Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 37

37: Goldeneye (N64)
Developer: Rare
Year: 1997

When I talked about Perfect Dark (oh so long ago), I mentioned that the game was in no way as good as Goldeneye, and I meant it 100%. For everything PD was, Goldeneye was first. And, while being the first to do something doesn’t immediately make it better, it does place it within a more favored realm of memory for the player. Ask anyone who played Final Fantasy VII as their first FF-title or, more importantly, RPG period… and they’ll likely tell you its their favorite game in the series and/or favorite RPG of all time. There are exceptions to this, but its hard to break a game from that spot. So, as far as console shooters go (within the notion of the console exclusive that is), Goldeneye is the best of the best.

The narrative, interestingly enough, follows that of the movies really well, with the only discrepancies popping up when the game needed additional narrative devices to, you know, make more levels for the gamer to play through. The really interesting thing, though, is that the game came out two years after the film. In a time in which games based on movies are produced at the exact same time as the film, that’s real curious. Anyhow, players take on the role of James Bond as he infiltrates a soviet dam to blow up some chemicals, only to be backstabbed (so it is revealed years later) by his one-time partner and fellow 00 agent, Alec. Now Jimmy Bond must team up with a super-hot but ultra-stupid (as far as the AI goes) Russian tech specialist and computer programmer to stop a plot aimed at knocking out the British electronic world. So they can, I presume, rob banks or something. Basically, Alec is pissed at the Crown and wants revenge. This plot is fleshed out, somewhat, with some impractical missions taking place in the in-between years not seen in the film. And I say impractical because if they’d had Bond go on missions to investigate the satalite in the first place, they probably would have knocked the project down years before. A giant, nation-crippling EMP-firing weapon that can hit anywhere in the world on a whim? No chance in fuck they’d leave that up there.

As far as the gameplay goes, Goldeneye is the revolutionary title as far as at-home FPS games go. While Doom and its sequel brought the genre to life on the PC, for the most part console shooters had nothing of great interest going on for them. After this game, every console had its Goldeneye clones. Players explored levels to complete objectives, collecting weapons, neutralizing enemies (by shooting them in the face), and blowing shit up in general. For a super spy, Bond is featured doing very little in the way of anything remotely “stealthy” – but the game did provide enough diversity in missions to complete, including some “don’t shoot innocents!” based levels, and one in which players drove a tank through city street, blowing Russians the fuck up. But, for every bit as good as the single player levels were, the reason we all owned this game was for the multiplayer, a feature that changed how people looked at consoles, and paved the way for games like Halo, even before online support was possible. Up to four people could now blast each other to death on one screen, murdering each other with any setup they could devise. One-hit kills with automatics? Remote mines only? Team-based capture the flag? It was all up to the player, making for hours and hours of deathmatch glory.

While the game is dated, now, back in those days the graphics engine was fairly impressive for the Nintendo 64. Draw distances, which you could scoff at now, were becoming a giant talking point at the genesis of full 3D gaming, and certain levels of Goldeneye were simply breathtaking back in those days. You could see that unreachable island across the water in the dam level, despite the heavy levels of fog. And the size and scope of some of the levels, as well as the layout design (Facility for example, or the Archives) were impressive, if not for the bigness of it all, but for the impressive level of detail featured, making the levels look like their counterparts and sets of the film. Everyone can point out all the spots in the game found in the movie, and vice versa. And who can forget the car-by-car Train level? The variety in these levels – as well as the guns and the enemies featured – helped create a gaming experience that was, at the time, unparalleled in gaming, especially on the N64.

All in all, Goldeneye is one of those games that no one could hate. And if you say you do, you are a damn liar. A game that took college campuses by storm, Bond’s best console outing is almost more famous than the movie its based on. With a Wii-make coming out on Nintendo’s latest system here in the next little bit, the legend has a chance to continue on. While the game will feature better graphics, updated physics, and new featured, the same thing will be as true for it as it was for the game’s original follow-up, Perfect Dark; despite the fun found in the game, the fact remains that every console shooter (and quite possibly PC titles, too) were built from the structure this game presented. While other games may have done it better, this game did it first, and did it perfectly. What else can be said?

Classic Moment:
Who the hell didn’t shoot Boris the first time you got the chance, near the end of the game? I know I did. I also cheated to get rocket launchers and then blew his ass off the ground over and over again. So what if it resulted in a game over? It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Why Goldeneye > Mass Effect 2:
Innovation, originality, and influence. These three things push a dated, ugly-as-sin game past something fresh and beautiful. While Mass Effect 2 provides more hours of single player experience and unique gameplay features based upon a morality/choice system (resulting in different gameplay experiences for each player), no amount of sharing stories from that game matches the level of fun had blasting friends in a basement until the wee hours of the morning instead of doing homework on a weekend.

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Added March 22, 2017
The cheap thrills this game offered a Young Skyler and his family/friends were innumerable. And phenomenal. I look back upon them with great respect and love.
My family did have a contract drawn up, though, which disallowed certain characters, weapons, modes of play, etc. It was because I was too good and everyone else couldn’t’ keep up.