Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #878 in Video Games
• Released on: 1997-08-25
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platform: Nintendo 64

Editorial Review
GoldenEye 007 has been a huge success for Rareware, and it's easy to see why. More than a simple movie translation, this has earned its top-seller status on its own. Fans of Doom and Quake will recognize the first-person shooter perspective, but there the similarity ends. James Bond 007 has too much style to simply blast everything in sight and move to the next level. No, as 007, the player has a variety of different missions to perform, each with its own specific objectives. Each mission follows the film closely, and so James must use stealth and cunning as much as brute force. But if you see a Kalashnikov rifle lying around, by all means pick it up.

Controls are easy to master, which is impressive considering the variety of actions the onscreen hero can perform. James can run and walk at variable speeds, duck, pivot, hide, attach mines to enemy helicopters, block doors from opening, and more. The optional auto-aim feature is especially nice. Of course, James Bond is proficient in a wide variety of weapons. You get to use them all, from the trusty Walther PPK (with silencer) to double sets of full-auto machine guns.

The game's faithful tribute to the Bond legacy includes briefing dossiers on each mission, complete with wisecracks from Q and flirtatious comments from Moneypenny. And the 3-D representation of locations and characters from the movie is very impressive. The Rareware team spent time on the set with digital cameras, and it shows.

One of the distinguishing features of the game is the outstanding artificial intelligence of the enemies. When attacked, squads will rush to hit the alarm. If they make it, reinforcements come running. Enemy soldiers respond to being shot or blown up with chilling realism. According to Rareware, there are over 30 different animation routines that come into play, depending on where the soldier is hit. For those who prefer the challenge of human opponents, there are six clever multiplayer modes where up to four players can shoot it out, as teams or solo agents.

With excellent gameplay, intelligence, and style, GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter that'll keep you coming back for more. --Jeanne Uy

Pros:

• Built-in save capability for up to 4 players
• Auto-aim feature helps novice players feel like a sharpshooter
• Rich, complex game world filled with detail and variety
• Great bonus missions

• Sometimes cinematic scenes for fulfilling mission objectives are a bit anticlimactic

GameSpot Review
Upon first seeing GoldenEye at the E3 convention, I was underwhelmed. I mean, here was yet another first-person shooter, with the only features setting it apart being the neat-looking sniper rifle and the fact that it was based on a movie that just about everyone had forgotten about. I couldn't have been more wrong. GoldenEye not only lives up to the "quality, not quantity" mantra that Nintendo continues to tout, it surpasses it. The sheer joy experienced by putting a bullet in some Russian's head with the sniper rifle, from 200 yards, never gets old, and the countless mission objectives spread across 12 different environments and three difficulty levels ensure that the game has the staying power of - dare I say it - Mario 64.

GoldenEye closely mirrors the plot of the 17th James Bond movie, starting with the daring bungee jump sequence and ending with a showdown between 007 and Alec Trevelyan atop a huge antenna. In between, you'll shoot scads of soldiers, plant explosives, escape from a train seconds before it explodes, and execute other decidedly Bond-like maneuvers. The entire game takes place from a Doom-like perspective, except that holding down the R button allows you to aim anywhere on the screen, and with the sniper rifle, zoom in for a nice, clean head shot.

The graphics in GoldenEye are incredible. From installations deep under the snow to lush Cuban jungles, each environment looks really good, with a decent amount of detail. There is a slight bit of fogging at the edge of your view, but hey, St. Petersburg is a foggy place. The sniper rifle alleviates some of the fog, enabling you to zoom up and peep the action long before the guards are alerted to your presence. Also, the characters in the game look really good. When you run into Boris, he actually looks like Alan Cumming. The only character who doesn't transfer favorably into the 3-D world is Natalya, who looks a little too square.

The music in GoldenEye is absolutely perfect, and adds a lot of ambience to the game. For instance, one of the later levels starts in an elevator, complete with laid-back elevator music. When you exit the elevator, the level's real soundtrack kicks in. A minor point, sure, but it demonstrates the detail of the game. The only thing that could make GoldenEye's sound better is the inclusion of speech.

