Goldeneye 007 reviewed

In 1995 James Bond was back in Goldeneye, at the time the most successful Bond movie ever if you discount inflation which I do.  Sure the plot was slow and it only spurted along instead sprinted like it should, but the villain was awesome, the action was good and Pierce Brosnan bought a sly charm to Bond.  Then in 1997, the game adaptation by Rare came out and people were like "What movie?" Tomorrow Never Dies notwithstanding.  It finally turned the First-Person Shooter into it's own full-fledged genre and we never heard the words "Doom-Clone" again.

James Bond is out and about infiltrating a Soviet weapons factory.  He meets up with 006 but the mission goes bad and 006 is killed but Bond escapes just in time.  Nine years later, the world has changed and the Cold War is over.  However, Bond goes back to Russia and discovers the plot of the Goldeneye Satellite that would unleash an EMP on the world and bring the British finances back down to zero.  And who is the mastermind behind this evil plan...why 006 I mean Janus is silly.

I think what got my attention first was the utter freedom of movement.  In Doom and Wolfenstein you didn't have that freedom because you were using the D-Pad which was a bit cumbersome.  But with the control stick and some good use of the C-buttons it showed the future of the FPS.  There was freedom, you could glide, you could actually do some good strafing and actually do some precise aiming.  There was a sense of exhilaration, a sense that you could do almost anything your imagination could allow you to do.

Another innovation was that this game forced you to actually think before you killed.  You can't kill certain people since they have something you need, but you can kill them after they give it to you.  You obviously can't kill innocent civilians or hostages, that's just bad. And of course, as much as we all want to, you couldn't kill Natalya since she was the main bad girl who wasn't evil.  Granted, you didn't think too much as all supposed intelligence was "Don't kill this person or destroy this thing." but it was something that set it apart from Doom.

But what everyone remembers about Goldeneye 007 is the multiplayer.  Sure, multiplayer existed in some other games like Bomberman, Secret of Mana and various sports, fighting & racing games there really wasn't a pervasive party atmosphere.  It didn't really help since the 16-bit consoles only had two controller ports.  But with the Nintendo 64 having four controller ports and use of split-screen, things drastically changed and it sprouted the seeds of the multiplayer phenomenon that Halo would then crystallized. 

The game has aged a bit, especially in terms of graphics with its five-sided faces but it's still a milestone of video game history and still a great game in its own right.  The control scheme is fluid and natural.  The missions are fun to play.  There's a cheap thrill when you shot a chair and it explodes.  This game still has it.

9/10