GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

"I get to play an evil... err bad guy adversary person.... yeah."

Story: 5
You are an MI6 operative who had a terrible accident three years ago in which you lost an eye. You are said to have become irritable and prone to violence. Well, time passed, and you are sent on a mission for to assist 007 James Bond to defuse a bomb that Goldfinger has placed in Fort Knox. Well, something goes horribly wrong and Bond is killed, and the bomb goes off destroying Fort Knox, and presumably, the American economy, but you find out that this was a training mission in a VR environment.

MI6 dismissed you from service for this blunder, however, citing that you killed Bond (in reality, the helicopter just crushed him, you had nothing to do with it), So you take Goldfinger up on his offer to go work for him, and he gets Scaramanga to replace your defective eye with a magic one that can wield special powers.

Then, you are sent by Goldfinger to assassinate Dr. No because he left Goldfinger's ranks, but from there it just gets convoluted and paper-thin. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason as to why you have to kill a Triad informant in the process, and the omen, presumably some sort of super weapon you also have to protect, seems to be detracting you from your mission. None of it makes sense really.

At least, this is what its like half way in, but I have no intention of finishing this game.

However, the story does score a 5 for originality and a nice try.

Gameplay: 2
Bland, uninspired, and just plain redundant.

Seriously, playing this game is, well, an exercise in masochism, if you will. It started out alright, but quickly degraded as I played more of the game, seeing the same personaless enemies over and over again. There are mini-bosses to contend with from time to time, and while they add a nice touch to the game, generally are not too hard to beat even on hard.

The weapons, however, are among the coolest I've seen yet, from a hand-held gatling gun to a double barreled sawed off shotgun that really doesn't do as much damage as it should. I find myself having to shoot it two to three times at an enemy before he falls for good, and it fires very slow because Goldeneye has to reload each time. Then there is this pistol that fires an explosive projectile that is remotely detonated by pressing a button on the pistol. Perfect for when you just want to kill an enemy in a fun way or when you must deal with armor, or a helicopter or some flying contraption.

You almost always start off with one sidearm called a "spec 9", which I suppose means its a 9mm, however it feels a lot more in terms of look and power to be a .22 with a lot of recoil, and it fires very slow as well. The only good thing is that you get unlimited ammo with it.

Which brings me to my next point. You just can't carry that much ammo, at all. Take the light machinegun, for example. Its magazine holds 50, and you can carry 100 in reserve. You burn through it fast, and you can still carry 100 rounds even if you have them dual-wielded, which means you burn through ammo double-fast (even with alternating fire). Also, Goldeneye can't seem to take rounds out of an active magazine for a weapon not in your inventory, which means you'll have to pick up a new weapon to get more ammo. Sometimes you can walk over a weapon and pick up its ammunition, if the gun has ammo lieing around with it, just not in the weapon. This design defect forces you to have to switch weapons constantly, even if its the same weapon, and this gets very, very annoying.

What may be even more annoying is that you can't even hold two weapons (dual wields don't count), and you can't even throw grenades when you have a two handed weapon.

Instead of blood, you get a cheesy blue splash of what looks to be static electricity whenever you hit someone. This is just silly, and if you don't want to program in blood, then don't. Simple. Don't insult us and think we'd prefer something else. Blood or nothing, because anything else just looks silly, every time.

One neat ability is that you can melee with your opponent, stun him, and take him hostage as a human shield, much to his sadness. It was humorous at first, to see the enemy taking shots at you but instead hitting their "friend" (no honor among thieves, eh?) and was semi-useful when you needed protection quick, but got old fast.

There are four different goldeneye powers one obtains for the goldeneye as the game moves on. You start out with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows you to sense enemies behind cover, and you can kill them with the railgun because it shoots through barriers, which is actually cool, but MRI had little use to me except to give me advance warning if someone was coming around the corner I was hiding behind.

the second power is E.M. Hack, and its alright, you can jam up an enemy's weapon so it won't fire, or if it does, he won't hit anything within 10 miles of you. However this I rarely use as well because usually I'm too busy just killing everything to worry about jamming someone's weapon, and the button is in an awkward position. Also, you can hack any computer you can hack at a distance, which might sound cool, until you realize you could have also gone up to it and hit A to activate it because you have to go that way in the first place.

