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Goldeneye 007

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Reviewed by Hans Bergengren

Game Review: Goldeneye 007 )))PAL((( Version

What needs to be said about the game's origins, really? As just about everyone knows, it is a game by RARE, British gamersmaker-house extraordinarily, and the PAL version is absolutely brilliant. Like Killer Instinct Gold and Blast Corps before it, Goldeneye uses the *FULL* PAL playfield with no borders whatsoever. In fact, the game runs in such a large window that it stretches outside the screen on all TVs I've seen it run on. This is why we all love PAL (yes, don't we? :-); RESOLUTION. 100 more lines (well, 50 in low-res, like most games run in) really shows. FYI, I use the "Turok"-style control scheme when I play (1.2 Solitaire, the game calls it), so when referring to various buttons, these may differ accordingly to the layout of the controller. My ratings (listed at the end) use a 21-graded scale (zero being absolutely atrocious, and twenty being the total opposite. Ten in the exact middle of the scale means *average*, not "crap", as most people seem to think one means by an average score).

PRESENTATION

Fairly average in my opinion. The game begins with a screen that makes fun of the British film classification board, informing the player the game is "suitable for 1-4 players only". Then a rotating Nintendo logo follows, and a RARE logo as well. Then the title sequence begins - and it is a pretty good facsimile of any Bond movie (you've seen it, I'm sure), well-made, but nothing extraordinary. There is no FMV - naturally - but every level starts with a short polygon movie sequence, or a stylish view of a part of the level from a camera view. Then the camera switches to Bond, and "flies" into his skull (it turns transparent in the process, ugh :-). After finishing a level, the player gets to see Bond fix his tie and cuff-sleeves - stylish as ever - or something similar. A rather good substitute for FMV, in my opinion, considering that at least I always click my way past FMV sequences after having seen them a few times. These movies could have been somewhat longer, that is my only wish, but isn't that always the case? More, better, longer... Information on the missions is provided as text on a static screen. Quite boring, even if the game displays the text as "classified" files. Well, carts do have their limit, as far as storage space go, and I guess that's the reason for the spartan briefing screen.

GAMEPLAY

As one might expect, this is a game on the movie with the same name. It's even got the faces of the major actors from the movie - a nice touch. The structure of the game is like most other DOOM-clones; the player "looks" out of the character's eyes (in this case, Bond, James Bond, secret agent), with a weapon sticking out of the lower part of the screen. Aiming is simple, like in Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire, the CPU helps with that (more so on easier skill levels). This can be turned off in the watch menus (more on that later), but I find it rather helpful and thus leave it on at all times. The player proceeds in part by wasting enemy scum and collecting keys/opening locked doors, and in part by performing various tasks that more often than not is *not* killing and/or collecting keys. These tasks vary according to the level, and are often ingenious, sometimes somewhat frustrating, but always rewarding. The fact that the game levels follow the plot of the movie quite well only adds to the experience, although of course, it doesn't help a bit no matter how closely you've watched the movie. A few levels (there are 20, in all) rely somewhat on stealth, by using silenced guns, and by knocking out surveillance cameras, the player can avoid detection and thus being swamped by enemies. On other levels, enemies come constantly, no matter how many are killed. I must say that I enjoy the sneaking-around style much more than simply running around and killing anything that moves (something you do a lot of in the later levels), it's a pity RARE didn't add more "sneaky stuff", those levels simply are more exciting and at least I feel more immersed in the game. Especially the sniper rifle is ultra-cool, picking off enemies at a great distance by hitting them with a single round smack in the head. Sick, but fun. 8-) I also like that increasing the difficulty adds more tasks that needs to be performed, as well as increasing the overall difficulty (which is rather bloody high on "00 Agent", the highest setting (there is one more, but it's not initially accessible), even for a well-seasoned DOOMer like myself, since the game removes the bodyarmour while making enemies harder to kill and better at shooting back as well), Goldeneye is not a game one simply cruises through in an afternoon. It takes a lot of effort to beat a level on the highest difficulty, I've so far only managed that to level five, but I'm working on it, of course. "This is no ordinary wang", to quote another recently released DOOM clone. Goldeneye certainly has brains *as* *well* as brawn.

