| GoldenEye 007 | |
|---|---|
American box art |
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| Developer(s) | Rare |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Designer(s) | Martin Hollis David Doak Duncan Botwood |
| Programmer(s) | Steve Ellis |
| Artist(s) | Karl Hilton Adrian Smith B Jones |
| Writer(s) | David Doak |
| Composer(s) | Graeme Norgate Grant Kirkhope Robin Beanland |
| Series | James Bond |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 64 |
| Release date(s) | 25 August 1997 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter, stealth |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | |
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. It was published by Nintendo and was exclusively released for the Nintendo 64 video game console in August 1997. The game features a single player campaign in which players assume the role of British Secret Intelligence Service agent James Bond as he fights to prevent a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon to cause a global financial meltdown, and a split-screen multiplayer mode for up to four players.
GoldenEye 007 was developed over two and a half years by an inexperienced development team and was originally intended to be an on-rails shooter inspired by Sega's Virtua Cop, before being redesigned as a free-roaming shooter. As one of the first first-person shooters for a home console, GoldenEye 007 established a new archetype and introduced several innovations to the genre, including a zoomable sniper rifle, stealth elements, and a multiplayer deathmatch mode on a console.
GoldenEye 007 was a critical and commercial success. It received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the gaming media and sold over eight million copies worldwide. Many of the industry's journalists have praised it as one of the most important first-person shooters of all time. The game's influence on newer games of the genre signalled a transition from the old Doom-like approach to a more realistic and atmospheric style. GoldenEye 007 was followed by a spiritual successor, Perfect Dark, also developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64. In 2010, a reimagining of the game was published by Activision and released for the Wii and Nintendo DS, then later re-released as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the following year.
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GoldenEye 007 closely follows the plot of the movie, though with some minor alterations. The game starts in Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union in 1986, where MI6 has uncovered a secret chemical weapons facility at the Byelomorye Dam.[1] James Bond and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan are sent to infiltrate the facility and plant explosive charges.[2] During the mission, Trevelyan is apparently killed by Colonel Arkady Ourumov, but Bond escapes by commandeering an airplane.[3] Five years later, Bond is sent to investigate a satellite control station in Severnaya, Russia,[4] where programmers Natalya Simonova and Boris Grishenko work. Two years after the Severnaya mission, Bond investigates an unscheduled test firing of a missile in Kyrgyzstan, believed to be a cover for the launch of a satellite known as GoldenEye.[5] This space-based weapon works by firing a concentrated electromagnetic pulse at any Earth target to disable any electrical circuit within range. As Bond leaves the silo, he is ambushed by Ourumov and a squad of Soviet troops. He defeats the troops, but Ourumov escapes.
The remainder of the game takes place in 1995. Bond visits Monte Carlo to investigate the frigate La Fayette, where he rescues several hostages and plants a tracker bug on the Eurocopter Tiger helicopter before it is stolen by the Janus crime syndicate.[6] Bond is then sent a second time to Severnaya, but during the mission he is captured and locked up in the bunker's cells along with Natalya Simonova, who has been betrayed to Janus. The two escape the complex seconds before it is destroyed, on the orders of Ourumov, by the GoldenEye satellite's EMP. Bond next travels to Saint Petersburg, where he arranges with ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky to meet the chief of the Janus organisation.[7] This is revealed to be Alec Trevelyan — his execution by Ourumov in the Arkhangelsk facility was faked. Bond and Natalya escape from Trevelyan, but are arrested by the Russian police and taken to the military archives for interrogation. Bond eventually manages to escape the interrogation room, rescue Natalya and communicate with Defence Minister Dimitri Mishkin, who has verified Bond's claim of Ourumov's treachery.[8] Natalya is recaptured by General Ourumov, and Bond gives chase through the streets of St. Petersburg,[9] eventually reaching an arms depot used by Janus. There Bond destroys its weaponry stores and then hitches a ride on Trevelyan's Soviet missile train,[10] where he kills Ourumov and rescues Natalya. However, Alec Trevelyan and his ally Xenia Onatopp escape to their secret base in Cuba.[11]
Natalya accompanies Bond to the Caribbean. Surveying the Cuban jungle aerially, their light aircraft is shot down. Unscathed, Bond and Natalya perform a ground search of the area's heavily guarded jungle terrain, but are ambushed by Xenia,[12] who is quickly killed by Bond. Bond sneaks Natalya into the control centre to disrupt transmissions to the GoldenEye satellite and force it to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.[13] He then follows the fleeing Trevelyan through a series of flooded caverns,[14] eventually arriving at the antenna of the control centre's radio telescope. Trevelyan attempts to re-align it in a final attempt to restore contact with the GoldenEye,[15] but Bond ultimately destroys machinery vital to controlling the antenna and defeats Trevelyan in a gunfight on a platform above the dish.
