Ok, ok. So I know it’s an obvious one, but to omit a discussion about GoldenEye when recollecting a list of your favourite games? Simply ridiculous. Rare’s FPS masterpiece is just that: a masterpiece. A (pardon the pun) rare occasion when film and game merge in harmony and the result is something spectacular. You know the name, you know the game, so let’s get straight down to it.

The year: 1995. The place: Her Majesty’s United Kingdom. The event: the imminent release of the next James Bond motion picture. Expectations are not high; Dalton’s Bond films have stuttered at the box office and after a seven year hiatus public suspicion is that a post Cold-War Bond may not be as relevant as he once was. Meanwhile the games industry is going through something of a transitional period. Thanks to the introduction of the PlayStation into the marketplace and Sony’s aggressive advertising, gaming is now turning from an adolescent medium into a more adult one. With the advent of genuine 3D graphics the gap between the two begins to subtly bridge and Nintendo looks to take advantage. After purchasing UK-based developer Rare Ltd. Ninty recognises the need for patriotism and in a shrewd move hands the licensing for Bond over to their latest acquisition. They would not be disappointed. Over on the PC gamers had been privy to class First-Person Shooter action from day one; games such as Wolfenstien 3D and Doom helped defined the genre whilst the release of the seminal Half-Life was just around the corner. Console gamers at this point had been neglected. Sure the action-genre was hardly running on empty but due to controller restraints an FPS for the home platforms seemed unfeasible. A year later all that changed; the N64 hit high street stores and with it came a new type of controller. Nintendo looked to replicate the mouse and keyboard (well mouse anyway) via an analogue stick that the player would control with their left thumbs. The concept was ground-breaking; whilst the pad itself looked a little space-age, the control was masterful. Never before had Mario traversed with such grace or fluidity. Players rejoiced at the prospect of what might follow, and in 1996 the Ninty/Rare collaboration bore its first fruit in the form of GoldenEye 007. Speaking personally, I so was not ready for this. Being 10 at the time, my knowledge of the industry was limited at best (I tried to buy the official magazines when possible and always instigated game-based debates) but in terms of software know-how and appreciating what actually made a game good, I was a rank amateur. As a result when I walked into a ‘Game’ store (Electronics Boutique if you’re an American) with my dad and saw GoldenEye on the shelves I had no clue to what I was looking at. I though it looked like any other title – how wrong I was.

GoldenEye means many things to many people; to some it’s the joy of seeing a big-budget movie facsimiled faithfully (and then being able to play it), for others it’s the feeling of nostalgia evoked when anyone say the words ‘split-screen 4-player’. Indeed, multiplayer memories seem to hold truer than any other, so that’s where we’ll start. Whilst 007 multiplayer exploits were plagued by slow-down compared to current-gen capabilities these sorts of things didn’t matter back in the day. If you had 3 friends of similar ability and 4 controllers (preferably without that white residue that inevitably formed around the stick) then life was pretty sweet. Minutes turned to hours at an insane rate once the bullets/slaps started to fly. As skill sets between players improved memorising level lay outs became a necessity as did precision shooting of the upper neck region. At the time there was no such thing as bots or AI opponents so when people came together competition was fierce. What really stands out to me is how different the affection for such a title was shown compared to today. Nowadays the moment you find something interesting or undergo any sort of experience it immediately gets the social network treatment. It’s literally minutes before half the online community knows of your interest/hobby/relationship and exactly how much you like it/them. Conceptually there’s nothing wrong with this at all; news travels faster by the years but by the same token we lose something along the way; that intimacy that comes from learning via word of mouth, the coolness that comes from hearing your best mate tell how good their new game is and you learning exclusively from that. It’s a small ideal, but one that’s becoming lost with time and one that can make the discovery of a video game that little bit sweeter.  Anyways back to 007; multiplayer was brilliant. I hate to be one of those guys who jumps on the proverbial band wagon but in this case an exception can be made. Rare gave us so much and asked for so little in return, only that we embrace their new product and play it until our fingers bled (or at least until Perfect Dark came out). They gave us automatic shot guns, remote mines and RCP90s to deface our friends with, and then, just when we thought we’d seen it all, they gave us Odd Job. Good times. Dangerously addictive, being good at GoldenEye became an obsession. It wasn’t enough to complete the game-you had to be able to do it on ‘00 Agent’…and unlock all the extras…blindfolded. Ok so that last one may not be accurate but there were times when it felt like you were handicapped, the difficulty was so hard.

And so we come to the single player. The development team did a fantastic job of making you feel like Bond, and it wasn’t through celebrity voice over or having Pierce Brosnan appear on ‘The One Show’ five nights in a row. No the feeling of being the inimitable secret agent was achieved through authenticity. It seemed like every measure had been taken to recreate the locals from the movie, and whilst some creative licensing was employed (I hated the Caverns mission with a passion) it didn’t mar the overall experience. Starting the Facility level in the air vent, driving the monstrous tank through the streets of St. Petersburg, chasing Trevelyan round the sky top cradle; all iconic moments that made the transfer from film-to-game with ease. It’s crazy to think that fifteen-plus years after its release people still reference this game as being the quintessential movie tie-in (is that because films offer less convertible material or games just aren’t made like they used to be? I’ll let you decide).

To sum GoldenEye 007 up in a few sentences would be to do Rare’s shining light a grave injustice. The game reinvented the FPS genre; it simply can’t be replicated. And that’s where Eurocom went wrong. Whilst I applaud the idea of redoing things shot for shot with Daniel Craig and bringing the original writer back in for a 21^st century remodel, it just wasn’t the same. The update was COD with the James Bond logo slapped on the front. And GoldenEye most definitely isn’t Call of Duty…it’s better.