Stuff I Grew Up With/Video Game Corner: GoldenEye 007 (Nintendo 64) (1997)

This game was my introduction to James Bond. I was aware of Bond before I played it but I'd never seen any of the movies (I actually thought that the movie GoldenEye was the first Bond movie and all the films before it were episodes of a TV show) and it wasn't even until I played the game itself that I realized it was associated with Bond. I was so ignorant that I didn't realize that the 007 behind the GoldenEye title on the box was Bond's agent number and after I found out, I thought that he was called agent GoldenEye 007, in spit of them making it very clear that GoldenEye is the satellite that you're trying to stop. Anyway, enough about my childhood naivety. I first saw clips of this game on a VHS I received from Nintendo Power on the upcoming Nintendo 64. Even though it was a very brief clip and I didn't understand the significance of the title at all, it looked like a fun shooter. By the time I finally played it, I had already played another N64 shooter, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and was becoming a fan of the genre, having before only played platforming games like Mario and Donkey Kong Country. I didn't actually own GoldenEye until Christmas of 1998 but before then, I had rented it many, many times from our town's video rental store. In fact, my first attempt to play it was on a messed up demo at Wal-Mart but I didn't get very far due to that controller being completely broken and my opinion of the game wasn't very high as a result. But, once I actually played it as a rental, I fell in love with it and I was far from the only one: it became one of the most successful and beloved N64 games of all time and was the Nintendo Power game of the year after its release in August 1997.

(Some of the images I used in this review are from a website whose managers have asked me to link to their page on the game, so here it is: https://gamefabrique.com/games/goldeneye-007/.)

The game follows the movie's plot pretty closely. As James Bond, you start out performing an infiltration mission along with Alec Trevelyan, agent 006. After Trevelyan is apparently killed at the end of the mission, you go on to partake in several side-missions that deviate from the movie's main story but do still have some ties to the overall plot and, save for one exception, do involve settings and environments from the movie. Once the game gets back into the actual story of the movie, that's when you meet computer programmer Natalya Simonova, discover that the still-living Trevelyan is now the head of the Janus crime syndicate, and proceed to try to stop him from destroying London's economy with a powerful satellite called GoldenEye. But the game's story doesn't end there.

The gameplay for the one player mode is fairly straightforward for a shooter: there are twenty levels and each level requires you to wade through armed enemies and make your way to the end while completing various objectives, such as meeting with certain characters, destroying some particular objects, acquiring specific items, etc. Each level can be played on three different difficulty levels: Agent (Easy), Secret Agent (Medium), and 00 Agent (Hard). The higher difficulties not only add to the challenge by making the enemies tougher and limiting the amount of ammo and body armor (the latter of which is vital because, like many Bond games, you can't recover health) you find but they also add to the number of objectives you must complete. For instance, objectives that you didn't have to accomplish on Agent (but still could if you knew about them and wanted to) are required to complete the level on the harder difficulties. There's also, of course, a beloved multiplayer mode to the game but I'll talk about that later.

Apparently, if you complete the entire game on 00 Agent level, you unlock a special type of mode where you can customize the challenge of each level when you replay them, something I don't remember the Nintendo Power Player's Guide ever mentioning. I can't say I've ever played this mode for the simple reason that I've never beaten the game on 00 Agent. I never did it not just because it's unbelievably hard but also because I never felt that I absolutely had to do so to really beat the game. I'm not one of those gamers who feels compelled to complete a game on the hardest difficulty to really experience the ending (that is, unless it's absolutely required). When I beat GoldenEye on Agent and Secret Agent, I felt, "I beat the game and seen the ending. I don't need to prove anything." I'm that sure that "007" mode is fun to fiddle with (it sure sounds like it) and, at the time I did this revision, I did attempt to complete the game on 00 Agent just for the heck of it but, while I made it farther than I did originally, at the same time, I'm not going to break my neck trying to unlock it just for this review, which I ultimately didn't.

One thing about this game that you need to understand right off the bat is that stealth is the key to succeeding in a good chunk of the levels. Being an impulsive ten-year old when I first played the game, I would often just go running in guns blazing and while I would usually succeed on the Agent and even sometimes on the Secret Agent levels, I would get shot full of holes on the 00 Agent level. Silenced weapons are your friends because un-silenced ones attract hoards upon hoards of guards and, what's more, if one of them flips an alarm, it usually means you'll have an endless amount of reinforcements to deal with. In big open areas or levels where the guards already know you're there, it doesn't matter and you can shoot as loud as you want but most of the time, you need to be stealthy and methodical to reach the end of a level. Something else that you need to try is strafing, which allows you to quickly peak around corners without having to put yourself completely in the line of fire. Believe me, before I learned that trick, I would usually get my ass blown off whenever there were blind corners that had a lot of guards around them.

Even on the Agent difficulty, the enemies in this game can be quite challenging. Like I said, if you use loud weapons in an enclosed level, they'll come for you and will find you. If you keep moving through the level, you'll eventually lose them but the best thing you can do is be as stealthy as possible because if you get caught up in a firefight, it can really wear your health down, particularly on 00 Agent level. Unfortunately, there are a few interior levels were silenced weapons are either nowhere to be found or are quite a ways into the level, forcing you to make due with what you have. (I'll talk about how I personally deal with those types of situations when we go through the levels.) You also have to constantly watch your back because in quite a few levels that are fairly straightforward, just because you clear out all the enemies in one section doesn't mean that reinforcements won't come up behind you when you least expect it. Even more nerve-wracking is that the enemies tend to wear uniforms that help them to blend in with their surroundings. It's particularly so in the Surface 2 and Jungle levels where visibility isn't so good anyway and you have to deal with enemies that are very well camouflaged. You'll be going along all fine when suddenly you'll be hit from out of nowhere and it'll take you a long time to figure out where the shots are coming from and when you do, it's usually too late. The enemies also tend to throw grenades at you. Believe me, if you're in a firefight and you suddenly hear this soft clanking, you better run because that's the sound of a primed grenade hitting the ground. One interesting thing you can do is get right up in an enemy's face. If you do that, he can't shoot you (unless he's wielding a DD4 Dostovei) and you can proceed to put one right in his coconut.

