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GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

An entire dictionary of words could be created to describe this game’s mere existence: Opportunistic, misleading, deceptive, audacious, presumptuous, disrespectful, insulting, ambitious, unambitious, imaginative, ridiculous, lazy, bold… cheeky (Bond is British, after all). From its inception, the very notion of the title was offensive, yet strangely alluring. Yet, as outrageous as the premise was, the truth is that the end result is neither abhorably awful or surprisingly fantastic, but simply mediocre.

Breif history lesson for the uninitiated: Back on the N64, developer Rare made a game called Goldeneye 007 based on the movie of the same name (albeit years after the film’s release thanks to a ridiculously long development process). This game was one of the greatest first-person shooters ever created, and in one fell swoop it gave the N64 a system-seller it desperately needed, proved that consoles could compete with PCs in the FPS genre, and made James Bond a valuable franchise in the world of videogames.

In fact, after the success of Goldeneye (and the parallel re-invigorating of the movie franchise thanks to actor Pierce Brosnan), the license’s value went up so much the only publisher that could justify paying for it was powerhouse Electronic Arts. At first, they stuck to decent but unimaginative games based directly on the films, but later branched out into more liberal uses of the license, ranging from crappy (007 Racing) to pretty damn good (Everything or Nothing).

However, now Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond contract has expired and he’s not interested in renewing, which leaves Electronic Arts with a license to everything relating to James Bond, except with no actual James Bond. Ha. Sucks to be them.

EA’s answer? A new James Bond game… without James Bond. A sequel to Goldeneye… except without anything to do with Goldeneye. A game with characters from throughout the franchise and homages to multiple films… but no respect for its story. A game that celebrates everything James Bond… that really has little to do with Bond himself.

Players actually take on the role of an agent fired from MI6, partly for being a big jerk and partly for letting James Bond die. Yeah, you read that right. Right at the beginning. If that weren’t enough of an assault on the Bond franchise’s already-shaky continuity, the game has you working neck-and-neck with a plethora of classic Bond villains, most of whom met their untimely demises in the films that introduced them. In addition to breifly showing Bond and M (voiced by Dame Judi Dench), after getting fired you’ll quickly come into the employ of Auric Goldfinger to fight in his war against Dr. No, in the process of which you’ll fight either with or against the likes of Scaramanga (voiced by Christopher Lee, probably inbetween recording sessions for the Lord of the Rings games), Oddjob, Pussy Galore, Xenia Onatopp, and various other series standbys.

Now, while I’m sure there’s some precedent to the idea of making a sequel to someone else’s game, it’s never gone to such bizarre extremes as this. Not a single employee charged with the creation of this game ever worked on N64 Goldeneye, there’s no direct link to the movie or the story contained within it, few similarities in gameplay or structure… in fact, there’s no real reason to call this game Goldeneye at all.

Well, okay, there’s one. To excuse the pathetic attempt to prey on the N64 game’s popularity, the Goldeneye: Rogue Agent’s unnamed protagonist gets… wait for it… a golden eye, and is from that point on dubbed Goldeneye. This device obviously seems designed to accommodate the game’s title more than the gameplay, and is right up there with “Kryptonite fog” in the history of ridiculous B.S. that publishers expect gamers to believe. Ultimately, the entire plot and premise for the game reads like a bad fanfic gone awry. I almost expect to round the corner to see Austin Powers duking it out with Dr. Evil because one of the folks at EA thought it would be cool.

In the end, though, a game must be judged based on how it plays, and the gameplay lacks the ambition and wild energy that seems to have been spent on its premise. While Electronic Arts obviously wants to replicate the success of Goldeneye 007, and the protagonist may follow in the footsteps of Bond, the gameplay tries more than anything to be like… Halo 2.

Like that title, your health heals automatically back to full when you can get a moment’s peace, the two shoulder buttons correspond to the weapons in each hand, and Bond can only carry two weapons at a time (one for each hand). While one could argue that this type of setup helps to sell a game’s realism, the Bond franchise was never about realism to begin with, and having the protagonist always scrounging for a new weapon kills much of the “action hero” feeling the series seemed built on. This is made worse by the low amounts of ammo the guns carry. At least Master Chief could hold on to a weapon for a few minutes before running dry, but Mr. Goldeneye will usually be swapping guns every half-dozen enemies or so.

However, while Goldeneye: Rogue Agent copies Halo 2’s basic gameplay mechanics, it fails to emulate that game’s solid controls, or those of Goldeneye 007, for that matter. Only a select few FPSes on consoles have even remotely decent controls, as the lack of a mouse and keyboard tends to make the concept of aiming laughable in most console games. Goldeneye: Rogue Agent is not one of the exceptions to this rule, and making even simple shots seem frustrating and unnecessarily difficult. The game gives you an optional auto-aim feature (which seems to lag behind targets, potentially making aiming worse), and the ability to adjust X- and Y-axis sensitivity, but nothing really seems to help much.

And while the Halo series kept things interesting with pretty darn good enemy A.I., a decent variety of enemies, expansive outdoor environs and fun vehicular combat, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent features extremely dumb enemy A.I. that has soldiers predictably strafing left and right repeatedly to make them more annoying, hordes of look-alike soldiers that have few distinguishing features, constricted and linear level design and… overall, has very little to keep things from getting repetitive. There are occasional “traps” you can use on enemies who happen to be standing on the metaphorical X, but that’s just a gimmick. There’s also your golden eye, but that’s… just stupid.

Let’s talk about that, shall we? The golden eye that gives an excuse for the game’s namesake allows for some abilities that initially seem pretty nifty… until you try to put them to practical use. For example, the first, X-Ray vision, sucks up energy ridiculously quickly, only works at short range, and its only major use is in conjunction with a gun that can shoot through walls and obstacles… but only gets ten shots and takes so long to fire that the enemy will have moved out of harm’s way between the time you pull the trigger and the time shot reaches the target. The second ability’s primary use is to disable enemy weapons… but only when you’re close enough you could easily just shoot them down. Yeah, you’ll quickly conclude that you may as well have pink eye for all the good it does you. Hey, pink eye is highly contagious, you know.

The game is not without its charms. For the first time I’ve ever encountered in a videogame, enemy shouts are contextually relevant (”he’s on the stairs!” and “behind the forklift!”, for example). Also, the graphics are decent, and the presentation is very good too, albeit nothing incredible. And I have to admit, running into occasional Bond gags like Goldfinger’s laser table is a nice touch.

However, as a game it’s just not fun. Not compared to Halo 2, not compared to Goldeneye 007, and not compared to FPSes in general. And if we go beyond that, we see how insulting it is for EA to even imply that this game has anything to do with Rare’s seminal N64 title, in spirit, form, or function. As a fan of the Bond films, I find it questionable that something that couldn’t possibly fit into continuity, with a plot this amateurish, is actually an officially-licensed product of the franchise. If they’ve really lowered the bar this much, I’d like to write the next Bond film. Hey, it doesn’t even need to star James Bond!

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Tags: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

Posted by Jake McNeill on Feb 16th, 2005 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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