CONTROL (and stuff)

For more accurate shooting, the joypad's shoulder buttons can be pressed, causing a crosshair to appear on-screen. This also activates the zoom lens that some weapons are equipped with. The sniper rifle even has variable zoom, controlled via C up and C down. On other guns than the rifle, pressing the aiming button + C down will make Bond kneel, to what purpose is unknown to me, other than it allows the player to crawl through airducts and such. Maybe it makes you slightly harder to hit, but Bond moves slower on the other hand, so it's no great advantage in any case. Pressing C left or C right in aiming mode will lean the player left or right, useful when exchanging fire with several enemies; just stand behind a corner and pop out, let off a few rounds and then pop back again before the evil-doers have a chance to react, causing your foes to shoot at the wall in front of you. Simple! Well, maybe not, I've found this option to be somewhat fiddly, and I rarely use it. Jumping is not possible, something I rather miss. Oh well, considering the game uses ALL the available buttons (that one easily can reach; that excludes the D-pad and left shoulder button when using the 3D stick), this was the least useful, and/or needed function to waste a button on. What is funnier than not being able to jump is the inability to fall down ledges, cliffs or just about any height difference larger than a few decimeters. Sure, it helps sometimes, but it also becomes a bother at times. Maybe Goldeneye's 3D engine has more in common with Blast Corp's than one might think at first glance. There also are polygon folds that are impossible to cross, this is most noticeable in the "Statue" level, where the grassy slope closest to the edge of the level is unclimbable, Bond simply slides along an invisible wall. Most strange! There are a few other noteworthy items in the "quirks" department as well, one being the use of the 3D stick when in "Turok" mode (i.e.: looking around with the stick, not the C-buttons), instead of always centering back to a level line of sight when releasing the stick like in Turok, the "head" in Goldeneye stays in whatever angle you last pointed it in. This makes it easier to aim (especially when coupled with the Auto Aim option), BUT it makes looking around and turning considerably slower as well, something I don't quite like. I miss Turok's sensitivity settings for the 3D stick X- and Y-axis. The final quirk is that the game's menus are somewhat fiddly and inconsistent. Several different buttons can be used to confirm choices in the menus. I like it when only ONE button is allowed. START, for instance, that's what it's for anyway. Bond's Q-Watch v2.01 Beta (accessed during the game via the START button) contains all the mission briefings, the whole inventory including weapons and special items like key(card)s that the player accumulates during a mission. It is also all to easy to start flipping through the menus in the wrong direction. A little clearer layout would have helped.