The third powerup is a shield that allows you to deflect bullets and is the only useful one so far. It consumes power, and more power as you get hit, but this power always regenerates (albeit slowly) so its not like you must really conserve it at all. I use this, quite a lot actually, because deflecting bullets from hurting you is really cool and quite useful.

The 4th power up I haven't acquired, however I think it might be something allowing you to throw enemies from a distance, ala Star Wars, or pick up objects and throw it into the enemies for yet another way to kill someone. Ooo! It may very well be useful, I haven't tried it, because I don't have it.

The game talks about this new E.V.I.L. AI, and how it makes each game different, but so far I've found it to be brutishly stupid, relying on health for difficulty rather than innovation, and has about as much brain power as a rock. A terrible disappointment.

And for all this talk about being evil and everything, you don't get to do cool stuff. Like shooting civilians or blowing up cars for no reason. Sure you can kill your team members and take them hostage but even this gets old, as I said, and there never seems to be anyone on your side except you. You don't even get to exact revenge on MI6! So evil is really just a gimmick, more than anything.

Truly a shame. I think EA needs to review "gameplay mechanics for FPS games 101".

Control: 5

The default setting is crap (you should set it to either "angel" or "precision", not "classic"), and the D-pad for selecting which power you want to be able to activate and the black and white buttons for meleeing and activating the goldeneye powers are just in awkward positions. A and X would have been better buttons for melee and goldeneye power, and black should be to grab the hostage. There is, to my knowledge, no way to customize that.

Also, looking/turning is very sluggish. You can change the sensitivity but they don't stick, you would think it would. You can get used to it but its still very sluggish, this is no good for aiming.

The controls aren't bad, per se, but could have been better.

Graphics: 3

Bland, uninspired, and just plain redundant. Its obvious EA didn't even want to spend a little bit of time giving each enemy a little variety in face and design, opting to let you battle a bunch of clones instead. Mini-bosses (who even have their own name, like Barth, or Drake) all look the same. You can note them because their heads are shaved. The most basic enemy has a lousy haircut, while a more advanced one likes to wear a bandana. All seem to have armor, and each type wears the same armor.

Level design is also bland, uninspired, and just plain redundant, lacking any sign of flavor or life. I swear I walked into a room and thought "I've been here before. This is the same room I just came out of!". Walls are rather textureless, but at least they colored them. Wish I could say the same for the helicopter. Aside from black windows, it looks like a carved out block of white stuff to resemble a helicopter and then someone painted black for windows. Maybe is one of those unmanned ones that doesn't need a pilot.

The weapons, however, look decent, almost futuristic even, truly the first shotpistol I've ever seen, and that is fun, despite its lack of all practicality. The gatling-gun looks like it came from the year 2020, and most of the weapons are just plain cool looking in general.

Aside from weapons design, I don't think EA even tried. So this nets them a three for graphics. Seriously, EA, what the heck happened?

Music: 1

Bland, uninspired, and just plain *gets shot*... Seriously, what little I noticed in game, because its turned down so low in the game, was the same riff over and over again. A game like this needs music, lots of it, like heavy metal or something. Well maybe not but we definitely needed music. The intro music is also just a mix of bland, repetitive riffs thrown together at random, then cuts out to some random thing even more boring before it restarts

Its as if they didn't even try!

Sound: 5
One of the few things they got right, sort of. The explosions sound a little like what an explosion may sound like, and the shotgun is a close resemblance to how an actual shotgun should sound but most guns sound like they have an undertone of clanking metal, with the exception of the gatling gun, which sounds quite phenomenal in comparison.

Replayability: 0

I've only played halfway through singleplayer, and have decided that there is really no point in continuing even through the game once. Yes, it is that bad.

Overall: 3

Rent or buy? Neither. If you must spend 50 dollars, buy Call of Duty, or Halo 2 (currently contesting Goldeneye for the new standard in console FPS). While you could rent it, and see if you like this game, I would suggest not even bothering if you have any ounce of hardcore FPS gamer in you, as I don't think you'll like it at all. Instead, find a game that doesn't need marketing gimmicks to sell well, like Call of Duty, or Halo 2.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/02/04