GoldenEye 007

As close you will get to the N64 game

Posted 2 years ago By - Jay Acevedo

Fact: Everyone would love to see the good old GoldenEye N64 game hit XBLA, PSN, WiiWare.

Fact: It will never happen

Despite the rampant and incessant demands from nostalgic gamers, Activision and Eurocom decided to pay homage to the classic title by creating a brand new, 21st century Bond game exclusively for the Wii. Note that this isn’t a remake of the N64 classic. Although, for any die-hard fan that finds himself booting his good old N64 cartridge from time to time, it does feel like one; at least to a certain degree. I mean, why would someone develop a brand new Bond game and use the highly recognizable old name? Right?

Anyways, GoldenEye 007 does follow the classic movie storyline. Bond and Trevelyan head over to Russia to destroy a weapon depot. Trevelyan gets shot, Bond escapes, meets-up with Zukovsky, rescues the hot computer engineer Natalya Simonova and so on. However, everything has received a modernized lifting while providing a nice mix of the stealth, character and action that recent games been offering during the current generation of consoles. Pierce Brosnan is now played by current film-Bond Daniel Craig. The classic GoldenEye characters are returning, but have been updated to a point where they don’t even look like their original counterparts and the story plot has been moved from the post-Cold War set-up to a 21st century world that will take you to different locations across the globe. Of course, it wouldn’t be an up-to-date Bond game without hearing the voice of Dame Judi Dench as MI6 giving directives. Hot!

Aside from the mutiplayer realm, which I will touch on in a little bit - GoldenEye 007 does capture the essence of the old classic game with its amazing storytelling and in its playability. Even though the campaign can be completed in less than eight hours, Eurocom designed the game with the idea of tempting players to return and replay the missions on higher difficulty levels; as extra objectives - such as photographing documents or saving hostages - will be added to each mission. A nice wink to the classic N64 game and honestly, way more interesting, especially for the more experienced secret agents. I highly recommend bumping the difficulty level up. It will be more satisfying.

When it comes down to shooters, one of the things I’ve realized is that I tend to overlook the Wii + Nunchuk control set-up and go with alternative options for a more responsive and less-frustrating experience. In the case of GoldenEye 007, Eurocom made sure to bring as many control schemes as possible so no one feels left out. Doing the opposite would have certainly ticked off some, including yours truly. Here, the Classic Controller, the Gamecube controller, the Zapper and the Classic Controller Pro (which is available in Gold when buying the GoldenEye 007 Classic Controller Pro Bundle) are supported. However, and surprisingly enough, GoldenEye 007 responds very well no matter which one you choose. Yes, even the default WIi + Nunchuk combination, which I wasn’t expecting to be that fun and responsive. Mind you, its a bit finicky at first, but I was more than pleased to see my least favorite control method getting attention from me. Note that using the Classic Controller will lead you to play the game without the aiming precision of the Wii + Nunchuk set-up. There’s an auto-aim option that you can turn on to counter-balance the loss, but for me it lead to frustration more than anything else. Give the Wii + Nunchuk controls a bit more attention and you’ll find the experience much more rewarding.

Being an ultra-fan of the classic game, multiplayer in GoldenEye 007 was the piece of the puzzle I was looking forward the most, despite having a few reservations for its online component. I knew the Wii was never able to offer great online experiences but somehow, I’ve failed to keep my expectations low. While the offline four player split-screen mode brought joy during the review process and reminded me a lot of my crazy N64 competitive sessions back in high-school, the GoldenEye 007 online realm was a total disappointment. On top of having troubles finding people to play with, every match I was able to find was plagued with either random disconnections or awful frame rate drops. If you’ve read some of my past Wii reviews, I’ve always ask developers to forget online all together if they’re unable to bring a respectable experience on ship date. If you decide to offer it, they need to be damn sure that it works. It’s a huge disappointment when you see customizable loadouts, weapon unlocks, multiple characters to pick from, XP progression and various game types/modifiers being featured. If you plan to buy GoldenEye 007, I hope you’re banking on the offline split-screen mode even though there’s less to be done and enjoyed compared to its online counterpart.

Finally, we all know the Wii isn’t able to pull of great visuals and has a hard time dealing with aliasing, but for the most part, GoldeneEye 007 still manages to deliver a satisfactory experience to your eyes. Venues and the main characters are well detailed and some levels feature destructible objects, but you can still feel the hardware limitations almost everywhere. Even still, those limitations don’t excuse the ugly menus. What happened there? There’s also noticeable frame rate drops, but it doesn’t happen often. However, the sound build, alongside the voice acting and the score (minus the classic theme after dying) is solid - aside from a few funny oddities - and deserves my praises.

Conclusion

GoldenEye 007 is as close as players will get to the much-demanded N64 remake. While nostalgic players will excuse the game’s “differences”, others will find a very enjoyable title worth adding to their Wii game library, as long as they stay away from the online multiplayer.

Now, about the N64 game...