GoldenEye 007 (N64)

Goldeneye 007 is a first-person shooter game based on the 1995 Bond film GoldenEye (plot here ). This game was released in 1997, and was originally intended, I believe, to be released for the SNES, but was ported to the Nintendo 64 instead. This was one of the earlier titles for the N64, and an important prdecessor to modern first-person shooters.

I actually own this game for my N64, and the game was released early in my lifetime. In fact, I remember that my dad and I would play the game with the same controller, where he would control Bond and I would just fire the trigger. Ah, violent times.

Anyway, moving on. If it's not established already, I completely love this game. In fact, whenever I play my N64, I consistently play this game (as it's probably the best game I have for my N64). The game has many, many levels, and the bad guys will almost always keep coming out of nowhere; either that, or there will just be tons of them in each area. This is fine, though, becuase while they may have different guns, they're basically all equally vulnerable, so you can just pelt them with fire and they die in less than a second. This alone made the game insanely fun to play, because you could just plough right through the enemies. However, some of the levels, like the Streets, take more strategy because you don't have much time to beat the level in. That hardly matters, though because you can pretty much just pick out a bunch of levels you like and keep playing those repeatedly, and you won't get bored.

In fact, this game has enormous replayability because there are many levels, and each one is doable at three different difficulties: Agent, Secret Agent, and 00 Agent. This can involve greater difficulty, but mostly new objectives to complete in the level (and you really must complete all of them, or the mission is considered a failure in the final briefing). It's a real challenge to see if you can successfully finish all of the levels at higher difficulties.

Also, (and this is what really rekindled my relationship with this game) there are cheat codes that you can utilize in the game. Some of these are fun things that you unlock through gameplay (like Big Heads), but there are others that include All Guns, Maximum Ammo, and Invincibility. If you play with all three of these things on, you will have the most fun ever with a first-person shooter, because despite the era, this game has some seriously boss weapons. I'll just leave you to research that on your own.

But you know what the most noticeable, home-wrecking, incomprehensible problem with this game is? Its exact name is Natalya Fyodorovna Simonova. She is SO ANNOYING. She runs like a girl whenever anyone starts shooting, trips alarms, and your mission is judged a failure if she gets shot to death, which is a shame because you'll often find yourself wanting to do it. There are a few levels where one of the objectives is to save Natalya, and that is a pain because if she runs away, you'll have to look all around for her and then find the way out. There is only one level I know of where Natalya is actually useful, and even then she does relatively little and keeps tossing out a bunch of stupid lines. In fact, there's one level (the Control, I believe) where Boris (the other surviving programmer) will pull a gun on you, but not shoot, and if you have a human survival instinct and shoot him, Natalya will quit the mission and you'll have to start over. Come ON! It's self-defense! Ugh. I tell you, the game would have been flawless without this woman dragging at your heels like a lead weight.

HOWEVER, this does not draw me away from my final verdict that this is my favorite first-person shooter and second-favorite Bond game of all time. This game is currently unavailable on the Virtual Console (but I think it's being worked on), but you may just want to hunt it down somewhere anyway. If you ever get a chance to play this game at all, do it to the greatest degree you can, because this is the greatest classic first-person shooter game in existence.