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Wednesday 28 September 2011
GoldenEye 007 N64 Review
I have chosen to write about GoldenEye 007 because it was one of the first games I played when I was little, I grew up with two brothers and we used to play the split-screen multiplayer mode more than any other game we had at the time.
There isn’t really any visual acclimation throughout the game. Most of the gameplay takes place in locations that are used over and over, although this saves time in both production and game size it seems to severely effect the flow of the game. The level design feels very linear in its design, lots of generic corridors and rooms with generally the same repeating textures throughout.
The character controls seem to be very awkward to use, but obviously coming from a next-gen console this is unfair to say. For the time when it was released, using a controller that had a single analogue stick it made great use of what was available, it used the analogue stick for general movement and the C buttons to aim (which could be used in unison). To interact with anything you press B and to reload is A, which seems right.
Interaction in the game isn’t particularly very obvious (as half of the items don't appear to be interactable!), you can be stood in an area for a while going round in circles before you realise for example, the locked door with the padlock you actually have to shoot off instead of finding an alternative route or key (no indication, hints or clues as to how to get past).
The animations in the game seem to be very over exaggerated, for example a simple shot to the leg would result in the antagonist doing almost a backflip. On the other hand it is nice to see a variety of animations, it seems if you shoot different zones on the body you will trigger a different death sequence. This proved quite funny when I managed to kill someone at the base of a ladder and he glitched back to the top and back down again!
The narrative within the game is very simple and not very immersive or believable, in the briefing you receive a large paragraph of text which is a combination of the objectives and also quotes from the film; in game you use your watch interface and all your supplied with is a couple of simple bulletpoints, for example : “Find the platform and bungee off”.
There is simple object destruction within the game, for example the exact same crate which you will dotted through every environment in the game is able to be shot and broken. Its great for gameplay in firefights (destructable cover) but they could’ve perhaps made some different shaped ones, or even just scaled them differently.
The multiplayer aspect of the game is really what shines through for me, having up to four players (albeit laggy) playing an immersive first person shooter which had an element of skill was something completely new to people. With the levels based on the campaign, they have been isolated to result in more fast-paced action and allow the player to become more familiar with the surroundings quicker. Using a variety of game modes seems to have been a great concept in this game, and using movie related items such as the golden gun.
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Below are a couple of screenshots I took whilst playing through the campaign, the first displays how the doors don't really make sense to be able to interact with (no handle?!) Great effects with the decal bullet holes giving the appearance of 3D depth damage to the walls.
Here is an example of a generic corridor, which is the general pattern for level design in this game (interior spaces) and the textures that are repeated over and over. It would have been nice to see an odd broken tile or peeling wallpaper every now and then just to break up the order.
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