While people may have fond memories of Goldeneye 007 on N64, is there much appeal in playing it now? I'm certainly not one to laud the achievements of the First Person Shooter, which has staled in its growing popularity, but it's obvious that the genre has come a long way since then.
Well, I say that, but perhaps I'm just being spiteful, as I never owned the game. I've only played it twice, not for more than an hour either time and only deathmatches - no single player experience. It was okay, but Smash Bros Melee trumped it easily in terms of multiplayer fun.
Funnily enough, I've not even seen the Goldeneye film and don't have any knowledge of its plot. All the reviews of Goldeneye on Wii have discussed the revised storyline with mixed opinions, but that will have zero impact on me, because I have nothing to judge the new story against.
It's quite a tough question to answer as someone who's had and known the game for so long, but I would say that yes, there is plenty of appeal to be found in playing Goldeneye today. I suspect others may disagree, but it seems like a lot of people simply go and take one look at the game and then say "wow the graphics are worse than I remembered" and proceed to write it off. The FPS genre has changed a lot since 1997 and that's actually the reason why GE is still unique and interesting to me. Half-Life, which came out the year after was the more influential shooter for the genre I would argue, and I think you'll find most modern shooters are far more frequently based on that game's template.
In case you haven't played it, structurally Half-Life is a completely continuous world, loosely split into large chapters which are essentially irrelevant as you can save and load anywhere. It never takes the player out of the game experience between sections of the game. It also pioneered the use of heavily scripted events, where big events that would typically take place in cutscenes are done in real time, while you are in control of the character. Now from my limited experience with modern FPS's it seems like this is the common model.
Goldeneye uses a self-contained stage-by-stage structure whereby after every mission (and most of these are fairly short, I'd say they average about 5-10 minutes each) you are taken out of the game back to the menu to go into another one. There are no save points or checkpoints of any sort within any of the missions. As a result, and thanks to the game's high difficulty, Goldeneye's structure feels very old-school. It offers lots of incentives to go back and replay the missions on a higher difficulty level, to unlock cheats and the 2 secret singleplayer levels. And, as was brought up in the podcast, the higher difficulty levels add extra objectives to every mission and substantially alter the way you play.
The Half-Life model has the benefit of being more cinematic, more story-driven, and more "immersive" (not sure if that word is still allowed in gaming today). The Goldeneye model, as I said, is much more old-school. The equivalents in the platformer genre are the modern Prince of Persia games (Half-life's equivalent) and the Super Mario Bros games (GE's). Clearly neither of the two are intrinsically better than the other in my opinion, it's entirely a matter of personal preference, but hopefully this gives an idea of how Goldeneye manages to differentiate itself from modern shooters, and certain modern gaming trends in general. Now the recent retro revival (particularly with games like Super Meat Boy) shows that there is still a demand for these non-continuous, distinctly un-cinematic experiences and I would say your tolerance for old-school sensibilities should be the main factor in the decision of whether to play or not to play Goldeneye.
Anyway that was a long way to explain it, but I feel as though on the harder difficulties Goldeneye has much more in common with a game experience such as Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts than another shooter like Half-Life. Because it can be so very demanding, it's immensely satisfying when you finally master a level, pull off everything perfectly and make it through alive by the skin of your teeth, or in the case of the cheat challenges, when you beat it one second under the time limit. Also, unlike the graphics, the game's fantastic level design and weapons have not aged. Also possibly most importantly (it is the thing you're doing in the game the most after all), it is very satisfying to shoot enemies. It just feels really good.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of the appeal of this game - it's certainly not for everyone in the single-player mode at least, but it has the sort of challenge many modern shooters just don't offer or incentivise the player well enough to try. Oh and as a footnote as it's a Rare game it has the advantages of a good PAL conversion which is a nice plus.
In fact I just looked it up and found this interesting (from a Cubed3 forum post): "It\'s really arguable either way, and is a tough one to call, but I personally deem the PAL versions to be the definitive versions of both GoldenEye 007, and Perfect Dark. The increased resolution of the PAL versions is more evident (and makes for a clearer multiplayer experience when the screen is devided up into quarters) than the more stable framerates of the NTSC version. Of which only really comes into play when the game slows down. It still slows down, it just drops a few less frames than the PAL one, so is arguably negligible. You could argue for either version though, there\'s so little in it either way. Which again highlights how great Rare was."
Maybe this could help explain Johnny's complaint about it being hard to distinguish things clearly?
Topic: Episode 218: Killed in the Restroom, Again (Read 14009 times)
