GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

"Who would've thoght mass murder could be so dull?"

Boring and repetitive are two words that can spell death for any otherwise excellent or classy game. Perhaps nothing can describe this phenomenon better than the game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

GRA is by no means a bad game. In fact, with a smarter A. I., an almost revolutionary "Duel-Wield" feature, and hostage situations this could have easily beaten any competition that would present itself. Repetition is the culprit in this crime, and the damage was 5 points. The basic premise of GRA is to go through mission-oriented levels and mow down anything in your way with guns, rocket launchers, and anything else that your numerous enemies drop on their carcasses, first person perspective. Do not come here for the traditional Bond formula. This game has no stealth, and no gambling. It's best to look at it like a totally different game rather than blame it from straying from the classics.

The story and premise of GRA is typical James Bond. You, as an MI6 agent, was wounded in a battle with Dr. No and lost the use of your right eye. After one of the contacts of Scaramanga crafts you a new eye (granting you the name "GoldenEye") you begin to show signs of anger and a general disregard for human life. After a failed simulation combat run you're booted out of MI6 for good. Filled with revenge you take up an offer by Goldfinger to hunt down Dr. No and protect the OMEN, a new super-evil big bomb thingy.

Confused by all the new names? Don't worry. You can almost be assured that the person won't be there for long. Mostly the enemy appears, gets shot, and dies. The main disappointment here is just that. Save for two people, there isn't any incentive to connect with anyone. You know he or she will be gone in the next level. All in all, The story can be confusing and annoying to people illiterate in the Bond history, including yours truly. Maybe you can glean more from the plot than I can, but as it stands the premise left me empty and devoid of any feeling for the characters that I have to have to make me want to kill hordes of people.

4/10

Graphically, this game performs above average. The flames and explosions were off, but I can excuse that. Enemies move so fluently that you'd think they were real, and this proves especially true in the physics engine. Suppose you nail someone in the head with a bullet of a weak pistol. He'll hold his face and collapse on the floor. Shoot him with a gun that's a little more powerful like a shotgun he'll fall backwards and lie there on the floor. Or perhaps you'd like to nail him square in the chest and watch with sadistic pleasure as he falls down to the floor or possibly roll (that's right, I said roll) down a ramp. Shoot him in the side or off-center and he'll do a spin as he falls to his death.

Another excellent feature is the reloading animation. While this may seem puny and insignificant, it gives the illusion that you are GoldenEye. Take, for example, the shotgun. On any other shooter you would see the gun turn down then turn up. Here you unhook the barrel and slide two shells in each barrel, flip it up, pull off the side and replace it, and lock it into place. It's hard to describe on paper, but if you're like me you'll be incredibly impressed.

FMVs can be described as “breathtaking” Starting at the beginning you can see that they were meticulously rendered almost well enough to make you confused for a second whether or not it was performed by live people. All of the characters were worked on perfectly. From the bags under Dr. No's slanted eyes to the sheen in Oddjob's top hat. Pussy Galore's ummmm… upper chest area has a higher polygon count than absolutely necessary, but I'm certainly not complaining.

The enemies do not share this. They do give the illusion of "faceless drone enemy" on the first level, but after level two they begin to look like "lazy graphics artist". This becomes painfully clear when they begin to chuck them at you like an ace pitcher on meth. And yet another reason to dislike the hordes and hordes of identical cannon fodder enemies is the fact that they replaced the blood with some sort of blue spark. This is almost an insult to me. If I kill a villain I want to see blood, even a little bit, burst out of their arm. I'm sorry for this, but the situation is a dead ringer for the following two sentences;

Do you bleed blue!? YES I DO!!

8/10

The music was below my par of music that deserves not to get muted. Sort of hard rock music will be playing in the background the entire level. Hardly atmospheric when you learn that the music played in the middle of a raging volcano is the same at an underwater base is the same as a freezing wasteland. Add in the fact that they're repeated almost to the point of nausea and the mute button will be your best friend. I generally don't get on games too much for their lack of sounds. I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is only one soundtrack playing through eight levels where by the time I'm done I find myself humming it in the shower without noticing it.

It's a shame really, because voices sound very nice and even more so expresses the intelligence of our pallet-swapped and blue-bleeding army of enemies. In a general firefight you would want to hide behind a sort of shield, right? But what you did not expect is that from random a man calls clearly: “he's behind the [insert what you're hiding behind here]”. He knows where you are! To add to the majesty of the FMVs clips of speech accompanied by sound effects to match every footsteps that the 20+ soldiers can be heard despite the presence of laser-cutting sounds and gruff commands matching the soldiers. It is very evident that a lot more time was put into the movie clips than anything else in the game was. Perhaps that explains the 5/10 score, but I digress.