GoldenEye is the type of game N64 owners have been waiting for since they finished Mario 64. It has outstanding graphics and sound, and contains a certain depth in its gameplay that really entices you to finish it on all three difficulty levels. If more N64 games use this as a model, as opposed to Cruis'n USA or KI Gold, then perhaps the system really does have a shot at toppling the PlayStation's reign as the dominant game platform. --Jeff Gerstmann
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

best corridor shooter ever
Without a doubt, Goldeneye 007 is the best corridor shooter I've ever played and one of the best games I've ever played period. The graphics, sound, control, fun factor, and replay value are all awesome to say the least. Even when you get right up against a wall, there's no sign of pixelization. The weapon selection and options to use are the best ever seen in a corridor shooter. The one player game is challenging, but not impossible. But where Goldeneye 007 really shines is the multiplayer mode. It can't be beat by any other game. You can play up to 4 players at a time and hunt each other down and see who has the better aim. There are tons of weapons to choose from under Options to use in multiplayer. You can choose lasers, timed mines, golden guns which will kill the others in just one shot, and my personal favorite, proximity mines that you throw anywhere on the level and when anybody (including yourself) gets close to them, they will blow them to pieces. However, that's not even half of the weapons there are to choose from. There are also most of the main characters from the movie that you can select during the game. This game doesn't have ANY weaknesses. This is one of the best games that anybody could buy whether you liked the movie or not.

A complete revolution
This is the one game that I would play day in and day out, for more than a year. The one game where I discovered something new almost every time I played. It was the one game which brought me and my friends together religiously at least 3 or 4 times a week. Somehow it just wouldn't die, no matter how hard we tried.

At first, it just seemed so standard and bland. Playing muliplayer for the first time, I had problems finding guns and felt confused and bored running through the Temple level. soon, somehow, something clicked, and me and my friends ended up playing it for about 4 hours straight. Towards the end of that introductory marathon Goldeneye session, we took our first stride out of the standard Deathmatch restriction- increasing my character's health to its highest limit and my friends fighting against me. Thus we coined the "God" mode, and we played this variant to death in the coming months.

It didn't end there. We had fests where we would do nothing but attack each other with punches. We bought a bunch of video cable and conected three televisions together to form a sort of splitscreen, LAN-type mode, covering up other player's screens so we wouldn't know where the other players were. We playedthe Team mode constantly, refining our knowledge of the levels and our marksmanship. Fed up with auto-aiming, we turned it off and further honed our skills. I began to be able to play the Complex level in my sleep. Proximity mines soon became an addiction. We pushed the game to its limits, learning that we could move the ammo boxes, shields, and guns around by shooting them, thus reworking their positions and creating large stockpiles in team games. We began to use Gameshark to unlock multiplayer maps that weren't intended for the final version, as well as increasing the limits on two and three player maps to four players. We discovered a code that turned one player invisible, and proceeded to do hunter-hunted scenarios over splitscreen.

Basically, it was the first game to really show limitless possibilities. It was a revolution for first-person shooters, and so many have overlooked this fact. It was the first to have targeting of individual body parts, over 20 weapons to choose from, realistic glass, shooting out of lights, and bullet holes, and for its time fairly revolutionary AI. All in all, it was an experience that defined video games for me, and few if any have matched it with a similar addictive experience.

Possibly the best N64 game ever created
The biggest reason this game deserves 5 stars is its repeat-playability. It takes much time to beat all the levels in each Agent mode, and you must work to get the two bonus levels. Also, you must work to get each cheat as well. Instead of pressing a few buttons to get a cheat, you must beat certain levels in a certain amount of time. Even after you've beaten everything, and you're tired of the One-Player Missions, you can have a blast with the multiplayer battle! You can play with up to 3 of your friends and battle each other in different unique stages and different battle modes. I've been playing the multiplayer with my friends for 3 years and haven't gotten tired of it one bit. You won't want to put this game away, EVER! Even if you aren't a fan of first-person shooters.