Goldeneye 007 (Xbox One/S/X and Switch) // Review
If you ask a bunch of people who were kids and teenagers in the 1990s what the best First-Person Shooter on game consoles was, odds are you would get only one answer. There were hundreds of First-Person Shooting games on the PC, led by games like Doom, Quake, and Half-Life. However, console games were a wild frontier where games were either crippled by the console they were on, limited by the controller options, or even broken from overambitious developers who had no idea what they were doing.
Or in the case of 3DO’s port of Doom, all three.
But one game would come out in 1997 that wound up proving that the First-Person Shooter was a viable concept on home consoles, by Nintendo of all companies. That game?
I mean, it is kinda on the banner you clicked on…
Goldeneye 007.
Developed by Rare over in England, Goldeneye 007 was a licensed tie-in game made to spin out of 1995’s rebirth of the James Bond franchise with the similarly-named Goldeneye. Rare had already made a name for themselves with the incredibly well-received Donkey Kong Country series on the Super Nintendo, as well as the Donkey Kong Land series on the Game Boy. The game itself took so long due to the evolving technology of the day. Starting as either a platform jumping game or a racing game on the Super Nintendo, Rare would upgrade their development to the Nintendo 64 with the console’s announcement.
From there, Goldeneye 007 almost became an on-rails shooting game, with players only controlling an aiming reticule. However, someone had the mad idea to make the game a much more involving game, and granted movement to the player while assisting them with some of the earliest automatic aiming in a console shooter. Finally, a bunch of people at Rare basically snuck in a 4-player local versus mode for the hell of it just before the game was released. The fact that they would use likenesses for characters who weren’t in Goldeneye like Jaws, Oddob, and Mayday got them into a heap of trouble.
However, the virtual models of the other actors who played James Bond were, sadly, nixed.
Where the game truly succeeded was taking the license for the movie and expanding upon it. Scenes from the movie were turned into entire levels, with many stages linking together to create an extended narrative. To further increase replay options, Rare created a three-tier difficulty level that not only made foes tougher and made them deal more damage, but also added additional mission objectives. What could have been a 1 minute mission could become a 15 minute rush as the player tried to survive against endless waves of alerted guards when they goofed up in an unfamiliar area.
And, of course, 4 player versus multiplayer was the first of its kind. The Nintendo 64 was the first console to experiment with simultaneous four player games, and games like Goldeneye took complete advantage of it. I am certainly not alone in remembering endless rounds of harmless death-dealing with friends and family long into the night for months at a time.
Add in some truly amazing music that somehow never failed to work in the James Bond Theme tones with almost each track, excellent controls that somehow felt natural with the bizarre and experimental Nintendo 64 controller, and you had a gem of a game that often deserves its place atop most “best of” lists.
And there it stayed on the Nintendo 64, for decades.
There was an attempt to have Rare, now owned by Microsoft, to remaster and remake Goldeneye 007 for the Xbox 360. However, it was canceled due to licensing issues with EON Productions (and possibly Nintendo). There have also been endless rumors about the game coming to one of Nintendo’s virtual console services, not helped by games made to try and capture the hype memories of Goldeneye 007 like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent and Goldeneye Reloaded.
However, September 2022 would finally bring a revelation: Goldeneye would be back, and on both the Xbox and Nintendo platforms!
Now that the game has been fully released, as of January 27th of 2023, how has it held up? And is there a superior version you should get? We’ll look at that here.
First, however, is the catch. This release of Goldeneye 007 is a digital-only one, with one of three methods to obtain:
You must have a subscription to the pricy Nintendo Switch Online with Expansion Pack service if you wish to play this on the Nintendo Switch.
You must have a subscription to Microsoft’s Game Pass service, where it is free.
If you own a copy of Rare Replay, a 30 game compilation celebrating 30 years of Rare as a developer, you receive a copy of the game for free. However, it is only provided to those who own the digital version of this software release.
If you only own a Playstation, or do not subscribe to either service, and do not wish to own Rare Replay for some bizarre reason, you are out of luck. However, those are at least cheaper options than trying to scrounge up a working Nintendo 64, controller, and Goldeneye 007 cartridge on the secondary market… to say nothing of how to connect it to a modern television.
Visually, both games are essentially identical. There are minor glitches from upscaling the game to 4K resolutions on the Microsoft side, but there are also similar issues on the Nintendo side with some texture resolutions apparently being incorrect. Having played the game on a Switch Lite, I did not notice those issues. I did notice the visual issues while playing on an Xbox Series S, but it’s hard not to notice when you’re on a 60 inch TV screen. Either way, it is a comparable experience to 1997, with a superior visual presentation… but the visual glitches and imperfections of 1997 loom larger than ever with these ports.
Allegedly, the Xbox version of Goldeneye 007 is a port, while the Switch version is an emulated rom of the original game using Nintendo’s home-developed emulator. However, the end result is pretty much the same, and where we wind up having our key differences between the versions.
Nintendo advertised they have online multiplayer for Goldeneye 007. This is true, and a wild thing for fans who remember the game from the day of four people sitting in the same room, screaming about filthy “screen-lookers” and trying to see details on a fourth of a 16-inch CRT screen. However, it is limited to friends in the Nintendo Switch system only, and seems to be a coincidental thing due to how Nintendo is emulating their older console rather than on purpose. Online performance isn’t horrible, but it does lack compared to a service like Microsoft or Sony. This is normal, and still somehow works for Goldeneye 007.
Microsoft’s multiplayer is limited to 4 people in the same room, but that is all. It also should be noted Goldeneye 007 does have some brief lag at times on the various Xbox consoles. This seems to be a result of what could be a rushed port, and only happens rarely. On top of that, Nintendo’s version preserves the shortcuts to unlocking the various infamous cheats of Goldeneye 007… but the Microsoft version requires the player to unlock them the hard way.
In spite of these flaws, the Xbox version Goldeneye 007 has dramatically enhanced controls. While Nintendo has chosen to merely emulate the original controls of 1997 in their release, this leaves the player with controls that should also be left behind in 1997. The controls for Goldeneye have always been the weakest part of the game looking back, as with any shooting game on the Nintendo 64 due to the console’s lack of a second thumbstick. Developers Code Mystics have reworked the controls for Goldeneye so that the players can use both thumbsticks as they would in a game of Halo, while also adding other quality of life improvements to the game like fast cycling through weapons.
In fact, the controls became the deciding factor for us at You Don’t Read Comics. While the online multiplayer with friends is a nice addition, it’s the enhanced modern control scheme on the Xbox One/S/X that makes the Microsoft iteration of Goldeneye 007 the one to play. Either one will get your nostalgia fix, but only the Xbox version plays like you remember it.
The fact that these two games are digital-only could mean their availability is decidedly limited. While Microsoft has yet to pull games off their service for those who’ve technically purchased it, Nintendo has no such qualms about removing free content. Your time with these releases may well be limited.
It is a tragedy that Goldeneye 007 is likely never going to get an enhanced remake like Rare’s Perfect Dark, but this will have to do for now.
