3/5 ★ – curt924's review of GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.

Definitely rougher around the edges than most of these bond games, but the gun play here almost makes up for its shortcomings... almost. The biggest issue is that this has the GoldenEye name but isn't even remotely connected to the GoldenEye on N64. This is an original story line that pays homage (or at least thinks it does) to older bond films. Namely Dr. No and Goldfinger, as well as Man with the Golden Gun for some reason? The story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, even from the way the cut scenes play out. There's multiple cut scenes that don't match up with game play here, and it feels very rushed. That sucks too because I would've loved to see a fully fleshed out game where you interact with a bunch of different bond villains, but they are all as static as cardboard. The story is one of this game's biggest downfalls, it's barely even a story to begin with and it doesn't go anywhere worth following. However, in terms of gameplay, this game is completely different from the other bond games I've revisited recently. Instead of the traditional Doom style "Carry your entire arsenal in your pockets", this opts for a much more run and gun type feel where you regularly are scavenging for enemy weapons and almost never have more than one or two mags of ammo for each weapon. You can run around with 2 akimbo weapons and your grenades, but that's all you'll ever have on you at any given moment. It's very frantic and it does the inaccurate gunplay much more gracefully than Agent Under Fire. Weapons are still capable of hitting distant targets when fired in short bursts, and levels are normally built around this style of play. The keyword there is "normally". This game has some of the weirdest level design I've ever seen. Some of the levels are great run and gun playgrounds, which are open enough to allow for experimentation and flanking maneuvers that feel great to pull off. Meanwhile, others are boring hallways that feel padded and overstay their welcome, on top of making the game spike in difficulty whenever they show up. It dawned on me while I was on the last level that I don't think I ever actually beat this game as a kid. That final level is full of so many assholes with that one-hit-kill rifle that I think I just gave up. It doesn't help that the majority of the level is forgettable long hallways where the game play shows most of its weaknesses. What's hilarious is that the pen-ultimate level before than bullshit might actually be the best level in the game thanks to its wide pathways and varied environments that were a ton of fun to shoot in. Visually, it's probably the weakest out of my bond game endeavors so far. It runs at 30 fps compared to Agent Under Fire and Nightfire's smooth 60, and it doesn't really look that much better to justify it. I'll admit that the levels are much larger than anything in those previous games, but I would've compromised for more loading screens in favor of better performance. Textures look ugly often as well, and it doesn't even look remotely as good as Nightfire's impressive animation and texture work. Overall, when the game doesn't get in the way of itself, it's actually a really fun romp through the 007 universe. It fails to deliver in story, but the gunplay is great when the level design cooperates with it, you should probably just play the first 7 levels and then ignore that the 8th one even exists to get full enjoyment. Beat it on hard, but probably wouldn't have gotten through it if it wasn't for childhood nostalgia. Next up I'm gonna play through all of the movie tie-in games that released on the GameCube to see if there are any hidden gems to be found!