There are some interesting things about the enemies' designs, AI, and animation features as well. First off, the face models for the enemies switch from one play-through of a level to another, including the individual enemies at specific points. Often, you see a lot of enemies with one type of face model, making it seem as if you're killing a bunch of twins, triplets, or quadruplets! Speaking of the designs of the game's characters, both friend and foe, they do seem dated by today's standards, particularly the bodies with their polygonal hands and the like, but for back then, the faces are actually quite well done and are still well designed when you see them up close, even kind of creepy with their frozen expressions. Even though the enemy AI is actually pretty good most of the time, there are instances where it can be really stupid. The best example I can think of is when I was messing around in one level and came across two guards with their backs to me. I had a grenade on me so I threw right past them and down the hall in front of them. Not only did they not react when I threw it, they didn't even bat an eye when it exploded. When I shot one of them, though, that's when his partner swung around and shot at me. Also interesting, and actually quite useful, is the fact that if there's any type of gap between yourself and an enemy, he won't see you even if he's staring right at you. It may make them look really dumb but believe me, it's useful when you've had a bunch of enemies shooting at you for most of the level and you need a moment to catch your breath.

The way the enemies die and react when they're hit is another noteworthy aspect of their conception. Their grunts, groans and yells of pain go through a noticeable cycle that you can catch onto if you play the game enough and listen very closely. Those sounds are also classic 90's sound effects that you hear in a lot of movies, TV shows, and commercials from that period. I'm not sure if this is their actual source but I know I've heard them in a lot of other stuff besides this game. Like their grunts, the sounds they make whenever they hit the floor also have a cycle that they go through. The enemies are also so well animated that they'll react different depending on where you shoot them. For instance, if you shoot one in the hand, he'll either wring it or grab hold of it and wrench backwards in pain. My favorite thing to do when you sneak up behind one, though, is to shoot him in the butt and watch how he jumps up and, sometimes, hop forward and seem to actually scratch it! Speaking of sneaking up behind them, it's sometimes fun to do that and just watch the animation on them while they stand guard. They do everything from yawning and sneezing (you don't always actually hear the latter but when you do, it's quite amusing) to what looks like swatting away a fly and even pointing their gun at it. They also tend to react differently when they see you. Most of the time, they immediately start shooting but sometimes, they'll actually point at you before shooting, giving you time to shoot them. Some will run forward and then shoot at you while others will gradually walk towards you while shooting. Finally, the enemies have a number of different death animations. These, unlike the other bits of animation, are more random and don't follow a cycle. I don't think you can even shoot someone in a specific way for each death animation. Regardless, the death animations are detailed and included everything from straight falling backwards to going limp and falling forward, slumping backwards against the wall, and death rolls. The rarest death animation is when you shoot someone and they slowly fall to the floor, curl up into a ball, roll over, and die. Speaking of rolling, enemies will occasionally do a barrel roll even before you start shooting at them and if you hit them while they're doing so, they have this funny delayed reaction where they'll finish the roll and then die. Bottom line is that you never know what kind of reactions you're going to get from the enemies when you play this game and that's part of the fun of it.

The characters that you encounter that aren't enemies can be one of three things: necessary in order to complete the level, just plain annoying, or both. When you come across a character whose trust in you is imperative to completing the mission (such as Trevelyan in the second level or Defense Minister Mishkin in the Archives level), the game gives you an incentive to take it seriously and not fool around and shot at them because usually if you do that, even if you miss them, they will pull out their own gun and start shooting at you, causing you to fail. Of course, there would be no reason why you would turn your gun on them (unless you're like how I sometimes was where I would get a little excited about the enemies I was constantly running into in one level and didn't look before I shot) but I like how the developers give you an added reason not to screw around with them. Other types of non-enemy characters can be a little on the annoying side. The most common you run into are these scientists who you're not allowed to kill even though they're working for the enemy. You're allowed a couple of casualties but killing too many of them, usually three, results in your failing the mission (it's rare but I've also had a scientist pull a gun out on me before). I never found it that hard to avoid killing them but if you get caught up in a firefight in a roomwith a lot of them, you have to be careful because they will panic and start running and you could very easily shoot one who runs through your line of fire. The same goes for the hostages you have to rescue on the Frigate level. Even when you release them, you have to be careful about killing the rest of the enemies in the room because they will start running all over the place. You run into Boris Grishenko a couple of times but, while he's an untrustworthy little rat and does and says things that make you want to blow his brains out, you often can't for various reasons I'll get into later. The worst character of all in the game, though, is Natalya, which is ironic since I love her in the movie. Except for the one level where she becomes useful, she's mostly deadweight. I'll get more into her when I talk about the levels but for now, I'll say that it's often extremely difficult to get her through a level without losing her and thus, failing the mission.

As with any good shooter, Goldeneye gives you a wide variety of weapons to choose from. Your standard gun is always your Walther PP7 (which is odd since Bond always used a Walther PPK in the movies, including GoldenEye, until Tomorrow Never Dies), which you can get in both regular and silenced modes. Most of the time, you'll want the silenced version to avoid getting into unnecessary firefights but, like I said earlier, there will be times where you're stuck with the normal version and there's nothing you can do about it. However, whatever version you get, it's still a useful and dependable weapon. Another weapon that you are sometimes automatically equipped with is the sniper rifle, which is very useful because it's always silenced and its long-range allows you to clear out enemies in a big, wide level so you can move on safely. The DD44 Dostovei is a silver handgun that is much more powerful than the Walther but is also louder and doesn't have a silenced version. Despite its power, I try to use it only when it's absolutely necessary. The KF7 Soviet is the most common automatic weapon in the game and, despite how loud it is, is very useful. Since so many enemies use this gun, you'll hardly ever be starved of ammo for it and it also has a scope that makes targeting very easy. And in spite of how loud, it is you usually don't attract much attention if you shoot in small bursts. The most hated automatic weapon in the game is the Klobb and it's not hard to see why: it's slow, inaccurate, eats through a lot of ammo, and is really loud. The only reason you would use this is if it's the only gun you have at the moment and it's also a type of weapon that you often end up with two of. The D5K Deutsche is an automatic that you come across fairly often in the later levels and, like the Walther, does have a silenced version, which is nice. It is an overall useful gun (although it and the Walther share ammo, meaning you can run out of bullets for both if you're not paying attention) but my problem is that I often get saddled with it when I need something more powerful, like the ZMG (9mm), one of my favorite automatics in the game. It's really fast and has great stopping power. You often get equipped with two of them so you can easily mow through a hoard of enemies. The Phantom is a weapon that you only come across in the Frigate level and while it is a good gun (its magazine holds 50 bullets) and you can also get it in pairs, I never find myself using it that much because it's so loud and draws a lot of attention. The US AR33 assault rifle is probably my favorite weapon in the entire game: it's fast, deadly, and has a sniper-style scope to it. The only downside is that its clip carries a mere 30 bullets and you go through them rather quick. The RC-P90, however, makes up for it by having a clip that carries 80 bullets, fires the fastest of all the guns, and I think can even shoot through doors. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the scope of the US AR33, so you have to work with what you got. You also have both a regular shotgun and an automatic shotgun. While they do a lot of damage and have some stopping power, their magazines don't carry many bullets at a time and they're the loudest weapon in the game, so they're best used only when necessary.

