Originally posted on Of Carbon and Silicon, 27 December 2010
As you are no doubt aware, Activision has recently released an adaptation of the seventeenth James Bond film, GoldenEye, for Wii. Not for the other Seventh Generation consoles, but for Wii and DS only (for the moment, anyway). Right now, Nintendo DS has the market's advantage as it has two Bond games: the Nintendo-exclusive GoldenEye 007 and the competing Blood Stone. But, that's a different story.
Of course, GoldenEye Wii (as it will be known, hereinafter) has been out since mid-November, but I got it for Christmas. I haven't played it all the way through as yet, but I've played enough to know what's good and bad about it (well, as good as).
The first thing that becomes glaringly obvious is the title. GoldenEye. Gamers associate that word with Rareware's GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 (or, as it will be known hereinafter, GoldenEye 64) -- arguably the best FPS of the entire Fifth Generation. What most players familiar with GoldenEye 64 are likely to do is to compare it against GoldenEye Wii. This would be an error in judgement. It's rather like comparing apples to oranges -- both are types of fruit, but one has pectin where the other has citric acid. GE64 and GE Wii are both first-person shooters, both are based on the same plotline, but -- let's face it -- one is dreadfully old and the other is shiny and new.
Another major thing that one notices right off is the tone of gameplay. The adaptation (written by Bruce Feirstein -- author of the original GoldenEye film's screenplay) calls for it to be set in the modern day and for it to support the drastically revised James Bond as portrayed by Daniel Craig. All of this creates for a very dark undertone, compared to other Bond games.
007 NightFire, for example. NightFire, whilst enjoyable and with high replay-value, is somewhat out of place in the Bond universe. Its predecessor, the critically-panned Agent Under Fire, played out similarly to a Connery-era Bond film -- sneaking about on oil-rigs, infiltrating foreign embassies at night, speeding through subterranean railway tunnels. NightFire wasn't like that -- even though Pierce Brosnan's likeness was featured, it really didn't pan out like a Bond film. It borrowed elements from Moonraker and You Only Live Twice, but it just lacked the proper James Bond "essence". Even 007 Everything or Nothing, featuring not only the likeness and voice of Pierce Brosnan, but also the likenesses and voices of Judi Dench, John Cleese, Heidi Klum, and others, didn't manage to capture it.
There was recently a discussion between Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, and Mario creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, on the Wii website about the "essence " of Mario. Even though each game in the series is worked on by different people, they all manage to maintain a certain Mario-ness. The same can be said of the James Bond games. Using the film series as a benchmark, developers should create Bond games that mesh with the films as much as possible. In effect, the player needs to believe that they are playing a Bond film, which is something that GoldenEye Wii has managed to achieve.
Perhaps because it was worked on by two Bond veterans; writer, Bruce Feirstein, and composer, David Arnold... perhaps because of the game designers' decision to incorporate the Classic Controller into the control scheme for more traditional gameplay... perhaps a combination of all of these... perhaps something completely different. It's difficult to tell precisely why, but the game seems to belong in the Bond series.
Referring back to Everything or Nothing, in contrast, it does not seem to fit in the series. Perhaps because the perspective was third-person, like a Mario or Zelda game, rather than first-person, like GoldenEye 64. Perhaps the problem was that the A-list cast sounded like they'd never done voice-acting before. I think, though, the problem with EoN was in the screenplay. What I like to do when I play a game of any kind (except, perhaps, SimCity) is to imagine how it would fare as a movie. With EoN's plotline (which seemed to be pieced together from various sources, including GoldenEye and You Only Live Twice, with a tenuous reference to Max Zorin from A View to a Kill -- which, itself, was a box-office failure), Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, and the late Gene Shalit would all have agreed that it was a waste of time.
Fortunately, as I've mentioned, GoldenEye Wii was written by the same bloke who wrote the GoldenEye film: a professional screenwriter. As a film, GoldenEye Wii (at least the bits of it I've played) has potential.
The next significant thing is the gameplay, itself. Without comparing it to GoldenEye 64 too much, the controls aren't as user-friendly. Of course, GE64 had just the one control stick and four "C" buttons. GE Wii has two control sticks, with one taking the place of the four "C" buttons.
