Thread: Goldeneye 007 Remastered

If you remember the Perfect Dark Remaster back on the Xbox 360, you probably heard mumblings of a Goldeneye 007 remaster. It got pretty far in development but it got canned due to rights issues. That seemed to be the end of it but now, someone got their hands on the game and uploaded footage from the entire campaign and even throw in some multiplayer gameplay as a nice bonus.



As someone who absolutely loved Goldeneye 007 way back in the day, I have to say that this looks slick. Much like the Perfect Dark remaster, it doesn't mess with the gameplay and just gives it a graphical facelift and a better framerate. Honestly, I'm loving with what they did with the character and weapon models. I'm seriously hoping this gets released one way or another into the wild because I would love to play this and would give me something else besides emulating the original N64 game.

Saw this video a few days ago. I know it's closing on 14 years since the proposed release date but all this really does is highlight why it was canned, because it shows just how incredibly limited GE64 actually was compared to both it's original 1997 FPS peers and The New Challengers™ of 2007. I'm hardly a Halo fan by any stretch of the imagination but putting this up against something like Halo 3 -- never mind something like Team Fortress 2 if you want to go all-out for PvP -- is Nightmare difficulty; it isn't even remotely fair... much like how attempting to seriously compare the '97 original's 4-way FFA to its PC competitors like Doom & Quake was a laughable proposition.

Sure, I get it; GE64 was fine for its era and platform, almost a sacred cow, but it's best remembered that way, a relic of its age when console FPS games finally got a 4-way deathmatch option without needing multiple consoles and a news studio's worth of TV sets. Even if the framerate was absolute fucking dogshit when explosions were onscreen.

I was going to write a few paragraphs about GoldenEye, but I think I'll leave it at this for now:



Emulator

Game

"Gene Starwind: Well, there you have it! That was quick."

I'm sure you probably didn't intend it but I consider this to be a mighty fine birthday present! I've been playing for the past hour or so and I have been having a blast. It actually controls quite well with a PS4 controller. I like that you can switch between the remastered graphics and the old graphics on the fly. Still having as much of a blast playing it now as I did back in my bratty teenage years.

Thank you for this thread. I was not aware of the remaster at all.

PS I find this ironic that Xenia is required to run Goldeneye

So I got a new controller (old one broke—I've been playing the same games for a while because I want to play most games with a pad) and I finally started up GoldenEye. I played for a few hours and I'm up to the second bunker level on Secret Agent. I really hate to say it, but the game has aged terribly. I couldn't agree with what Baron said more. It's quite a shock really because I used to adore this game. That was then and this is now. I was a child and I didn't have a lot of games to play.

I'll give GoldenEye a proper write-up when I reach the end of this slog. If there's one thing I can say for sure, it's that while I have good childhood memories of the campaign, the multiplayer is what I remember most fondly. And that's probably very close to the truth. The multiplayer may still be very fun to play, but the single-player mode? Oh, no. It's not really because of the difficulty level (I chose Secret Agent because I wanted at least a bit of a challenge) but some of the design choices in the missions really made me cringe. It's overall a janky mess and the scripted events are quite terrible too.

Whenever I see people criticise Halo: Combat Evolved, one of the most common complaints I see is that a couple of missions are repeated. It's sort of true. You get to explore some new sections of them and they feel quite fresh despite that. With many of the GoldenEye levels it's really difficult to tell whether they changed much at all. Some are identical-looking. You notice small differences. Of course many of the levels are original but many of them do seem extremely similar.

As I said, I don't like to be so harsh on GoldenEye. Rareware was a console FPS pioneer and GoldenEye was pretty much the OG 3D console FPS. However, I don't think that really excuses GoldenEye's shortcomings. The year before we got what is known as the first 3D platformer: Super Mario 64. I think that game aged seriously well. I still had a blast playing it a couple of years back. Additionally, I see Perfect Dark as a masterpiece. Rareware improved on GoldenEye in every way, both in campaign and multiplayer. They heavily improved their GoldenEye engine and game design. I have played the remastered version of Perfect Dark. It works similarly to the GoldenEye leak.

I'm about halfway through GoldenEye now, I think. My new opinion of it is far different to what I hoped for. My early estimate is that I'll give the campaign a 5/10 at best. If someone is willing to try multiplayer with me using Parsec at some point, maybe I will end up enjoying multiplayer enough to bump up my overall score for GoldenEye to a fairly decent number.

I had Goldeneye and The World is Not Enough as a kid. Never cared for Goldeneye whether that was multiplayer or the single-player campaign. The World is not Enough? Still play that one with my sister & friends for some laughs once in a while. We always play with the grenade launchers.

The World is not Enough? Still play that one with my sister & friends for some laughs once in a while. We always play with the grenade launchers.

You know, I actually quite liked that one and found it to be a worthy successor to Goldeneye. The only thing that I found baffaling was, despite relying heavily on gunplay, you got pitifully little ammo for your weapons. Still, it was a good time.

I've been playing the remaster of Goldeneye a bunch of times and I'd have to say my opinion on it is a little bit more rosy than Mantis'. I still had a blast playing it all these years. What always drew me into it was it's gunplay. I still found it just as satisfying as I did in my teenage years. It's the kind of gunplay that we don't see too often which is that Hollywood-ized depiction of gunplay where they had stylized sounds and the bad guys would do these exaggerated, theatrical death animations. I especially love these because not only are they fun to watch but you don't see that often anymore. Most modern games just rely on ragdoll physics. In fact, not a lot of games aim for that style of gunplay. The only games that I can think of that go for that is F.E.A.R, Black, and Killzone 2.

I'll concede that there are other games that refined Goldeneye's gameplay and improved upon it, particularly Timesplitters, which was made by some of the original developers. Still, I was grinning like an idiot playing through the game, hearing the classic music and mowing down russian scumbags. Some would say me gushing over this game is just me being blinded by nostalgia and perhaps they're right but I can't help it. It was just cozy going back to a game that was huge during my teenage years.

Originally Posted by Starwind55

I'll concede that there are other games that refined Goldeneye's gameplay and improved upon it, particularly Timesplitters, which was made by some of the original developers. Still, I was grinning like an idiot playing through the game, hearing the classic music and mowing down russian scumbags. Some would say me gushing over this game is just me being blinded by nostalgia and perhaps they're right but I can't help it. It was just cozy going back to a game that was huge during my teenage years.

If you like it, then you like it. Not much more needs to be said to justify that position. I'm a massive FF8 fan and it's nearly as old as Goldeneye with arguably even more systems to its name that aged poorly depending on who you ask. Whether it's being blinded by nostalgia or not, it's nothing that requires an "I can't help it." Since we talk at minimum once per week, I know that you & I don't really change our media interests over time. New things are allowed in, but old favorites never really leave. I don't even like Goldeneye but I don't think it's at all silly if you like it just as much as you used to.

I honestly wish that I felt the same joy I felt at a much younger age. I was thinking of writing about how nostalgia comes into our perception of retro games in this reply but I think I'll reserve it for a new thread later. In the end though, if you like it you like it! We all have different tastes and I think our tastes can and often do change over time. But yet I still love a lot of retro.

I have great multiplayer memories of other Bond games too. One in particular, actually. I can't remember whether it was for PS1 or PS2, but there was one with a grappling hook. I used to play that with a friend all the time.