There are plenty of other weapons besides the typical guns. When all else fails, you have your bare hands, which can help you get out of situations where you've been captured without making a lot of noise, although it feels a little ridiculous when you're going around, karate-chopping people while avoiding their gunfire. You can also clobber someone with the butt of your sniper rifle but I've hardly ever found myself using that. There's one level where you don't have your silenced Walther but you can find some throwing knives if you know where to look. While they are useful in getting around without attracting attention, they're awkward to aim correctly and tend to miss enemies. You also have to actually pick them back up after you've thrown them. There's a fair share of explosive weapons as well. You have three types of mines: remote mines (which are the best), timed mines (which are my least favorite), and proximity mines (which are okay). I usually either use the remote ones when I need to or just don't use them at all. There are also your standard grenades but I don't use them much because they're not very reliable. It's hard to get them to land where they'll do much damage and they can bounce back and explode in your face. Grenade launchers make it much easier to aim your grenades and they explode on contact when shot from the launcher. Rocket launchers are best used at very long ranges because their power is so immense but they are useful for clearing out a lot of enemies in big open areas (but when the enemies have them, you better act fast). In one of the two bonus stages that you can unlock by beating the game on the more challenging difficulty levels, you come across the laser gun from the movie Moonraker. You really could have used it in the other levels because it doesn't have to be reloaded and it does a lot of damage. You also have a watch laser in one level that can be used as a weapon if the need arises but it's best to save it for the final objective in that particular level. In a couple of levels, you can take control of a big tank in order to blast away enemies with missiles or simply run over them (the enemies tend to scream when you do so and you also hear nicely disgusting squishy noises). And finally, there's the golden gun, which you come across in the game's real actual level and kills in one shot. The downside, though, is you have to reload after every single shot.

There are also some weapons that you can get only as cheats. The Cougar Magnum is the best one. It has great stopping power and can shoot right through doors. You can even kill two enemies in a row if they're lined up directly with each other (that gun's bullets can go right through two enemies and through the wall behind them; imagine what a painful way to go that has to be!) There are two unlockable variations of the PP7 as well: the silver one, which is like the magnum except that its rate of fire is much faster, and the gold one, which, like the golden gun, can kill an enemy in one hit. There's an unlockable alternative to the throwing knife: the hunting knife. You have to actually get right in an enemy's face to use it but it does more damage and makes a cool squishy, stabbing sound. The most pointless unlockable weapon is a tazer. It looks kind of cool but it's really weak and difficult to aim, so it's basically just for shits and giggles.

Speaking of cheat codes, GoldenEye was one of the first games I can remember, along with Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, that had a plethora of really fun ones that you could unlock. There were several ways to unlock them. The official way was to beat each level on a certain difficulty setting in a certain amount of time, which Nintendo Power revealed the specifics of in certain issues of the magazine as well as in their player's guide for the game. I tried to unlock some of the more fun cheats, particularly the Invisibility one that you can receive on the Facility level, but they were next to impossible to unlock (to all of those who've ever managed to do that, I tip my hat to you; you're much better gamers than I could ever hope to be). In a much, much later issue of the magazine, it was revealed that there were simpler ways to unlock cheats: pushing a certain combination of buttons either on the cheat menu, the mission select screen, or during the actual gameplay. However, those codes never worked for me, mainly because I've never been good at entering those types of cheats. I almost always either push the wrong button or move the control stick or pad in the wrong direction. Regardless, I did, get to experience those cheats: I went out and bought a Game Shark. Yes, I bought an emulator but it's not like I used the cheats to complete the game (I had already done so numerous times by the time I finally got the Game Shark). I just wanted to play around with them and doing so was fun, I must say. Besides, you can't use cheats to beat the higher difficulties because the game simply won't allow it, which is fair enough, I guess.

The cheats are the usual ones you get in these kinds of games (invincibility, all weapons, infinite ammo, and being able to use two of certain weapons, which you couldn't do otherwise) but there are also some really interesting, unique ones as well. The one that I get the biggest kick out of is that Invisibility one. The enemies can't see you and when you fire your weapon, they run around in confusion since they're unable to find you, which is really funny to watch. Paintball Mode is a cheat that I honestly don't see the point of. As you can guess, it turns your bullets into paintballs that not only hurt and kill enemies but can also leave paint splotches on the walls. I don't get it. DK Mode, which is a very well-known type of cheat that pops up in other games, makes the characters' heads gigantic and gives them enormous arms like Donkey Kong to boot. It's funny the first time you use it but then it becomes ho-hum because it does nothing else. Turbo Mode gives you the ability to move very fast. Some people find it more irritating than fun and, like DK Mode, I find that its charm wears off very quickly. Tiny Bond shrinks you down to a very small size to where the enemies tower over you. Again, its novelty wears off after you've used it a few times. Fast Animation makes all of the characters run really fast. I don't think I've ever tried it myself (if I did, it didn't leave an impression) but I hear the results are pretty funny. And as you can guess, Slow Animation does the exact opposite (in both of these codes, your own speed stays the same). Enemy Rockets is a code meant to bring an extra challenge to your gaming: it gives all the enemies in the game rocket launchers! I think I only tried that once and, after getting blown to smithereens several times in a row, decided, "To heck with this!" Try playing the higher difficulties with that code on! Finally, there was a code that allowed you to pass through walls (I think it was called God Mode) and while it was cool at first, the game really started to glitch up and I couldn't figure out where I was, where I was supposed to go, or how I could get out of the weird limbo that I had gotten myself into, so I had to reset. Unless you're a good enough gamer who can unlock the codes by yourself, if you can track down a Game Shark for the Nintendo 64, I'd say checking out those codes (as well as its codes for all the other games).