Of all of the criticism I have heaped upon Electronic Arts (yes, them again) on Of Carbon and Silicon over the years, one beneficial thing could be said of them: their games were and continue to be easy to control. The Bond games under EA's supervision were no exception. Agent Under Fire introduced the control scheme where (using GameCube as an example) the left control stick always controlled Bond's body (forward, backward, turning) and the "C" stick always controlled Bond's head and feet (looking up and down and strafing). Furthermore, if Bond were in possession of a sniper rifle, the "C" stick always controlled the scope. Bond could strafe in sniper mode with the left stick, but the "C" stick would always move the gun.
GoldenEye Wii has not done this. On the Normal Pro setting (default for the Classic Controller Pro), aiming mode is a direct reversal of normal movement controls. Outside the sights, Bond moves with the L Stick and strafes with the R Stick. Whilst aiming, Bond looks left and right with the L Stick and looks up and down and strafes with the R Stick. This causes the learning curve to be a bit high when it comes to actually controlling Bond. A NightFire-like aiming system wouldn't go amiss (no pun intended).
In Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, Bond is seen performing difficult tasks which would require intense concentration and manages to do them whilst injured or poisoned. This made it into gameplay of 007 Quantum of Solace as a regenerating health metre. Unlike other games where Bond must collect body armour and only has a set amount of health which means death when totally depleted, Quantum allowed Bond to be shot many times, even to the brink of death -- but, if he managed to not take damage for a while, his health would regenerate. This seems to be a permanent character trait for Daniel Craig's Bond in the games, as it makes a re-appearance in GoldenEye Wii. The only downside, relative to Quantum, is that there is not a visible stamina metre onscreen. Players are forced to guess when Bond requires a break. Of course, if his health drops below half, a red blur begins to enter the field of view from the sides of the screen. If his health drops below 25%, little lines akin to those in bloodshot eyes appear also.
If you're the type who likes to shoot everything in sight, the next significant thing is that this is the first Bond game with a semi-destructible environment. Shoot that barricade enough times and it breaks apart. Sure, there have always been things in Bond games that you can shoot and they blow up in sodding great balls of fire, but it was always unusual to me that, if you shot that wall with a rocket-propelled grenade, it didn't show any damage... as though I hadn't just wasted a perfectly good bomb on a stupid wall. As a general reference, GoldenEye 64 had a great many objects that could be destroyed by shooting them or blowing them up. Of course, fully destructible environments were unheard-of back in '97 -- too processor intensive. In terms of lousy environment destruction, that award goes to Everything or Nothing. That game's third-person viewpoint meant that you couldn't even target things that weren't objective-related unless you had the bloody loud sniper rifle.
Talking of weapons, here's the other important thing. Like Quantum before it, GoldenEye Wii does not allow you to pick up more than three weapons at a time. In Bond games of yore, you could carry as many weapons as you could find. Some would contend that this "Professional Mode", as it was called in NightFire multiplayer, presents a more realistic challenge -- I contend that it's bloody inconvenient when you're pinned down by guards with huge machine guns and you've only got a couple of pistols and an empty AK47.
And finally, GoldenEye Wii does contain a few tongue-in-cheek references to its progenitor, GoldenEye 64. I remember that people took issue with the truck in GE64's Dam and the totally nonfunctional missile battery in the Runway. In GE Wii, Trevelyan and Bond hijack the truck in the Dam and use it to blast their way through most of the territory before epically crashing it just before the dam, itself. Then, in GE Wii's Runway (called the Airfield), an attack helicopter strafes Bond with guns and explosives. The missile battery in this game works just fine, as Bond can use it to destroy the offending vehicle.
Then, I seem to recall something about a hacker finding a motorcycle in GE64's code and a great deal of speculation about what purpose it may have served at the beta stage. In GE Wii, Bond has a few opportunities to drive a motorcycle, though the player only aims the gun, rather than piloting the cycle, itself.
Also in GE Wii's Dam, there is a destructible boat docked on the pier, but looking through a sniper-scope at the river beyond won't yield sight of an unreachable island.
Suffice it to say, as I continue to play the game, more things will make themselves evident, which may cause me to make additional entries on this topic. However, at this point, I give Activision's GoldenEye 007 a 4.5/5.
