Product description
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You are Bond. James Bond. You are assigned covert operations
connected with the GoldenEye weapons satellite. M will brief you
on your mission and objectives from London. Q Branch will support
your efforts with a plentiful supply of weapons and gadgets.
Moneypenny offers you light-hearted best wishes and you're off!
Your mission begins in the heavily guarded warfare
facility at the Byelomorye Dam in the USSR. Look and shoot in any
direction as you navigate 12 interactive 3-D environments. Use
stealth and force as you see fit in matters of international
security. Consider the personnel expendable. You are
licensed to kill!
.com
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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 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 (
/exec/obidos/0792842723/${0} ) closely, and so James must use
stealth and cunning as much as brute force. But if you see a
Kalashnikov 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- 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 s.
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
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 nents, 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- feature helps novice players feel like a sharpshooter
* Rich, complex game world filled with detail and variety
* Great bonus missions
Cons:* Sometimes cinematic scenes for fulfilling mission
objectives are a bit anticlimactic
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Review
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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 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 , 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, 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 anywhere on the screen, and with the sniper
, zoom in for a nice, clean head .
The graphics in GoldenEye are incredible. From installations deep
under the snow to lush Cuban jungles, each environment looks
really good, with a decent a 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 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 sed to Cruis'n USA or KI
Gold, then perhaps the system really does have a 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
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