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter that features both single and a multiplayer modes. In the single player mode, the player takes the role of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond through a series of free-roaming 3D levels. Each level requires the player to complete a certain set of objectives – such as collecting or destroying specified items, rescuing hostages, or meeting with friendly NPCs – and then exit the stage.[16] Some gadgets from the James Bond film series are featured in the game and are often used to complete particular mission objectives;[17] for example, in one level the electromagnetic watch from Live and Let Die is used to acquire a jail cell key.[18]
Stealth is a significant element of the gameplay: frequent gunfire can alert distant guards,[19] and activated alarms can trigger infinitely-respawning enemies. Therefore, in order to avoid gunfights with numerous opponents, it is advantageous to eliminate soldiers and security cameras before they spot or hear the player. Certain weapons incorporate suppressor or telescopic sight attachments to aid the player in killing enemies discreetly.[20]
The arsenal of weapons includes pistols, submachine guns, heavy weapons, grenades, and throwing knives, among others.[21] Guns have a finite magazine and must be reloaded after a certain number of shots, but the player may acquire and carry as many weapons as can be found in each mission. The player's initial weapon in most missions is James Bond's Walther PPK, called the PP7 in-game. Most of the game's firearms are modelled on real-life counterparts (although their names are altered), while others are based on fictitious devices featured in the Bond films, such as the Golden Gun and Moonraker laser. The weapons vary in characteristics such as rate of fire, degree of penetration and type of ammunition used, and inflict different levels of damage depending on which body part they hit.[20][22] There are no health-recovery items in the game, although armour vests can be acquired to provide a secondary health bar.
Four save files are available to track the player's progress through the game's twenty missions, each of which may be played on "Agent", "Secret Agent" or "00-Agent" difficulty settings.[20] Higher difficulties increase the challenge by altering factors such as the damage enemies can withstand and inflict, the amount of ammunition available, and the number of objectives that must be completed.[20] Once a mission is completed, the player may either continue progressing through the story or choose to replay a previously completed level. Completing certain missions within particular target times enables the player to unlock bonus cheat options which make various changes to the gameplay.[20] Upon fully completing the game on the hardest difficulty setting, an additional "007" mode is unlocked that allows the player to customize the challenge of any mission by manually adjusting enemies' health, reaction times, aiming accuracy, and the damage they inflict.[20]
The multiplayer mode allows two, three or four players to compete against each other in five different types of split screen deathmatch games: Normal, You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights (Flag Tag), The Man With the Golden Gun, and License to Kill.[23] Normal is a basic deathmatch mode in which the main objective is to kill opponents as many times as possible. It can be played as a free-for-all game or in teams.[23] In You Only Live Twice, players only have two lives before they are eliminated from the game,[23] and License to Kill is a mode in which players die from a single hit with any weapon.[23] In The Man With the Golden Gun, a single Golden Gun, which is capable of killing opponents with only one shot, is placed in a fixed location on the map; once the Golden Gun is picked up, the only way to re-acquire it is to kill the player holding it. The player with the Golden Gun is unable to pick up body armour while opponents can.[23] In The Living Daylights, a "flag" is placed in a fixed location on the map, and the player who holds it the longest wins. The flag-carrier cannot use weapons but can still collect them to keep opponents from stocking ammunition.[23] Aspects of each gametype can be customised, including the chosen map, class of weapons, and winning condition.[23] As players progress through the single player mode, new maps and characters are unlocked in the multiplayer mode.[20]
GoldenEye 007 was developed by an inexperienced team, eight of whom had never previously worked on video games.[19][24] David Doak commented in 2004, "Looking back, there are things I'd be wary of attempting now, but as none of the people working on the code, graphics, and game design had worked on a game before, there was this joyful naïveté."[25] Due to the success of Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007 was originally suggested as a 2D side-scrolling platformer for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System,[19] but Martin Hollis, the director and producer of the game, proposed "a 3D shooting game" for Nintendo's in-development "Ultra 64" console.[24]
