(Review) Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (xbox)
What happens when you take a beloved franchise, but strip it of its main character, and most of its charm along the way? You get a GINO, or “Goldeneye in name only”. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent is a 2004 first-person shooter that was released for the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. It’s worth noting that this title has nothing to do with the 1995 movie or the 1997 all-time classic game in which it’s borrowing a namesake from.
In this game you play as an ex-MI6 00-agent who was once working alongside James Bond. “The agent” as he’s temporarily known, is responsible for the death of James Bond. That may sound shocking at first, but it’s revealed that you’ve merely killed Bond in a simulation. Right away, this game shows off a unique premise, but retracts its fangs by pulling the ol’ “it was just a dream” card. Even though it’s just a simulation, the protagonist gets fired in real life from MI6. Apparently, he has an eye injury that is causing him to be a bad agent, due to frequent fits of rage and behavior that isn’t fit for MI6. So, a life-altering injury is what makes the agent a bad fit for service? The simulated death of Bond is the final straw, and Judi Dench’s “M” fires you on the spot. The agent must have a decent résumé as classic Bond baddie Auric Goldfinger scoops the agent up to come work for him under the SPECTRE collective of villains. Yes, you say the name with your whole chest, “SPECTRE!”. Goldfinger isn’t just offering employment, he’s offering a brand new cybernetic eyeball for the seemingly semi-blind Agent. Not only is this new eyeball a way to see, but it’s made…of gold. GET IT? GOLDENEYE! HIS EYE IS MADE OF- yeah, this was a really cheap cash-in on the Bond title that was once worth a fortune. It really feels like EA started with the name “Goldeneye” and worked their way backward. Responsible for surgically installing the eye itself is another classic Bond baddie, Francisco Scaramanga, who’s also a member of SPECTRE. Scaramanga is played by Chirstopher Lee in this game, which is a big treat. Things aren’t exactly smooth within the world of SPECTRE, as your first task as Goldeneye is to kill Dr.No. In-fighting amongst bad-guys is this game's best idea, and it makes for a great story. Here’s the thing, the story is actually a really solid premise, solid gold I’d dare say. The story finds a way to work in the greater Bond universe, with a cast of classic bad guys from across the most classic eras of Bond movies. Along the way, you’ll team up with other classic Bond baddies such as Oddjob, and Pussy Galore.
The eye isn’t just another way to see, no, it’s also a replacement for Bond’s gadgets which were a mainstay for this era of 007 games. As you progress, you unlock four abilities (like gadgets) for your eye: A shield, the ability to see through walls, a “hack” ability for environmental electronics, and finally, a magnetic force ability which basically acts like the force from “Star Wars”. These abilities can’t be triggered whenever, because you have to have enough juice to power them up. Your eye abilities will slowly recharge over time, so you can’t just spam your eye abilities. The game slowly trickles out these Goldeneye features as you progress through the game's levels, and each level will feature a few instances where you need to use that newly-gained ability in order to proceed. The Goldeneye abilities take a back seat to combat in this game, as you’re not going to need to rely on most of them for very long.
Looking through walls with the MRI eye ability
At first, you can only use the ability to see through walls. This is really not that useful, as you can’t shoot through walls without a specific weapon. This weapon in question is one of the rarer weapons, so the game only wants you to use your ability in predetermined scenarios where it gives you that weapon. Looking through walls isn’t that useful as you generally know where the opponents are due to the frequent firing coming from any direction. The hack ability seems useful on paper, but it mainly just allows you to disable your opponents weapons. Disabling your opponents weapons may seem like a good idea, but in practice, it’s ineffective as you need to get pretty close up to someone before pulling this move off. The disable feature really only works well if you’re in a 1 on 1 gun fight, which almost never happens in this game. Occasionally, you can use the hack ability to hack larger setpieces to work in your favor. For example, you can hack turrets to fire at your opponents instead of firing at you. This was quite fun, but the opportunity didn’t arise often enough to feel like a main feature of the game. The polarity shield is supposed to bounce bullets off of your character, but in effect it doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to do. What it does instead, is act like a shield to stack on top of your health. This ended up being the most practical of all Goldeneye abilities, as there’s some seriously tough sections in this game. The shield allows you to pull off your best “Leeroy Jenkins”, which was much needed given the difficulty of some of this game's segments. I found myself using the shield more than any of the other abilities. The magnetic force ability is great for ragdolling your opponents, but you need to be close to them in order for it to work. This is a problem, as if you’re close enough to get to the enemies, you’re probably already dead. It’s a real bummer that your eye abilities are restricted to certain levels of the game, as you can’t unlock an ability and then take it back to one of the previous levels. One of the game's more unique ideas is that you can take an enemy hostage and use them as a human shield, but so can the enemy A.I. which is interesting on paper but poorly executed. Rarely does the enemy stop to consider that your human shield is one of their own, and they will proceed to attack you in many instances. This leads me to my next point about the enemy A.I….