GRAPHICS

Best summoned up in one word: impressive. Attention to detail is ever-present, there are posters and signs on walls, lamps on desks, shadows on walls and floors cast by railings or window frames. The only thing I miss from the game's environments are heat radiators under windows and a coffee-maker in the lunchroom (oh, there aren't any lunchrooms in the game? What a pity!), but now I'm nitpicking. There's more scenery in this cartridge game than in most PC CDROM titles. Much kudos to RARE and their thoughtful design and impressive layout. Textures are surprisingly high-res and surprisingly varied too, and for once the hardware's bi-linear filtering actually isn't a problem. Thanks to the (at least apparently) high texture resolution, the graphics doesn't blur quite as badly as it does in some other titles, and the polygon edge anti-alias also is used to great effect, making some scenes look incredibly hi-res. The game's surroundings always stays sharp and crisp, even when pressing the nose up to a wall. This coupled with bountiful gouraud shading gives Goldeneye a look that easily can contend with the likes of GLQuake and relatives. The only thing missing are dynamic lights; all lightsourcing in the game is static, and shooting out a light in the ceiling produces a smashed-light texture, but no change in light levels in the room/corridor. I especially like the nice explosions, They are very well animated, and are colourful and pleasing to the eye. Other neat touches include bulletholes in walls and windows (it actually is possible to fire through several windows in one shot, puncturing them all without shattering them). Smashing a window (often requires a large number of shots) produces lots of pretty shards that unfortunately does not stay around on the ground. Oh well, not even Hexen 2 has *that*, so why complain?) There are downsides to all this graphic glitter and glitz, as unfortunate as this may seem. Framerate is the biggest problem, and then comes polygon breakup and a few clipping problems as well. The game speed does drop significantly in areas with much detail, or where the player can see a considerable distance into the screen. It doesn't quite become unplayable, but it happens a little too often for it to be quite comfortable. I had hoped more of RARE's legendary coding prowess in this department. There is Turok-style polygon breakup in a number of places in the game. Fortunately never as bad as in Turok, but still pretty disturbing, not to mention irritating. Where two textures overlap (such as signs, or bulletholes), the game sometimes can't seem to make up it's mind on which texture should be on top of the other. The result is that the top texture flickers rather badly. That fortunately is rather easy to ignore, at least most of the time. Clipping problems are rarely seen, except at doors. Enemy's limbs (or weapons) stick right through the door, which can be nice sometimes as you know there is somebody on the other side, but most of the time it just looks bad. Scenery occasionally show the odd glitch as well, mostly on the outdoor levels, but in general it doesn't happen very often, and one sometimes even has to look for it. I'm not trying to make excuses for RARE, it really would be nice to see a glitch-free game for once, but maybe I'm asking too much. In all, this is one of, if not THE best looking game released so far on the N64. There is a little fog in some levels to hide pop-up (which still is visible, unfortunately :-), but it's not bad. Also, the strange hardware dithering many games employ (by necessity?) sometimes make dark surfaces look grainy, but that is a very minor quibble.

SOUND

Sparse. Oh, there are weapon noises, yells, explosions and stuff, but not much in the way of ambient sounds. There are quite a few in the Cuba jungle, and the ship's engines whine on the level with the ship, but not much more, no car noises and stuff in the city level for instance. The music all seem to be variations of the Bond theme. Well executed in most cases (although I don't like the electric guitar remix of the title track), but it can become tiresome. RARE's license obviously covered character's faces, but not the film's soundtracks... Well, it is possible to turn the music's volume down (or even off). On the positive side, there is a fair selection of tunes (maybe even one per level, I'm not sure). I really don't know what more to say, what sound there is, is executed very well, even the MIDI wavetable music sounds good (not as good as the best SNES scores, but no SNES game sounded as good as this music when the machine was only 1 1/2 years old, with the possible exception of the first SNES Final Fantasy game, FF2 in the west). I just wish there had been more sound, some speech for example. Although, after having watched the beautiful graphics, I certainly wouldn't have traded textures for sound, that's for sure.

OVERALL

Not without it's flaws, but when it's positive sides outweigh it's negative by such a huge difference, one can't do anything but love the game. The reader might note that I haven't bitched anything by the absence of copious amounts of blood. The reason for that is, who needs blood, REALLY? Games have been built alone on blood and guts and bodyparts flying everywhere, and failed MISERABLY (Rise of the Triad is the most noteworthy example, I think), Goldeneye simulates blood with a little gouraudshading, and that's good enough for me. It's in fact much more realistic this way, people really don't bleed that much when shot, and that coupled with the game's large selection of gruesome death animations, I'm not missing anything. Rumblepak support is there, but I really don't see the point in it - it doesn't work as well as in Star Fox (or as it's known over here, Lylat Wars), but it's always a way to run down those batteries...) The controller shakes when you fire your weapon, okay, that was fun. Or perhaps not, I'm not sure. :-) I haven't had time to test the game's multiplayer options (although I have been running around on a few of the levels by myself, and the framerate seems impressively smooth, although a quarter-screen is far from optimum, resolution-wise. Anyway, multiplayer still seems a blast, with all the options one can play around with, and the selectable characters... A few 'bots would have been nice, too, but perhaps we'll see that in Tomorrow Never Dies (for the 64DD, anyone?).

Ratings: (Min: 0, Max: 20) Playability: 18 Presentation: 13 Graphics: 18 Sound: 15 Music: 13 Overall: 18/20

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