The in-game sound effects do not astound me, but they don't make me want to vomit in rage either. They work but just that. A pistol sounds crisp, but everything else tends to sound like it's reverberating in a tin can. Sometimes repeatedly using a machine gun makes the sound stick with you until you reset it, which is a big minus in my book. That and the music aside, everything performed dead average so there isn't really any more to say.

7/10

All right, here it is the all-important gameplay. All past follies and successes must be ignored at this stage. Let's start with the good, because GRA has a lot going for it. For one, GRA boasts a duel-wield system that shames any other I've seen. In the beginning of each level you start with grenades in your left hand and a very weak gun with unlimited bullets in the other. Once you kill the first enemy, however, the strategy and possibilities of this game open. Pressing L and A will replace your current left weapon with the one on the ground. R and A for the right. Pressing L and R afterward will shoot the corresponding firearm. This being said, you can customize and rearrange weapons to suit your needs. Act like the Terminator and shoot the room full of holes with automatics? Go for a subtler approach and go for a head shot with the accurate Jackal pistols? The choice is yours.

The new AI (or E.V.I.L. AI as the box proudly states) is really more of a wild card. That's not to say that it's a dumb thinker, quite the contrary. Enemies do not just stand there and take hits from you as they feebly try to strike back. Their usual plan of action when they see you is to jump behind a counter top or wall and call out where you are to the others, who then move between cover as they get close enough to shoot you or shoot through your cover. If you run into the middle of a battle with no protection, you will get killed. However, having smarter and stronger opponents can be a downside too. Trust me, I have no quarrel with difficulty, but this is a whole different kind of challenge. Once you get to the latter levels no matter the difficulty, they also display some other logic. They will ignore all cover, run up headfirst and shoot you repeatedly, knowing you'll go down before them.

Let's face it: you're a bad guy that just got fired because of his violent behavior. That said, you're entitled to a few tricks even Mr. Bond could not pull off. One of these is the ability to take someone hostage. This can be achieved by punching someone in the face and pressing A when prompted to do so. Doing so results in you grabbing the poor sap and, for the cost of not being able to use your left hand for anything, can use him to take bullets for you for a short time. If you think it just isn't worth the trade of a second weapon, you can throw him into his friends to buy you some time to pump their identical blue-blooded asses with a spray of hot lead.

Your golden eye does not come without its perks either. In total you'll end up with four powers, none of which are exciting or useful. You have the MRI vision, which allows you to see through walls and obstacles to search for potential ambushes and enemies. But since you can't shoot through walls and this power uses energy it is useless except in about three instances. Your second power, the E.M. Hack lets you hack other people's weapons and gun turrets. Hacking weapons will make them less accurate and taking time to hijack a camera has effects I've yet to figure out. Another useless feature since each hack takes about 25 energy points out of your 100 points. Really, there's no real reason to use it. The magnetic shield is helpful, but since it sucks up power like a vacuum it only works for five seconds, tops. A magnetic wave feature is really the only one to have equipped, since it can throw enemies around like rag-dolls and aim at other enemies. Add all these to the fact that there is no way to upgrade the amount of power in your eye and these upgrades do next to nothing.

But there's just one problem with all of this. For about 20 minutes I was living out my dream of shooting people in the face and sucking up the eye candy that is GoldenEye. But after working over 12 rooms of goons that look and behave just like the other ones I realized there was not really much else to do. Behold, the killer of GRA. The formula is basically this: walk along a linear path and shoot guy after guy after guy through drawn out levels. Yes, this is the game. No stealth, no alternate routes, no puzzles, the bosses are just normal enemies with more health, and there's nothing to break up the pure monotony. Very soon I felt that I could easily live in a world without this game. It is so utterly and truly boring that playing for an hour straight will be all you need.

Good: Excellent graphics and physics engine, great attention to details, heavenly FMVs, plenty of new additions to the Bond Legacy, smart enemies.

Bad: Useless golden eye moves, no explanation of the characters, REPETITION TO THE POINT OF VIOLENCE

The bad does not necessarily outnumber the good, but it was enough to bring this otherwise fine game to a premature watery grave. That being said, I would highly suggest a rental. Once you play ten minutes, you've played it all.

Final Score:5/10

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/06/06