leaden goldeneye 007

this post is going to fairly controversial, because most of it is going to be spent complaining about the N64 fan-favorite goldeneye 007. i had played through the first level and gotten stuck on the second level and put it aside awhile back, but i finally came back to it and forced myself to spend some serious time with the game. it wasn’t a pleasant experience. i’m not a huge of fan of FPSes in general, but i had enjoyed my brief experience with doom; but this game was rife with the one thing i just can’t tolerate in a game, which is “try-and-die” gameplay. maybe i’m just the slowest gamer who’s ever touched this game, or maybe i was at a disadvantage since i haven’t seen the movie, but the amount of trial and error i had to wade through was ridiculous. the game includes multiple objectives for each mission, with more objectives required at the two higher difficulty levels. i found the objectives to be vaguely defined in general, and more often than not i would end up wasting time trying to complete an objective that wasn’t even required for the initial difficulty level because i didn’t realize it was part of a different objective. it was particularly maddening whenever the try-and-die gameplay reared its ugly head in the very last sections of a stage, which happened often, and i can’t count the number of times natalya jumped in front of my gun. ugh! escort missions at their worst. the enemies lack variety, and from a modern gameplaying perspective it also really bugged me that bond could have a plethora of gadgets at his disposal but couldn’t get as simple a thing as a map as part of his intel.

i tried out the multiplayer mode, and i wasn’t really into it but, again, it’s probably just that i’m not a fan of the genre. i did appreciate how easy it was for my n00b bf to pick it up and play it, and in terms of the historic context, the game was noteworthy for being one of the first console FPS local multiplayer games.

i’m glad i can finally cross this game off of my list, and although it was a significant setback in my interest in FPSes, i’m looking forward to moving on to try out other well-regarded games in the genre. my initial experience of FPSes post-goldeneye has been somewhat encouraging, and hopefully there will be more to come on that before too long.

leaden goldeneye 007 links:
– PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
– the game often gets mentioned on “greatest games of all time” lists, including this one at 1up.com. videogamecritic.net also offers a glowing review.
– the goldeneye wikia has a nice set of mission walkthroughs
– gamefaqs has images for all the maps in the game
– interview with creator martin hollis at gamasutra.com (also mentions hollis’s more-recent creation, bonsai barber, which i, coincidentally, played recently)
– entry at wikipedia

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