The intention for the first few months of development was for the game to be an on-rails shooter similar to Sega's light gun game Virtua Cop;[24] GoldenEye's gas plant location was modelled by Karl Hilton with a predetermined path in mind.[19] Although GoldenEye is controlled with a pad rather than a light gun, Hollis credited Virtua Cop as an influence on the developers' adoption of features such as gun reloading, position-dependent hit reaction animations, penalties for killing innocent characters, and an alternate aiming system that is activated upon pressing the R button of the Nintendo 64 controller.[24]
The development team visited the studios of the GoldenEye film to collect photographs and blueprints of the sets used in the movie.[19][26] Silicon Graphics Onyx workstations and Nintendo's NINGEN development software were used to create the geometry for virtual environments based on this reference material.[24][26] However, many of the missions were extended or modified to allow the player to participate in sequences which the film's James Bond did not.[24] Hilton explained, "We tried to stick to [the reference material] for authenticity but we weren't afraid of adding to it to help the game design. It was very organic."[19] Initially, the designers' priority was purely on the creation of interesting spaces; level design and balance considerations such as the placement of start and exit points, characters and objectives did not begin until this process was complete.[24] According to Martin Hollis, "The benefit of this sloppy unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel. There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level."[24] Hollis also noted that the concept of several varied objectives within each mission was inspired by the multiple tasks in each stage of Super Mario 64,[24] a game whose 3D collision detection system was also influential for Hollis.[19]
Final N64 specifications and development workstations were not initially available to Rare: a modified Sega Saturn controller was used for some early playtesting,[19] and the developers had to estimate what the finalised console's capabilities would be. The final Nintendo 64 hardware could render polygons faster than the SGI Onyx workstations they had been using,[24] but the game's textures had to be cut down by half.[19] Karl Hilton explained one method of improving the game's performance: "A lot of GoldenEye is in black and white. RGB colour textures cost a lot more in terms of processing power. You could do double the resolution if you used greyscale, so a lot was done like that. If I needed a bit of colour, I'd add it in the vertex."[19] At one time, developers planned to implement the reloading of the weapons by the player unplugging and re-inserting the Rumble Pak on the Nintendo 64 controller, though this idea was discarded at Nintendo's behest.[19]
GoldenEye 007 was one of the first games to feature stealth elements.[19] David Doak, one of the game's programmers, explained how this was implemented: "Whenever you fired a gun, it had a radius test and alerted the non-player characters within that radius. If you fired the same gun again within a certain amount of time, it did a larger radius test and I think there was a third even larger radius after that. It meant if you found one guy and shot him in the head and then didn’t fire again, the timer would reset."[19]
Rather than trying to release the game in tandem with the movie, the Stamper brothers made sure to give the team as much time as they needed.[19] It was developed through two and a half years, the first year of which was spent developing the engine and producing art assets.[24] The game's multiplayer mode was added late in the development process; Martin Hollis described it as "a complete afterthought". According to David Doak, the majority of the work on the multiplayer mode was done by Steve Ellis, who "sat in a room with all the code written for a single-player game and turned GoldenEye into a multiplayer game."[27] The game was released in all territories on 25 August 1997, nearly two years after the film. The game's cartridge size was 96 Mb (12 MB).[28] In addition to the Nintendo 64 game, a racing version was in development for the Virtual Boy, but was eventually cancelled before release.[29]
| Reception | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 95% (21 reviews)[30] |
| Metacritic | 96% (21 reviews)[31] |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Edge | 9/10[17] |
| Game Revolution | A-[21] |
| GameSpot | 9.8/10[32] |
| IGN | 9.7/10[18] |
| N64 Magazine | 94%[33] |
| Gaming Target | 9.2/10[34] |
| Gaming Age | 9.1[16] |
