Goldeneye (N64): 17 years later
Absolutely_Cart
NJ/NYC, United StatesPosts: 1,740MI6 Agent
Goldeneye was the most successful James Bond game and one of the most influential titles of its time. While it remains a classic, I don't think it aged as well as other games around its time.
The multiplayer mode, is by far, the most popular mode of the game. Ironically, one of the programmers just slapped it together last-minute out of curiosity as a little diversion and decided to include it in the game. Yet it made all of the difference.
PC games had multiplayer but for consoles, this was the very first. The PS1 wasn't capable of four-player multiplayer and the N64 had no first-person shooter multiplayer games. It succeeded because it was the first multiplayer shooter to hit consoles.
Is it the best? I wouldn't say so. Games like Timesplitters 2 have taken the mechanics that make Goldeneye 64 so fun and refined them further. But one thing Timesplitters lacks is that big brand name endorsement, and the impact.
Video games were younger back then so I can't judge them too harshly, but I felt like Goldeneye focused more on mechanics where as Everything or Nothing focused on having an adventure that takes you to lots of different places and has you do unique new things at every turn.
With Goldeneye, there are always going to be games with more maps, bigger guns, more multiplayer modes and so on. Maybe the joy of playing it for the first time in 97' isn't replicable but the mechanics themselves are. Since the game lacks any particular mechanic that is singular, it doesn't age well as games like Ocarina of Time.
It also misses color and personality. EON (the game) had much more color and diverse vistas than Goldeneye's constant barrage of gray halls and pavement. EON was released 6 years later, but even earlier games had a wider color palette. Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World may not have the best graphics from a technical standpoint, but their atmosphere is irreplicable.
The multiplayer mode, is by far, the most popular mode of the game. Ironically, one of the programmers just slapped it together last-minute out of curiosity as a little diversion and decided to include it in the game. Yet it made all of the difference.
PC games had multiplayer but for consoles, this was the very first. The PS1 wasn't capable of four-player multiplayer and the N64 had no first-person shooter multiplayer games. It succeeded because it was the first multiplayer shooter to hit consoles.
Is it the best? I wouldn't say so. Games like Timesplitters 2 have taken the mechanics that make Goldeneye 64 so fun and refined them further. But one thing Timesplitters lacks is that big brand name endorsement, and the impact.
Video games were younger back then so I can't judge them too harshly, but I felt like Goldeneye focused more on mechanics where as Everything or Nothing focused on having an adventure that takes you to lots of different places and has you do unique new things at every turn.
With Goldeneye, there are always going to be games with more maps, bigger guns, more multiplayer modes and so on. Maybe the joy of playing it for the first time in 97' isn't replicable but the mechanics themselves are. Since the game lacks any particular mechanic that is singular, it doesn't age well as games like Ocarina of Time.
It also misses color and personality. EON (the game) had much more color and diverse vistas than Goldeneye's constant barrage of gray halls and pavement. EON was released 6 years later, but even earlier games had a wider color palette. Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario World may not have the best graphics from a technical standpoint, but their atmosphere is irreplicable.
Comments
Well that goes without saying! Goldeneye was released when - 1997?????
Seven years later is bound to look like poo
Haha - yeah!
Though don't knock Mariocart lol
And that's 17 years old now
It also proved that not all movie based games had to suck.
A few levels also taught me patience........Grrrrrrr........Any escort mission protecting Natalya, especially that @#&;*ing Control center in Cuba.....
1: Brosnan 2: Craig 3: Moore 4: Dalton 5: Connery and 6: Lazenby
I remember going to an independant game store and the guy passing it to me under the counter a few days early before launch.
Yep!
Look at almost anyone's top ten N64 list, I can just about guarantee the games I mentioned above will be in their list somewhere.
1: Brosnan 2: Craig 3: Moore 4: Dalton 5: Connery and 6: Lazenby
GE64 looked incredibly realistic back then, I bet, but now it looks dull, while many SNES games have still retained their charm. I think this has a lot to do with the N64 in general, and the shift to 3D.
Another thing is irreplicability. If I want to play a multiplayer shooter, there are so many games I could be playing instead of GE64. But with N64 titles like Ocarina of Time and Banjo Kazooie, it's hard to find games like them.
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
I still play it a few times a year.
I recently went to a retro games convention and played 4 player multiplayer against complete strangers, it was brilliant fun. I won with 36 kills
There is a mod for Half Life 2 on Steam that is for Goldeneye. "Goldeneye: Source"
its currently only mulit player, but still a great play.
Ditto, for the time the Nintendo 64 was a great console just like the Ford Model T was a good car back in its day and time.
Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Banjo Kazooie look good today.
Goldeneye 007 was just given an art style that didn't age well. That's all.
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
I think GE was "in the right place at the right time". Sure it was successful and influential but not so much for the Bond elements, more so for the game play which is arguably in hindsight very generic. But due to it's success Eon keeps trying to go back to that well.
Since 2008 has been the worst. We got QoS which was by all accounts a lazy and half-ass effort, looked worse than CoD which it was based on. Then they spend energy on not one but two separate releases of Golden Eye Reloaded. In between that we actually get an attempt at something new, but as much as I like Blood Stone it just wasn't up to par to AAA games of the time. Well maybe if they spent more effort on the Blood Stone and not their constant obsession with GE we might have gotten a better game. Which by Eon business model might have spurred another 3rd person shooter. Anything as long as it's not another GE clone!
And don't even get me started with Legends. So that's 4 poor games that attempt to recapture the magic of the original GE.
As for GE on Wii I think the positive reviews had a lot to do with "Wii finally has a viable multi-player shooter!" Wow big whoop, Wii gets an FPS that can be played online. Then GER for PS3/X360 had a lot of "remember the good ole days" type reviews. GER was solid but hardly anything to compare to the original GE (adjusting for game technology "inflation" mind you). Felt generic to me and I still do not know what the fuss is about Daniel Craig. You ... hardly ... never ... see ... his ... face!
Now I hear the next game will be a free to play mobile game. Damn it! yet another example of a lack of vision. Eon hears about free to play and think "let's cash in".
All you need to do is look at the Batman series to know how to do it right. You do not need a direct movie tie-in. The Arkham series captures the feeling of the Dark Knight movies and very much satisfies any Dark Knight fan who wants to get his Batman on.
Imagine if we had such a series.
Very much so. The multiplayer was literally added on during the last month or so of production, and had it not been for that multiplayer element that pervaded college dorms, the game would have been forgettable.
Had the game come out 4 years later on the Gamecube, nobody would've cared.
AJB007 Favorite Film Rankings
Pros and Cons Compendium (50 Years)
The World is Not Enough for N64 was very underrated. I loved that one, too.