The game has a really good soundtrack to it as well. The opening animation, which is a recreation of the gun barrel from the films, has a pretty good rendition of the classic Monty Norman James Bond theme, even if it doesn't sound exactly how it does in the movies (then again, it sounded very different in the movie GoldenEye too). Besides the covers of the classic Bond motifs, you have a lot of other good music too. I like the kind of synthesizer, metallic sound that a lot of the music during the actual gameplay has to it, which is very similar to the sound of the music in the actual movie . I know some may feel that it's dated and very 90's but as I've said before, I'm a child of the 90's so I love it. What's really cool is that each level has its own distinct theme that helps to set the mood for each one, whether it be a standard level, a stealth level, or just a very tense level. Some of my favorite level themes are the Facility, which has this nice low-key, synthesizer beat to it that sometimes sounds like a heartbeat; both Surface levels, with the first having a pretty, subtle, "Arctic" chime to it, while the second has a very creepy, menacing sound to it, with these distant metallic clangs and what sounds like Gregorian chanting; the first Bunker level, which has another low-key beat to it like the Facility, only a bit more menacing; the Frigate, which just sounds cool all-around; the Train, which has a constant, tense rhythm throughout; the Control level, which has an interesting, almost business-like sound (along with the Caverns level, it actually has elevator music playing inside said elevators at the beginning); and the Caverns level, which goes back and forth between sounding pretty and rather tense, especially since it's a very difficult level. While there are many level themes I'm not crazy about, the only bit of music in the game that I can honestly say I'm really not sure about is the music that plays over the ending credits when you beat the game, which is a crazy remix of the Bond theme that goes backwards and forwards and gets really repetitive in its looping. Of course, it's only during the ending credits, so it's not a huge deal, but it just sounds clunky and scrambled to me.

Now let's get on to the actual levels of the game, talk about how difficult each one is and so on. Before I do, I feel I have to comment that the levels are very well designed, much more so than the actual characters, and, if you've seen the movie, you will note that they are quite true to the source material, which is because the development team was allowed to visit the sets at the movie's studio to collect photographs and blueprints in order to design the levels. But, as with most game adaptations, they had to expand on the levels to make the game much longer, resulting in you're playing in many environments and participate in situations that either were in the movie but didn't involve Bond or are completely original. Also, the levels tend to have a realistic and non-linear feel to them, with rooms that have no importance to completing the mission and often with many paths you can take, some of which you're not required to explore on the easy difficulty setting but must in the harder ones. But enough flattery towards the design: let's talk about the levels. The game is divided up into sections by the mission being represented and each mission has a number of levels to it (the first three levels in the game are all part of Mission 1, and so on).

Dam: This level is meant to be the lead up to Bond bungee-jumping off the dam at the beginning of the movie. As with any first level in a game, it's a good place to get yourself familiar with the controls, weapon types, how to deal with enemies, etc. If you're playing on Agent level, all you have to worry about is getting through the enemies (mostly normal guards, although there is one special officer wearing a tan uniform that can take a little more punishment and is equipped with a DD4 Dostovei) and jumping off the dam; if you're playing on the harder difficulties, you have a little more work to do. You have to neutralize all the alarms by shooting each one of them until they blow up (this is a level where it doesn't matter if one is tripped or not, you just have to destroy them), install a covert modem on one computer panel (said modem, by the way, is hardly covert since it's about as big as a brick), and, hardest of all, go through a series of tunnels below the dam, find a specific mainframe, and intercept the data backup. The latter part of the last objective is easy but actually getting to the mainframe is difficult because you have to fight your way through a lot of guards in the tunnels. The best way to do it is to start at the furthermost guard tower on the dam and go down into the tunnels from there. That way, you won't have to worry about guards coming up behind you and shooting you in the back. Still, it's really difficult on the 00 Agent difficulty where you're required to this (body armor is very, very scarce on that difficulty and I honestly don't think there's any to be found here).

Facility: One of my favorite levels in the entire game, this is one where you must exercise stealth as much as possible. Except for one, you have the same objectives on all the difficulty levels. You have to gain access to the laboratory area (which requires you to just proceed through the level as you usually would), minimize scientist casualties (an objective that you see in every level where there are scientists but is not particularly hard to pull off here), rendezvous with 006, which is simple enough, and destroy all the tanks in the bottling room with your remote mines. When it comes to the last objective, you can destroy the tanks as soon as you're finished setting the mines. You don't have to watch 006 surrender to and apparently be killed by General Ourumov. The only added objective in the harder difficulties is you have to meet up with an undercover agent who's disguised as a scientist who will give you a door decoder that you need to open the door to the bottling room (in the easier difficulties, you already have it). Problem is that, while the guy is recognizable, he's in a different room on each playthrough so you have to look for him while also battling enemies and making sure not to accidentally shoot him or any of the other scientists. You also have to be careful not to shoot the gas tanks in any of the labs or you'll cause a slow gas leak that will eventually kill you. And in case you're wondering, even though you start out in the restroom, you can't lower down and knock out the soldier in the stall like in the film (you do get to do that in the Wii remake of the game, though).

Runway: This is the shortest level in the game by far and as a result, I don't replay it that often. On Agent level, all you have to do is get the plane ignition key, get to the plane, and escape. In the harder difficulties, you also have to destroy three heavy gun emplacements and a missile battery. You can use some mines to do so but the better solution is get into the tank parked alongside the facility and use its turret to blow them up (the tank also serves as protection from the hoard of enemies you have to deal with). You have to be careful not to destroy the plane or let the enemies shoot the plane too much because it will eventually blow up, leaving you stranded and failing the mission. The biggest challenge, though, is how once you hit the runway, the enemies come out of the woodwork with guns blazing and you have to deal with them as well as the machine guns that you have to destroy on the harder difficulties. They're endless, so it's best to ignore them and focus on the tasks at hand, although once you've destroyed the guns and the missile battery, you'd better head for that plane as quickly as you can because by this point, you'll have a virtual army on your tail (I got killed at that point quite a few times on 00 Agent).

Surface: This is one of several levels that takes place at Severnaya, which, I might add, Bond never visited in the film. This one isn't too hard but it is a big, wide open area and it's easy to get lost and forget where each cabin is. You come equipped with a sniper rifle to clear out enemies from afar, which is very helpful, although you have to be careful of enemies who also have sniper rifles and will pick you off if you stand still for too long. In addition, some of the cabins have security camera on the outside and you'll have to deal with a never ending onslaught of enemies if an alarm is raised (although, the last time I played it on 00 Agent, I foun myself constantly running from enemies even though I didn't raise an alarm). Otherwise, like I said, this level isn't too difficult. On Agent level, all you have to do is go inside the satellite building and turn off a computer in a room upstairs (don't destroy it or you'll raise an alarm), and enter the base through a ventilation tower near the dish (going to the actual entrance to the bunker in front of the helipad will raise an alarm). On the harder difficulties, you have to get a key from a general in an obscure cabin, use it to open a locked cabin near the beginning of the level to get a safe key, and finally find said safe in another obscure cabin in a far off corner of the level, open the safe, and take the building plans that are inside. Don't bother going to the cabin across from the one with the safe because it's a lot more trouble than it's worth (there are toys in there that actually blow up when you shoot them!)

