Well here’s something we never expected to see.
At the top of the list of games people clamor to be remade or rereleased, usually while the original sits unplayed in their closets, is “GoldenEye 007.” The 1997 first-person shooter may have been the most played of all Nintendo 64 games, largely thanks to multiplayer modes that were the first good reason to buy more than two controllers.
System » WiiPrice » $49.99Rating » 3 out of 5 stars
But it would never be seen again, we thought — licensing issues with the original actors would tie it up, and the original was developed by Rare, a studio long since bought by Nintendo competitor Microsoft.
Well, the impossible is a lot more possible than was thought — replace Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig, hand the game off to a new developer, and you have a new “GoldenEye.”
In name, at least. Maybe game-code copyright issues were the one element that was never ironed out, because the original game, rather than lending its spirit to every pixel of this new venture, is never allowed to do anything more than make occasional cameos. This is no trip down memory lane.
Take the famous scene where you’re crawling in a ventilation shaft above an occupied bathroom stall. In the original, you could fire your silenced pistol at the enemy soldier’s head, but your bullet would just knock off his beret, and — the best part — he wouldn’t even notice. In this one, the stall dweller has no bulletproof beret, but you have the option to drop down on him, pressing a series of buttons as they flash on-screen to beat him up. This sums up the gulf between the original and new “GoldenEyes” — the new one, which sprinkles in modern-day trappings like environment destructibility and slow-motion fistfights, is much more action-packed and stealth-driven, but lacks the sense of the absurd that made the original special.
The online multiplayer, which is almost by default the best offered on the Wii, also discards the “GoldenEye” ethos in favor of industry standards. Gone is the need to search the environment for, say, proximity mines or throwing knives (depending on the rules you set), replaced by a system in which you can choose which weapons your character has at all times. Is it just me, or was a huge part of the fun of the original’s multiplayer the need to desperately search for better weapons, or blast your friend when he finally does find a weapon but it turns out be a Klobb?
Make no mistake, this game is fun, but it’s 2010 fun, and features like paint ball mode seem included as obligations rather than natural products of the game’s overall approach. Best shooter on the Wii? Yep. But when people say ” ‘GoldenEye’ was so great,” there won’t be any confusion about which one they’re talking about.
