01 The AI may have been basic, but at least they had
the decency and the awareness to crumble into a
melodramatic heap when shot.
02 When GoldenEye took the action outside, draw
distance woes often made tracking enemies tricky.One of the best examples of ‘classic’ not meaning
‘good’, the Klobb was memorable for all the wrong
reasons: its range and accuracy were poor, it rapidly
chewed through ammo and it was so loud as to be
almost unusable on stealth-based levels. Rubbish,
then, but endearingly so.
CLASSIC WEAPON
Facility was brilliant in both its forms. In the
campaign, its opening saw Bond enter through
the vents into a toilet occupied by guards: you
could hunt your prey with extreme prejudice or
sneak out without attracting attention. And in
multiplayer, it’s transformed into a thrilling game
of cat and mouse.
CLASSIC LEVEL
W
ere we to call Doom the
father of the first-person
shooter (FPS), then
GoldenEye 007 was the
cool uncle. This thoroughly classy and
stylish shooter was conclusive proof
that licenced games needn’t be lowest-
common denominator tat. And though
it took a few liberties with the plot of
the film, here was a globe-trotting
espionage adventure that really ‘got’
Bond’s appeal: slick and precise, with
just a hint of the preposterous. Its
campaign was brilliantly diverse, one
moment calling for slow and careful
tactics, the next letting you charge in
guns blazing. Some would argue that
Perfect Dark (p. 140) did the superspy
thing better, but GoldenEye laid the ideal
template for the modern FPS.
Besides, it also had that multiplayer.
Campaign stages were repurposed
into maps that hosted astoundingly
addictive four-player deathmatches.
Though hardly perfectly balanced –
everyone clamoured to play Oddjob,
as his diminutive size made him much
more difficult to hit – that’s no surprise
given that it was only added at the 11th
hour. With that in mind, it’s amazing
how well it hung together, and it would
go on to revolutionise the genre – it
took a long time for anyone to top it.