mission mirror that of the movie. Bungee jump into the chemical facility underneath the dam (though on harder difficulties other missions are added to the level, like they are pretty much through the game). The level set the tone for the game and better yet, set the tone for a generation of shooting games that had to follow in it's foot steps and it wasn't until a Medal of Honour game on the PS2 did a game genuinely better it for a first level.
The second, like the set area in the movie finds Bond in the Chemical “Facility” possibly one of the most famous levels in the game was also one of the best of any shooting game until Perfect Dark followed several years later. Here we met 2 key characters that again were featured in the movie (006 Alec Trevelyan and Colonel Arkady Ourumov) as Bond blows up the chemical bottles. The Runway level again replicates the movie on which it's based, though the level also includes a tank that the player can commandeer to much fun. After this level (in which we see a cut scene of Bond flying away, whilst the Facility roars up in flames and explosions behind the plane) the game moves away from the movie.

The parts away from the movie see Bond in the snow covered Severnaya of the movie, a remote Satellite, after this level he enters the Bunker that will be significantly different the second time he visits it. The silo level is entirely added just for the game, and was a complete nightmare on the higher difficulties, so full of areas that looked the same and things you had to take photos of the level often became one I didn't enjoy playing, though I did like some of the tricks that were possible near the end. It was possible to kill Ourumov and collect some items from his corpse...the items of which seemed to have no use at all.

The game would then semi follow the story of the movie with places like the Frigate level, though the added second versions of the Surface and Bunker levels breaking up the movie tie in until the Statue level (a giant broken ruins of a monument like park in which the major bad guy Janus reveals himself, like in the movie). After this the game follows almost the same plot and order as the movie, with Bond and Natayla a lovely Russian computer lady who in the movie worked at the Severnaya satellite (though from memory the game never actually explains and we meet her in the second Bunker level we she's in the cell next to you).

The game progresses from library like Archive level in which you and her try to escape (though sadly no piton belt section like in the movie) to The Streets level which sees you chasing down an unseen Ourumov through the Russian streets either by foot or by Tank. This leads to a weapons Depot (which from memory actually wasn't in the movie thinking about it) which was one of the poorer levels in the game, followed by on of the best.

Train as it was called was taken from the movie (though changed significantly). In the movie Bond boarded the train after it was shot by a Tank shell, in the game he just walks on in the side door, and progresses from room to room shooting the enemies as he goes. The levels finally is one of the tensest moments in FPS (first person shooting) games ever, where you are given a timer to (like in the movie) remove an emergency hatch on the floor before the time runs out and the train blows up. Despite hating this originally, after a few play through's of the level it starts to show just how much quality there was in the design of it, totally riveting level.

Sadly after one of the levels of the game, we then go to nightmarish Jungle level (which some players do seem to like, whilst I despised it) a treck through the jungle that was shown as Xenia Onatopp trying to kill Bond between her thighs in the movie (not for the first time). Sadly there was no Famke Jansen squeezing me between her thighs (this it's self may have caused the level to be a bit disappointing) just a lot of hard to spot people killing me. Though this is where the game suddenly got hard, the following three levels signalled the end of the 1 player game.
After finding the control centre (Control) Bond must protect Natalaya as she does some re-aligning of some satellite in the games most annoying mission, and the one that caused more swear words to be violently spat at the TV than the rest of the game. After this Bond chases Janus through through the Caverns to the games finale.

After finally completing that we were then allowed to face Janus on the Cradle level, full of thin Platforms and gang ways, this was a chase until you ended up on the small platform at the end of the level. The fight for good and evil was finished on a table sized platform hanging in the air for some silly reason just as it was in the movie.

As the game was completed on each difficulty an extra level was unlocked totally unrelated to the actual story of the game. Whilst completing levels in a set time on a set difficulty unlocked cheats to be accessed at the cheats menu meaning each level had it's own replay value on single player.

Funnily though, the single player game is often forgotten about despite it's depth, longevity and mission based game play that at the time drove people to completing it. Instead the single player mode was driven to the background by the addictive and limitlessly playable multiplayer game that caused the game to be one of the mainstays of multiplayer gaming through out the entire N64 tenure.

The game could be played between 2 and 4 players (no bots though) and originally there was 6 levels to play (the best of which were Temple, Complex and Library) from the off, with others (notably Facility and Archives) being unlocked as you beat them in the single player game. There was 5 multiplayer modes, with Deathmatch being the obvious one for most games. Whilst the options were fairly customisable with kill limits, limit and weapon types available to be set by the player (though some weapons we're absent from all sets, most famously the Phantom machine gun from the Frigate level).

The game on the whole relied on 2 things more than anything else, fun and the gameplay. Although neither are truly forgotten in modern gaming, it's the fact so few games have teamed the two up, leaving a limitlessly fun game that's as easy to play as games should be in general it's a shame in the current climate of Wii's, Ps3's and Xbox 360's that there's nothing that quite matches this in sheer terms of fun, with or with out mates.
It often feels as though the makers (Rareware) had as much fun making it as they expected players to have whilst playing it, and as a likely result, used this as their reason for the abundance of Easter eggs, tricks and secrets (that took almost 10 years to be fully unveiled). In fact button cheats took that long to find that people had accepted they weren't in the game to begin with, only for everyone to dismiss them when they were first found, until trying them themselves. Sadly the “all weapons” cheat showed a few glimpses of perhaps some should have been “in game” weapons, like the hunting knife, or the gameboy like weapon.

The game which has obviously aged since it's release still holds a welcome place in my heart, despite now looking like the old thing it is. Square heads we're order of the day as the game not only took the FPS action games to the console market, but also set it's self up to be one of the most influential games of all time. The game that kept the N64 ball rolling post Mario and it kept rolling, the graphics though out dated now, took years to be improved on, with Perfect Dark needing the expansion to do what it did years down the line. The game of legends it seems is unlikely to be re-released on any of the online networks (Xbox live Marketplace or the Wii virtual console) which is a real shame as this is a game that could have found a new generation of fans all over again. Though saying that, I don't think anything the Xbox has to offer in regards to a control could ever quite match the genius offered by the N64's pad and it's cleverly designed trigger. As a result of the disappointing news that it'll almost certainly never be re-released lets finish this with a moments silence for the old great.

RIP Goldeneye, you started it all. 

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