Despite an unsuccessful showing at E3 1997 and low expectations among the gaming media,[24][35] GoldenEye 007 turned out to be both a critical and a commercial success. It received overwhelming critical praise[30][31] and sold more than eight million units worldwide,[24][36] making it the third best selling Nintendo 64 game, behind Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. The game has collected numerous awards, including the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment "Games Award" in 1998,[37] and four awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences: "Console Action Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Interactive Title of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Software Engineering".[38] Rare was also recognized for its work on the game and won the BAFTA award for "Best UK Developer".[37]
Graphically, the game was praised for its varied and detailed environments.[32] The zoomable sniper rifle was seen as the most impressive feature of the graphical engine.[17][21][32] Edge magazine noted that it allowed to neutralize enemies quietly and efficiently from distant towers.[17] Greg Sewart of Gaming Age also remarked that the fog effect is "almost non-existent".[16] Lighting, smoke, transparency, and bullet hole aspects were positively received.[18][34] Character appearances were said to be realistic and detailed,[32][34] with the exception of Natalya, who looked "a little too square".[32] Generally, critics also noted that GoldenEye 007 maintains a solid frame rate.[16][34]
The game's audio was well-received. The music was described as addictive, and the various sound effects, such as the explosion, shattering glass, and the sounds of enemies grunting and fainting, were said to be detailed.[18][34] Some later levels begin in lifts and feature transitions from elevator music to full soundtracks, which Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot cited as examples of the music's ability to add ambience to the game, and as an illustration of the game's attention to detail.[32]
The gameplay was praised for its depth.[16][18][32][34] IGN's Doug Perry called GoldenEye 007 an "immersive" game, which "blends smart strategy gameplay with fast-action gunmanship".[18] Similarly, Greg Sewart pointed out that players also have "a bit of freedom as to what they want to do in any given situation, and what order the directives are completed in".[16] Reviewers also enjoyed the wide variety of weapons and the multi-objective-based missions, stating that they make the game stay "fresh by never having you do the same thing twice".[16][17][18] Colin of Game Revolution called the gameplay "realistic", setting Goldeneye "apart from the pack", but also criticized the campaign for being badly paced.[21] He noted that GoldenEye 007 "takes it for granted that you have already seen the movie".[21] He also added that players may get stuck due to the game's lack of orientation.[21] Critics also praised the "tight" and "precise" controls, which were said to be more intuitive than Acclaim's Turok: Dinosaur Hunter,[18][34] an earlier Nintendo 64 first-person shooter that was very well received.[39]
The multiplayer mode was praised for its numerous options and at the time was considered the best multiplayer game on the system, "edging Mario Kart 64 by a hair" according to IGN.[18] Edge described it as "the standard for multiplayer console combat" until it was surpassed by the release of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001.[40]
Video game journalists have praised GoldenEye 007 for proving that it is possible to create a "fun" FPS experience on a console in both single-player and multiplayer modes.[41] When the game was released, the FPS was primarily a genre for PC gamers. Journalists noted that the game "opened the genre to a completely new market" and that it was "the first big console FPS that truly got it right".[41] The analog stick also allowed for precise control, and the game used this in a way that was unique for its time.[41] On the other hand, the game's use of realistic gameplay, which contrasted with the approaches taken by Doom-clones,[18] and introduction of multiplayer deathmatch on a console is often credited for revolutionizing the FPS genre.[42] IGN journalists placed it at #17 in their "Top 100 Video Game Moments" list.[43] Along with Shiny Entertainment's MDK, GoldenEye 007 also pioneered and popularized the now-standard scoped sniper rifle,[44] and its use of context-sensitive hit locations on the enemies added a realism that was previously unseen in video games.[45]