Bunker: Another stealth mission like the Facility, only this one is a bit trickier. First off, the very door you start off in front of has two guards behind it, one of whom will try to set off the alarm once you start shooting, sending in a never-ending team of heavily-armored special forces who are also very good shots. You can try to blow up the nearby computer by shooting it but for me, that takes too long, so I just target the one who goes for the alarm first before dealing with the other. Second, there are a lot of security cameras in this level and the same thing will happen if one spots you. In the higher difficulty levels, it's required that you destroy all the security cameras but it's recommended that you do so even on Agent level to make it easier for yourself. Actually destroying them is no big deal: just point right at the lens and shoot. On 00 Agent, in addition to copying the Goldeneye key and photographing the main video screen near the exit, you're required to have Boris Grishenko lead you to the mainframe terminal (you'd better have killed all the guards in that room before doing so) so you can download some information. Thing is, when Boris turns on the mainframe, he'll activate the alarm, so it's best to save that objective for last and then run for the exit, wading through the special forces. Also, you have to keep an eye on Boris when you're following him to the room because, being the little snake that he is, he'll try to escape when you least expect it. This is the only time where you can pay him back for being such a weasel by shooting him after he's turned on the mainframe (he tries to run out ahead of you, which is when I usually blow him away).

Silo: This is a completely unique stage that has nothing to do with the movie. It's fairly straightforward, with no really important alternate routes: you just fight your way to the top of the silo while completing your objectives and escape. On Agent, it's pretty simple but you'll get killed a lot on the higher difficulties, especially 00 Agent, because of the sheer amount of guards in this level. Also, Secret Agent and 00 Agent force you to finish the level within a time limit, so you can't waste too much time shooting up guards. On Agent, all you have to do is photograph the Goldeneye satellite that you find near the end of the level, as well as making sure not to kill too many of the scientists. Additional objectives on the harder difficulties include forcing one of the scientists to give you a DAT tape (just approaching the scientists makes them put up their hands and drop whatever they're holding), pick up the green circuit boards that you find in each of the rooms with the scientists, and, finally, place plastic explosives in the fuel sections of the various labs (don't shoot the explosives once you planted them or you'll blow the whole silo up along with yourself). You also have to make sure to take the keycards the scientists drop to open the locked doors in order to advance further, which can be easy to forget since you have so much other stuff to do as well as fend off the soldiers who are trying to shoot you up and if one of the scientists holding a key runs off before you can make him drop it, you're screwed. The last leg of the level is particularly horrible on the higher difficulties because you're confronted by General Ourumov and some more guards. After killing the guards, you have to keep shooting Ourumov, who is armed with a DD4 Dostovei that can very easily sap away what little life you probably have left at this point (there's only one bit of body armor to be found on 00 Agent), until he runs away. By now, the countdown to the place blowing up is really getting low, so you have to get to the exit as fast as you can, while avoiding getting killed by some more guards that you run into in the final hallways.

Frigate: Another favorite mission of mine, this is based on a scene from the movie where the Tiger helicopter is stolen during a demonstration on a ship much like this. However, the game designers upped the ante by having the ship crawling with guards, some of whom are holding members of the crew hostage. Saving the hostages is required in all of the difficulties (as is planting a Tracking Bug on the helicopter at the back of the ship, which is easy enough) but on 00 Agent, you're only allowed to lose one of them. It's really tricky to save some of the hostages from being executed because if you don't enter the room from the right direction, it's hard to get a good shot at the guard holding one at gunpoint and if you wait too long, he'll kill the hostage. Even when you release a hostage, you have to be careful because they tend to start running around wildly and can run right into your line of fire, made even worse by the fact that there's usually more than one guard in the rooms with the hostages, as well as control panels that'll blow up if they're shot enough times. In the higher difficulties, you also have to disarm two bombs, one on the bridge and another in the engine room. The engine room one is fairly simple to disarm but the one on the bridge is made complicated by the fact that there are three guards and a hostage in the room. You have to open the left door into the room, quickly kill the guard who has the hostage, and then make short work of the other two. A stray bullet could, obviously, set off the bomb, so you have to be doubly careful when dispatching the other enemies. Besides the objectives, there are a lot of rooms to search, with plenty of guards waiting for you (few of the rooms below deck are really necessary to complete the mission but you have to navigate them to find the engine room).

Surface 2: While I enjoy the music here, like I said, I can't say I like the level itself. The layout is the same as it was the first time but it's much more challenging here because the place is now crawling with a Russian Special Forces team. You're almost constantly getting ambushed and chased by enemies who will find you no matter where you go and will not stop chasing you until you are shot full of holes. In addition, there are many more surveillance cameras that will send even more guards after you (destroying them is essential to completing the mission on 00 Agent) and the dusk setting greatly limits your visibility and makes it really hard to see what's up ahead. Like before, your main objective on every difficulty is to sabotage the link between the Communications Center but here, you have to actually blow up the monitor in the comm room rather than simply turning it off (in fact, fiddling with it gets you spotted and raises an alarm, while it was the other way around before). On top of that, the comm room is locked this time and you have to find the officer in a nearby shack who has the key. And finally, on Secret and 00 Agent, you also have to place a timed mine on the helicopter at the entrance to the bunker before entering the bunker, usually with a bunch of armed soldiers on your tail. Really challenging level, especially on the higher difficulties.