unlocking the Polarity Shield
The enemy A.I. in this game is very smart, but almost to a fault. I was playing on easy mode, and they were kicking my ass. I’ve beaten almost all of the EA Bond games from this era, so I’m no slouch, but oh man were these guys good. What’s interesting about them is that they seem to learn from your movements and even call out to each other. “He’s behind the wall!” one will say, as two other guys lock in on your location and flank you. Not only does the game have you fighting against tough humans, but they expect you to go 1 on 1 with vehicles. That’s right, you’re supposed to be able to take down an entire tank or airplane with just one or two weapons on hand. The game likes to stack vehicles against you, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting multiple tanks at once. The tanks in this game will kill you in 1-2 hits, so it’s a huge feat to fight them on your own. This game really could’ve used a proper cover shooting system, as all you can really do is duck behind conveniently placed obstacles. You can’t shoot from cover like you can in some of the other Bond games.
dual wielding guns
Not only do you have the ability to use your Goldeneye in this game, but you’re also able to dual-wield weapons after finding them scattered across the game. The dual wielding in this game is pretty solid, but you’ll quickly find that dual wielding is no match for the combination of single weapon/grenade. Coming up with your own combo of weapons can be fun, like having a shotgun plus a pistol can make for interesting moments. Unfortunately, you can’t throw grenades if you’re dual wielding. Wait, does this sound like Halo 2 to anyone else? I mean, they even have the recharging shield ability from Halo. Yeah, that’s right, if you get shot at, just hang out behind cover for a few seconds and your shields will recharge…just like in Halo.
Goldfinger's Casino
I must admit, it feels good to be the bad guy in this game…at least at first. The problem with this game is that while the story has a great premise, the gameplay fails to back the story up. There are 8 levels in total in this game, and each one features extremely smart A.I. trapped in extremely boring environments. Though the story tries to tie the environments into the narrative, they largely end up feeling like just another corridor followed by a room, and then another corridor…so on and so forth. Some stages of the game standout such as the Hong Kong rooftops, and Goldfingers Casino, but for every big set piece, there is 30 minutes of generic shooter lodged in between. Even the good levels in this game drag on forever, which quickly ruins any novelty. The 30 or so minutes of content that each level is designed to have can easily take you hours to get past, as this game is extremely unforgiving in its difficulty at times. Given how smart the enemy A.I. is, you’ll find yourself spending hours and hours retrying each level. It ends up boiling down to luck and memorization of enemy locations, instead of just reacting to them like you would in a more competent FPS. You can easily spend a few hours on a single level in this game, and that just gets boring after a while. Even though the enemies provide a challenge, it just becomes cruel after a certain point.
For every great cutscene in this game, there's potentially hours and hours of a brutal challenge separating them. I’d love to watch this game’s cutscenes as if they were one movie, but I never want to play this game again. The cutscenes are certainly a highlight, given that the game managed to pull off some big hits for their voice acting - Christopher Lee playing Scaramanga, and Judy Dench reprises her role as “M”. Speaking of audio, the game features a soundtrack by legendary DJ/Producer Paul Oakenfold. Despite the celebrity status behind the soundtrack, the soundtrack doesn’t stand out much. It’s by no means a bad soundtrack but it’s really not memorable, either. The main menu theme of the game defies the rest of the soundtrack, as it’s a bit of an earworm. The main menu theme is noticeably not the 007 theme, for obvious reasons, and that was a smart choice.
There is a scoring system built into this game which encourages the player to fight a certain way. You will be rewarded for headshots, for killing with explosives, and even for taking enemies hostage as a human shield. You can unlock behind the scenes game artwork if you end up scoring enough by using these methods in the game. This was a fun idea, and the game really seems to encourage headshots since the on-screen reticle is very high for an FPS. If you think about it, most FPS’s feature a reticle in the middle of the screen, but this game features it about ¾ of the way up the screen, right about where an enemy head might be. The scoring system was a fun idea at first but quickly became an afterthought, as being stylish isn’t as important as just getting the job done when it comes to killing enemies.
Let’s briefly talk about the multiplayer in this game - I can’t fairly review the multiplayer as the servers have been offline for nearly 20 years. On top of that, it’s not exactly easy to convince another human being to sit down and play a bad retro game with you in the year 2024. There are no bot offerings in this game, so split screen mode is locked to me until I plug in a second controller. From what snooping I could do around the net, it does seem like this multiplayer mode was actually substantial. That’s one thing that this game does have going in its favor, but like I said: I can’t fairly review the multiplayer.
How am I supposed to fight a helicopter? I'm just a little guy
This game had many great ideas in theory from the plot, to the eyeball abilities, and even down to the scoring system - but they all failed in execution. The poor execution of the games ideas, coupled with the games difficulty and length end up making for a very lackluster game. All too often, this game stacks the deck against your favor whether it’s the 8 on 1 gunfights, or the segments where you’re going 1 on 1 with tanks and helicopters. The plot is easily the best part of this game, it’s so strong that it could even be adapted into its own spinoff movie (no, seriously!) but the plot isn’t enough to make the game a fun playthrough. As a big fan of the EA 007 games, it breaks my heart to give this a ranking of: D