IGN described the game as the "definitive first-person shooter for consoles" and said that it took video games in general in a new direction.[42] Nintendo Power listed GoldenEye 007 as one of the greatest multiplayer experiences in Nintendo history, stating that it is remembered as one of the finest examples of a first-person shooter.[46] Rowan Kaiser of 1UP.com, who placed the game 53rd on "The 60 Most Influential Games of All Time", pointed out that the game "paved the way for the later popularity of Halo, Call of Duty, and more".[47] Similarly, GamePro, placing it 9th in "The 52 Most Important Video Games of All Time", called it the console killer-app of the 1990s and the best game ever licensed from a film.[48] With its eight million copies sold, GoldenEye 007 was also one of the most significant titles that helped the Nintendo 64 to remain competitive with rival Sony's PlayStation,[41] though it eventually lost much of its market share.[49]
GoldenEye 007 is frequently included in gaming publications' "greatest game" lists: In a January 2000 poll, readers of the long-running British magazine Computer and Video Games voted GoldenEye 007 into first place in a list of "the hundred greatest video games",[50] and it was ranked 5th in a poll the following year.[51] Also that year, the game ranked 16th in Game Informer's list of the "Top 100 Games of All Time".[52] In 2005, a "Best Games of All-Time" contest at GameFAQs placed GoldenEye 007 at 7th,[53] and in a list made by IGN in 2005, the game was ranked 29th,[54] while the Reader's Choice placed it at 7th.[55] Video game review site ScrewAttack rated GoldenEye 007 number one in three separate top ten lists: a June 2008 list of the "Top 10 FPS Games Ever",[56] a June 2009 list of the "Top 10 Movie-Based Games",[57] and an October 2010 list of the "Top 10 Local-Multiplayer Console Games".[58] Edge has featured GoldenEye 007 prominently in three "greatest game" lists: it placed third in a staff-voted poll in 2000;[59] seventeenth in a staff, reader, and gaming industry-voted poll in 2007;[60] and it was also included as one of the publication's "Top 10 shooters" in 2003.[35]
GoldenEye 007 led Rare to begin development of a spiritual successor titled Perfect Dark, also for the Nintendo 64.[61] Using a modified version of the GoldenEye 007 game engine, Perfect Dark made its debut at E3 1998,[62] and was released in 2000 to critical acclaim. Although the game features a setting and storyline unrelated to James Bond, it shares many gameplay features with GoldenEye 007, including a similar control scheme, mission objectives that vary with the difficulty setting, and cheat options unlockable through quick level completions.[63] The game led to the development of the Perfect Dark franchise.
A number of the GoldenEye 007 team left Rare soon after development on Perfect Dark commenced, beginning with Martin Hollis in 1998, who after working on the GameCube at Nintendo of America formed his own company Zoonami in 2000.[64] Other members formed Free Radical Design, and by 2004, four of the team of nine who originally worked on GoldenEye 007 were employed there.[27] Free Radical Design developed the TimeSplitters series of first-person shooters for the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube and Xbox. These games contain several references to GoldenEye 007,[65] including the design of the health-HUD, the nature of the aiming system,[66] and the dam setting of the opening level of TimeSplitters 2.[65]
Meanwhile, the James Bond game license was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1999,[67] which published new games based upon the then-recent James Bond films, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough, as well as entirely original ones, including James Bond 007: Nightfire, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. However, none of them reached the critical or commercial success of GoldenEye 007.[68] In 2006, the James Bond game license was acquired by Activision,[68][69] which published additional games in the James Bond video game series, such as Quantum of Solace, 007: Blood Stone, and a reimagining of the Nintendo 64 game, also titled GoldenEye 007. The reimagining features Daniel Craig as the playable character, modern FPS conventions, entirely new level-layouts, and an online component.[70] It was exclusively released for the Wii and Nintendo DS in 2010 to generally positive reviews,[71] and later re-released as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the following year.[72]
An Xbox Live Arcade port of GoldenEye 007 was in development at Rare for several months,[73] and in 2006 Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime commented that Nintendo was "exploring all the rights issues" involved in bringing GoldenEye 007 to the Wii Virtual Console.[74] However, due to legal issues involving the numerous licence holders with rights to game and to the Bond IP, the game was ultimately not released on either format.[75] GoldenEye: Source, a non-profit fangame mod project aiming to recreate and update the Nintendo 64 game, is in development using Valve's Source engine.[76]
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