The intrepid staff of PALGN have had a chance to try out a portion of Goldeneye’s single player mode, as well as the much-lauded multiplayer mode. Will this reimagining become a beloved part of the Bond universe, or shall it be relegated to the status of Never Say Never Again? Read on for the impressions of PALGN so far.
Our official taste of Goldeneye’s single player mode came not in the form of a standard level, but the infamous tank sequence, also present in the original film. With Colonel Ourumov on the run, it’s up to James to put down his vodka martini and pursue the nefarious colonel in the least subtle way possible.
For our playthrough, we used the classic controller set-up, as opposed to the Wii’s motion sensing functions or the GameCube controller. In this instance, our choice appears to have been justified as it offered us a fairly smooth playthrough in what could have been a much bumpier ride – even though our ride happened to be a Russian tank. Controlling your tank is based around the analogue sticks, with the left stick moving your tank’s treads and the right moving your tank’s turret. In our playthrough this set up was a near-necessity as there were a lot of things going on at once. You must keep your pace with Ourumov, but this is not made easy. All the manner of obstacles, enemies and the occasional narrow passage do all they can to impede your chase against the mad colonel.
When it comes time to terminating all that is in your way, your tank’s cannon is usually your best option. You can choose to either aim wildly at obstacles and fire off a few salvos or lock-on and destroy your opponents with a precision-guided missile. The latter method is particularly useful for taking out airborne enemies, something that the game’s onscreen prompts point out to you upon your first helicopter encounter.
Time to swat a fly out of the air...
Outside of your turret, you also have a rail-gun at your disposal. Though it is reasonably effective, it can overheat with continuous use, so you may often find yourself sticking with your mighty mortars to clear a path. The final option to eliminate enemies is the most obvious – you can simply run over some of the smaller obstacles and vehicles. This can incur damage, however, so it is best not to run over several enemies in quick succession.
The single player campaign of the original was a very solid affair, but it’s arguable that the key to Goldeneye’s replayability was its multiplayer mode. Before you even start shooting it out with friends, there are some clear differences to the original. While there are some familiar faces which you can play as, such as Jaws, Oddjob and Bond himself, there are a couple of villains making their Goldeneye debut, which are worth discovering for yourself if you’re a dedicated fan of the James Bond franchise. Another noticeable change to the formula is the assignment of weapons. Unless you pick a themed match, each character will have a different weapon setup. A standard soldier may have a shotgun with support from a PPK, whereas another character from the Bond canon may utilize a machine gun, with a magnum as a sidearm. Though it’s possible to change between sets, it’s interesting to see what kind of play style they are suggesting with their default set-ups. As well as these differences, there are several completely new maps and many of the classic ones have been tweaked to change elements of their design and layout.
Clearly you're crouching to make this shot...
Once the selection process is out of the way, the multiplayer carnage begins in earnest. As with single player, there is the option of using several controller setups, but we decided to stick with the classic controller. It’s perhaps an even more justified choice than in single player, given how heated and busy the local four-player split-screen mode can be.
Compared to the original version, this rendition of Goldeneye’s multiplayer plays in a super-slick fashion. The action seems much faster than before, which resulted in one PALGN staffer being absolutely slaughtered in the first playthrough (he did, however, manage to recover and win the next round by a significant margin).
Even with the Golden Gun, can you get the drop on Jaws?
A major concern of the previous game was the significant drop in framerate when a lot of action was occurring onscreen at once. Thankfully, this seems to have been all but eliminated. You can have people firing rockets, tossing grenades and detonating mines without fear of the game lagging or freezing as the previous version did.
Outside of the normal gunplay, many of the other game modes and modifications remain intact. Aspiring espionage experts can once again lock horns in Golden Gun mode, You Only Live Twice Mode and many of the other Bond-themed rules. In addition, paintball and big hand mode return to add an extra touch of fun.
And fun is the key element of Goldeneye’s multiplayer from the past and continues into this new version. Perhaps part of this can be put down to nostalgia - the original Goldeneye was made at a time when online play was all but non-existent in consoles and multiplayer entailed having a few friends crowded around the Nintendo 64. Online multiplayer is an option, but there is still something very special about playing against four other people in the same room, knowing how enjoyable it was in the past and still is today. There may be other shooters with more complex weapons and graphics, but these things aren’t needed to make Goldeneye the success that it is.
I definitely had some worries about it beforehand as well and though it may not be a GOTY candidate, from my playthrough it seems to be far from the train wreck that many were fearing it could have been. Hopefully we'll be able to get a better impression once it's released here.
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