While the console games of Blood Stone and GoldenEye had different developers, n-Space were given the task of porting both games to the DS, both releasing on the same day. While Blood Stone on DS was a surprisingly good attempt at recreating a full experience on the DS, GoldenEye settles for fully accepting that it’s a simpler game.

I didn’t get on with this version of the game at all, and I felt nauseous all the way though. I’m not sure what exactly caused it, but the movement of the game is extremely stiff (even just walking) and the field of view feels extremely claustrophobic. Couples with the DS’s control issues for shooting games like this (especially for left handed gamers), it wasn’t a nice experience at all. You can use the buttons to aim in this, but it’s very slow.

The dam starts off with explosions going off straight away and you soon encounter one of the major annoyances of the game: the hand holding. It takes away control to give you long-drawn out tutorials on even the most basic stuff.

The facility level slowly explains the stealth mechanics bit by bit, including major parts such as using a landline phone to ring another phone in the same room to cause a distraction. Towards the end, 006 and Ourumov have a Naked Gun style gunfight behind some bulletproof glass before Ourumov gets the upper hand. Bond sets off explosives and runs the facility, constantly falling off the conveyer belt due to the poor controls.

The runway and nightclub levels are skipped in this version, so it’s straight to an incredibly short level of chasing Ourumov and Xenie through the frigate. It does try to pad this out by locking you in a room until you kill a wave of enemies, but it’s still only a couple of minutes. The cutscenes have multiple styles, either in game graphics with voices, voices over static art or cutscenes showing you what you need to do with just text.

At the start of surface, you do get a nice cutscene of the GoldenEye satellite firing (you never get to see what it looks like in the Wii version), but this level feels extremely drawn out with nothing notable. The end does make a big deal about sneaking past some people, but you just walk forward slightly.

The bunker is about walking back and forth collecting keycards, which brings us to the touch screen mingames. When using a keycard, you have to swipe the card and then very quickly input a code that appears. There’s also a hacking minigame where you wait for changing numbers to stop and just tap them. The just seem to exist for the sake of existing.

At the end, Bond rally wants to get into a room that’s blocked by three doors. The first is opened by placing three mines and detonating them one at a time. For the second, you have to shoot a bunch of panels that look like they were placed randomly. For the third, you go up to it and tap action. The game gives you a hint making a deal of Bond’s arms being on the top screen but the game knows how lame the solution it so just tells you the answer within a few seconds: close the DS and open it again. They must have known how much people hated it in Phantom Hourglass, but still added it.

I don’t have much to say about the archive level, so it’s on to the tank level and…it’s pretty good. It fits the game much better than the console version and the game’s stiff controls naturally feel like a tank anyway, so this is very much the highlight of this game. You take out the front of the train and get the cutscene, escaping by hacking a computer (it’s not like Natalya is a computer programmer or anything like that).

The memorial park level ditches the “statue” style completely and just looks like a generic military compound. The end of this level was the hardest part for me: a serious of quick time events of swiping the screen, one part requiring a perfect circle (which is the reason why I’ve never beaten The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks).

Heading to a jungle, you have to fight Xenia in a helicopter by activating missiles and defeating waves of enemies – the game is still explaining everything you need to do. The second part is a section where you can actually be stealthy.

At the solar plant, it’s time for the forced stealth mission – get spotted and you fail the mission. You also have to slowly crawl past mines as you place charges. After you get captured, you have to fight waves of enemies until the game tells you to press a button.

You then chase 006 through corridors, stopping at points to shoot him until he carries on. He’ll end up at a balcony for your final shot.

Because of how awkward this game feels, gimmick that just feel silly and a lack of ambition or trying to do anything actually unique, this is by far the worst Bond game on DS.