Bunker 2: Like the second Surface level, the second Bunker level is much more challenging (I'd say it might even be a little more difficult than the previous level). You start out in a cell where you first meet Natalya. A required objective on all difficulty levels is to escape with her but you better not let her out of her cell until you've completed all of your other objectives and cleared out the guards. Believe me, she can be a real nuisance because she's very slow, often gets caught in the crossfire, and will walk right in your line of fire when you least expect it. And even if you save letting her out of her cell for last, this level is still not easy. For one, the base has apparently undergone a lot of construction in the four years since Bond's first visit, with the layout now being very different and more complex. There's also security cameras galore (like before, destroying them is required on the higher difficulties and if they spot you, you'll have to deal with a really strong special forces team), automatic gun turrets in some hallways (you'll see more of them in later levels) that will cut you down before you know what happened, and, except for some throwing knives you can find after getting out of your cell (which is easy), you have no silenced weapons until you find two keys for a sace in a nearby room that contains your silenced Walther. As far as objectives go, on Agent you merely have to get a CCTV tape from a guard but on the higher difficulties, you also have to recover is a list from one guard on higher difficulties and the GoldenEye operations manual from the safe that requires two keys to open. If a lot of guards get after you (and, trust me, they will find you), your best bet is to lure them into the halls and pick them off one by one from through the window of a nearby room's door or lure them back to the cells, get inside yours (except for Klobbs, no weapon can shoot through the bars), and pick them off. You have to be careful with how often you shoot because you can very easily bring the whole base on you and get shoot to pieces.

Statue: I absolutely despise this level, especially on the higher difficulties. and the main reason is that I almost always get lost. There are so many obscure paths and it's so dark that I have a hard time finding my way around, which isn't helped by how there are enemies everywhere and that all of your objectives must be completed on every difficulty. I used to get turned around so easily that I often couldn't find the spot where you meet with Valentin Zukovsky (I always ended up at the statue of Lenin where you meet with Janus but you can't do that until you meet with Valentin) but after playing the level a bunch of times, I finally figured out where everything was, although I still had to fend off hoards of guards the whole way, avoiding taking hits as much as I could for what lay ahead. When you meet with Janus, you must put your weapon away and not walk toward him or he'll abruptly end the meeting, causing you to fail. After the meeting ends, Janus (who has now been revealed to be Trevelyan) will order his men to kill you and after that, you'll continuously run into his heavily armored, shotgun-toting special forces as you try to find your way back back to the park gates to save Natalya from the booby-trapped helicopter. While there is some body armor in a spot right before the statue on every difficulty level and taking one of the guards' powerful shotguns does make it easier to break through their strong body armor, it's still hard to make it out alive, especially since the guards are endless and you only have three minutes to save Natalya. And after you save her, you still walk a few feet back into the park to find the helicopter's flight recorder. While actually finding it isn't hard since it's big and orange, avoiding the special Janus guards that are still gunning for you and meeting back up with Natalya at the park gates is, particularly since, if you're like me, you're running low on health and body armor at this point.

Archives: This is another level I enjoy replaying. Like Bunker 2, it begins with you being held captive, this time in an interrogation room. Escaping it is your first priority and you have several ways to do so. You can go for your PP7 and quickly shoot the two guards that are in the room with you but I usually can't get the first shot off before they do and besides, the noise will attract unwanted attention. The best method is to use your hands to take out the two guards (which is easier than it may sound). If you wait for the dialogue between Bond and the guards to finish, another guard will enter the room and announce that General Ourumov has ordered you to be executed and you have to react fast before they start shooting. After you get out of the interrogation room, you have to find Natalya, get back the flight recorder (only on the harder difficulties, which I don't get since you had to recover it on the previous level even on Agent), and escape. Finding the room where Natalya is being held is easy but rescuing her is tricky because the guards get right behind her while they shoot at you and, of course, she starts running around and can walk right into your line of fire. If you get caught in a firefight after you've rescued her, she'll usually run to the attic and hide. I typically just leave her there until I've cleared out all the enemies and done everything else I need to do before going back and getting her. Meeting with Mishkin in the basement to get the flight recorder can be tricky because guards can come in on you and the room is full of TNT (as is the whole level actually, making it difficult to find suitable cover to duck behind), so you have to be careful where you, as well as they, shoot. Like Bunker 2, you have to be careful about how loud and frequently you shoot to avoid getting swarmed, especially since there are a number of tougher enemies holding DD4 Dostoveis nearby. Fortunately, there's a secret passage in the upstairs corridors that makes it easy to get the drop on some of your enemies. Finally, you have make sure that Natalya is right behind you when you jump out of a window to escape or you'll fail the mission.

Streets: The other level that involves you taking control of a tank, this is based on the tank chase from the movie (although this isn't remotely as exciting as that was). I don't play this one much because, again, I don't find it that exciting or entertaining and, as a result, I often forget what to do when I actually do play it. First off, while it's only required on the higher difficulty levels, it's recommended that you always talk with Valentin in his tucked away little corner near the tank because it resets the timer and gives you another six minutes to complete the mission. After that, you have a choice between either driving the tank or going it on foot to reach the end of the level, with both strategies having their own advantages and disadvantages. While the tank allows you to run over enemies and blow them up with the turret, you're still a pretty big target, it becomes a bit harder to target enemies with your other weapons, you have to blow up sections of the road covered in mines as well as any cars in your path because if you just drive over them, the ensuing explosion will hurt you, and it's very hard to round corners and avoid crushing the panicked civilians, which is a mission objective (you also get penalized for any civilians that get killed by your enemies and if ten die, you fail). Going on foot allows you to more easily shot enemies ahead of you and you can just walk across the mines without risking getting blown up but you're unable to just drive through big masses of enemies and stopping to engage in firefights wastes time, which you have very little of. Whichever method you choose, you have your work out cut out for you because, in addition to what I've already described, there are only two body armor vests to be found (one at the beginning and another near the end) and a number of the enemies are wielding grenade and rocket launchers, the latter of which in particular can very easily kill you no matter how much health and armor you have, especially if you're in the tank. The only way I eventually did beat this on 00 Agent was pure luck: driving the tank up to a blockade of rocket launcher guards near the end, getting out and shooting them, going the rest of the way on foot, grabbing the body armor on the corner, and running straight for the exit, largely ignoring the hits I was taking since I was running out of time. I don't recommend trying that because, again, I just got really lucky.

Depot: This is a short but very difficult level, especially on 00 Agent, because it has everything that gives you fits: endless enemies coming out of the woodwork, lots of twists and turns that make it easy to get lost, empty warehouses that waste your time and allow enemies to corner you, and poor visibility due to the darkness. On Agent and Secret Agent, there's plenty of body armor to be found (more so than any other level) but on 00 Agent, you have to suck it up and power on through. On Agent, you're only problem is finding Trevelyan's escape train (which isn't that difficult) but, as usual, you have more stuff to worry about on the harder difficulties. You have to destroy an illegal arms cache in one warehouse by blowing up a bunch of brown crates (best to take all the available weapons before doing so, save for the KF7 Soviets, which have no ammo nearby), destroy the computer network and find a safe key in another warehouse (which has a drone gun and a bunch of guards), and use the safe key to open a safe in a building near the train and take what's inside. Trust me, you'll be screaming at the TV long before you finally complete this mission because the minute you start shooting, you'll have guards coming out of nowhere, some in places where they originally weren't forcing you to engage in firefight after firefight while, at the same time, trying to get inside these warehouses that are themselves full of guards. And once, you're done inside the warehouses, you'll have a lot of enemies waiting for you outside that you have to fend off before going on, with the doors often closing in your face when you're trying to shoot or when you try to reload in front of them (the B button opens doors as well as reloads your gun). That's why you'd better learn the layout of this place very quickly to avoid getting stuck in any of the number of warehouses that have nothing in them save for armor on Agent and Secret Agent.

Train: This level is short and, unlike the previous one, very straightforward but that sure doesn't make it easy, especially on 00 Agent. In the first couple of cars, you're forced to use TNT crates as cover while battling the heavily armed guards head on, so you're in danger's way almost the whole time. There are some metal crates that you can hide behind as long as you need to in the second car but that's it. The enemies on this train happen to be armed with some of the most damaging weapons in the game, the D5K Deutsche and the ZMG (9mm), there are some special officers in black suits who can take an awful lot of punishment, and there's no body armor on any of the difficulty levels, so you're going to get killed a lot. What's more, in the later passenger cars you'll come across some lock doors with enemies inside them that will only come out once you walk past, so you really have to keep your guard up while shooting everyone in front of you. Your objectives are to destroy the brake units you find in each car to make the train stop, rescue Natalya by killing Ourumov (which can be tricky), and then proceed to escape to safety by using your watch laser to open up the floor panel. The higher difficulties require you to let Natalya discover the location of Trevelyan's secret base as well break Boris' password but, trust me, even on the Agent difficulty she usually does that anyway because it takes you a little bit of time to open up the floor panel. It's recommended that, as difficult as it is, you try to get a shot at Xenia Onatopp, who's standing behind Ourumov along with Trevelyan, after you kill the general because it'll give you more time to do what you have to. Once you and Natalya are off the train, you better run like heck to the front to get away from the explosion, as well as watch out for the guards waiting for you at the rear.

Jungle: The difficulty here is mainly due to, once again, poor visibility, with the steamy jungle mist limiting how far you can see into the distance. Fortunately, though, most of the weapons the enemies drop are AR33s , whose telescopic sights you can use to zoom in and pick off any enemies you can make out in the distance. Natalya accompanies you once again and while you still have to watch her back, she can actually save you in this level. You'd be surprised how quickly she gets used to her new handgun and fires on enemies that you probably didn't even know were there. Still, this level is tricky. There are seven drone guns that you must destroy on every difficulty level before entering the base but, fortunately, they have a very short range so you are able to pick them off from a safe distance or even get behind them. You also have to deal with Xenia Onatopp (who figured very little in this game despite her fairly sized role in the movie) but I've never found it to be that hard. All you have to do is shoot at her diagonally as she attempts to cross the bridge and even Natalya will fire on her if she's close by, although you have to be careful of the grenade launcher she's wielding. If things don't go down that well, you can retreat back into the jungle and pick up some nearby body armor to increase your chances of killing Onatopp. On Secret and 00 Agent, you have to destroy this ammo dump at the entrance to the base that also has two drone guns guarding it but taking both them out is fairly easy. Finally, when all is said and done, you main objective here is to escort Natalya into the base. This only really gets tricky near the end because the elevator entrance will spawn endless enemies until you make your way up to it. You don't have to worry about Natalya because they'll be concentrating on you but keeping yourself alive can be tricky and Natalya, as usual, will sometimes walk into the line of fire like an idiot.

Control: For my money, this is the hardest level in the game. Some may say that the Caverns and the Cradle, as well as the first bonus level, Aztec, are the hardest but this is the one I've always had the most trouble with. The hardest part of it by far is the section where you have to protect Natalya in the computer room while she tries to disable the Goldeneye satellite. (In the lead up to this, do not shoot Boris, as much as you may want to, because Natalya will refuse to help you, even though Boris helped frame her for a crime she didn't commit.) Even standing in the spot where you can get a clear look at the entire room, it's still challenging to kill all the guards that come out of the woodwork up top and run down the twisting staircases towards you. Plus, when you least expect it, a guard will smash through either the left or right section of glass down below (it's random each time) and immediately target Natalya, so you have to react very fast. Even if she does manage to disable the satellite, you have to keep an eye on her until she runs back to the surface (she got killed one time after the objective was completed and I wanted to throw my N64 out the window) and it doesn't get any easier after this, either. The enemies will be endless throughout the rest of the level and you also have to use your remote mines to blow up six armored mainframes, two of which are in a room with sentry guns and a lot of guards. You also have to deal with Trevelyan, who will taunt and shoot at you from his elevator until you get close enough to where he'll make his escape. By the way, don't get too close to the elevator you're meant to escape in until you've completed all your objectives. One time, I hadn't blown up the mainframes yet and some guards shot at me while I was standing in front of the elevator and pushed me into it, causing the game to end the mission and failing me because I didn't complete all my objectives! To say that I was livid is an understatement.

Caverns: Even though I personally think Control is worse, this level is still really, really hard. All the enemies you run into in this level are Janus' special forces that are armored up the yin-yang and on the higher difficulties where ammo is quite scarce, you'd better get as many head-shots as you can. That's not so hard when you're sneaking through the corridors and coming across guards one by one but when you get ambushed by a bunch of them in one tight room or hallway, it's easy to lose all your ammo in your desperation to kill them. One of your mission objectives on the higher difficulty levels involves you destroying the computers that control the inlet pumps and the best way to do that on 00 Agent is to use your remote mines (after shooing away the scientists) so you don't waste ammo. There are also some outlet pump computers that you have to destroy later on and there's a secret passage you can use to do so but there's a drone gun nearby as well, so you have to be careful. The hardest objective to accomplish is using this radio in one room in order to contact Jack Wade, which is necessary to complete it on 00 Agent. There are flammable barrels all around the radio and if you don't lure the guards out of the room to kill them, they'll end up blowing both themselves and the radio up. Even when I try to do that on Agent level, I still often end up screwing up. You also have to destroy the master control console that's in the same room, so you better deal with the radio first. And the length of the level, the numerous twists and turns, the winding and multilayered pathways, and the darkness only add even further to the difficulty.

Cradle: There are only two objectives on this level: destroy the antenna control console and kill Trevelyan but, since this is the last official level of the game, that doesn't mean it's easy. You often have to deal with Trevelyan or his troops firing on you constantly and it's really hard to get a shot on Trevelyan as he's shooting at you. Destroying the control console is difficult because you only have a limited amount of time to get there, dealing with enemies all the way, there are two sentry guns inside its shed, and even after you take care of them, troops will continue to pour in as you try to destroy the console, so it's best to shut the door behind you and use the machinery behind the console as cover. After that, you have to chase after Trevelyan and shoot at him until he challenges you to finish the job. The best way to get him to say that is to shoot him in the head enough times but he runs so fast and gets so far ahead of you so quickly that it's difficult to do so. He also sometimes leaves behind grenades as you chase him, forcing you to keep your eyes peeled, and there are key points where he stops and fires at you but they're easy to memorize. And all the while, you have to deal with his troops. When he makes that final challenge, you have to follow him through the open duct in the floor of the maintenance shed containing the control console and when you fall down, you have to be sure to land on the platform and quickly spin around and shoot him before he can shoot you. That can be very tricky but there was one time where I went down there and Trevelyan was nowhere to be found. I guess he fell off before I got there! You shouldn't entirely rely on freak glitches like that to deal with him, though. Be ready to turn and shoot whenever you fall down there.

Aztec: This is one of the two bonus levels that you activate by beating the entire game on the harder difficulty levels and anybody who's seen the Bond movie Moonraker will recognize this level as being based on Hugo Drax's hidden jungle base. Just about everyone who's ever played this game says that this is the hardest level in the game and while I still think Control is the hardest, I can't deny how difficult and downright unfair this level is. It only has two objectives but the sheer amount of enemies makes it hard to accomplish both of them without being killed. The level's layout can be confusing to memorize, the enemies are all sporting either AR33's or Moonraker lasers, there are sentry guns everywhere (the ones on the ceiling of the shuttle hangar are particularly annoying), you have to deal with Jaws, who takes an ungodly amount of ammo to put down, in order to get the keycard you need to complete one of the objectives, and even after you kill him, an endless number of enemies will pour into the complex until you complete the mission. The level actually reenacts that scene from Moonraker where Bond ends up in the shuttle exhaust bay and, just like in the film, you're forced to take cover in the air vents (which themselves have guards and sentry guns in them) in order to avoid getting fried. After you get the key from Jaws, you have to go up to a console overlooking the space shuttle and open the exhaust bay doors to get back to the launch guidance center and once you've done that and loaded the DAT into the mainframe in the shuttle hangar, you have to open the exhaust bay doors again to launch the shuttle and complete the mission. This running back and forth in a level like this that's crawling with tough enemies is what will get you killed.

Egyptian: The real final level of the game, this one combines elements from the movies Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. There are endless enemies here too but their only usefulness is to give you gobs of extra ammo and weapons; otherwise, it's best to just ignore them. First, you have to get the Golden Gun from inside Scaramanga's shrine and it's protected by a deadly puzzle: you have to walk on a certain path of floor tiles to get the gun and if you step on the wrong one, four sentry guns will pop up and blow you away. After you get the Golden Gun, it's time to deal with Baron Samedi, the voodoo priest Bond dealt with briefly in Live and Let Die (I was disappointed when I saw the movie because this level built Samedi up to be a bad-ass villain but in the movie, he's a wimp who gets killed very easily). You have to kill him three times in three different spots in the level and he can take a lot of abuse from regular guns so it's best to use the Golden Gun since that weapon gives you one-hit kills. Samedi is constantly laughing throughout the level and after you kill him the second time, the sun will suddenly be blocked out by dark clouds, making it seem like he really is a powerful voodoo priest, as well as making things a bit tougher when you're trying to navigate your way through the level to find him. Even after you put Samedi down for the third time, his laughing will continue and make you wonder if he really is gone, which is rather creepy, I must say.

Now let's briefly talk about multiplayer mode. I almost never mention this in my game reviews because. being an only child and having not that many friends who play with me now (I did when I was younger, though), I rarely ever deal with multiplayer in games. However, I will talk about it if my childhood friends and I did play it a lot when we were younger and this game is one of those instances. Here, you have quite a few characters to choose from, such as James Bond, Natalya, Trevelyan, Xenia Onatopp, General Ourumov, Boris Grishenko, Minister Mishkin, many different types of guards and troops, and two unlockable characters after you beat the entire game on Agent level: Jaws and Baron Samedi. I read that there was also a proposed system where you could play as all the other Bonds (Sean Connery, Roger Moore, etc.) but it was canceled before the game was released, which is a shame because that would have been interesting There are different modes of play to multiplayer; there's Normal, which my friends and I usually played, where all you have to do is score the most victories in an allotted time limit; You Only Live Twice, where you have only two lives and the last man standing wins; The Living Daylights, where you have to grab a flag and hold onto it longer than the other players (you can't hold a weapon while holding a flag, though); The Man With The Golden Gun, where there's a Golden Gun placed in the arena and you have to take it from each other; License To Kill, where one hit kills you; and Team Battles, which makes use of the up to four players the N64 could support. You can also set the length of the match, the level you play in (some of which are only available once you complete them on one-player mode), and your weapons for each match. I can vividly remember my friends and I always having a lot of fun with this whenever we did play it. As usual, there were some characters and levels we each preferred, with the Facility always being my personal favorite of the latter because I loved hiding in the bathroom stalls and ambushing my friends (that didn't work when I played as Jaws, though, because they could see the top of his head behind the door). They only thing that kind of sucks is that you can look at your friends' POV screens and see where they are and vice versa, which often spoiled the suspense and surprise. Still, the multiplayer was very fun and it's not hard to see why it became such a beloved part of the game for a lot of people as well as why future Bond games nearly always had one of their own.

As you can guess from how long this review is, I have very fond memories of GoldenEye. It was one of my favorite Nintendo 64 games back in the day, it's what introduced me to James Bond, and it's one of the few games whose multiplayer mode my friends and I often played and had a lot of fun battling each other in. I had to play it again in order to do this review because I hadn't played it in a long time and even though the graphics are, admitedly, really dated by today's standards, it's still an entertaining and challenging, if sometimes very frustrating, shooter game, with lots of memorable and well-designed levels, challenging enemies, tricky objectives, cool weapons and gadgets to play with, well-done music, and, above all else, the spirit of the movie and Bond in general. It's simply one of the best of its kind and a must-play for fans of the genre, of Bond, be it all-around or in video games, or both.