Did Goldeneye age like very fine milk?
Yes. Yes it did.

But I played and finished it when it was already as pleasing to the eye as a roadkill.
Seriously, this game looks so ass, it's actually unreal.

But I still finished it. And had lots of fun doing just that.

And that's really something for a game this old that has aged this poorly.

GoldenEye 007 e The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time são jogos muito similares em vários aspectos. Lançados com um pouco mais de um ano de diferença, ambos são considerados clássicos do Nintendo 64 e comumente ditos os melhores jogos de seu gênero, até mesmo um dos melhores de todos os tempos. Porém, estamos falando do Nintendo 64, um console de 1996, e tanto GoldenEye como Zelda sofrem de um mesmo problema: envelheceram mal.

Ocarina of Time é um caso menos extremo, mas não significa que a situação é boa (20 FPS, controles ruins principalmente pra atirar em primeira pessoa, mundo vazio e pequenas faixas de gameplay como o templo da água). GoldenEye 007 para o Nintendo 64 original tem uma resolução baixíssima, gráficos extremamente feios e uma framerate terrível, que tornam a experiência de jogar abismal com um controle nas configurações originais. Eu tentei jogar e simplesmente não deu certo, então decidi instalar um hack para jogá-lo em HD com um mouse, então baseio minha avaliação nisso.

Tá, é uma questão complicada avaliar um jogo com base nas modificações feitas por fãs, mas jogar GoldenEye desse jeito parece demais ser a forma correta que os desenvolvedores queriam, a ação é rápida, os encontros com inimigos são muito melhores agora que é possível enxergá-los e qualquer efeito visual não destrói a taxa de quadros. Mesmo assim, com uma visão clara, podemos ver claramente os problemas.

Sendo um jogo transicional entre as arenas abertas em disposição linear de Quake e o mundo conectado de Half-Life, GoldenEye não acerta muito em nenhuma, a palavra que mais define o jogo é inconsistência. A qualidade dos níveis varia muito, às vezes os objetivos são claros e o level design é perfeito para as batalhas, às vezes é uma wasteland gigante com inimigos spawnando infinitamente para sentir algum confronto, mesmo que eles não consigam fazer nada. Há fases inteiras na qual eu não tomo um tiro porque parece que eu estou lutando contra Stormtroopers: a quantidade é infinita e a qualidade da mira é zero.
Nos seus altos, GoldenEye é pura ação, com o fuzilamento de uma série de inimigos em corredores enquanto você corre para cumprir seu próximo objetivo, nos mais baixos, você fica perdido por 15 minutos em uma fase de 2 minutos porque uma chave necessária para progredir estava camuflada em uma mesa específica dentro de um dos 20 bunkers idênticos presentes em uma fase escura.

Mesmo com altos e baixos, minha experiência está sendo positiva, por isso a nota generosa, é um jogo divertidinho no estado que estou jogando, só não chega aos pés de vários outros títulos da sua época.

P.S.: Eu nunca tive a oportunidade de jogar o multiplayer e apenas completei uns 80% da campanha principal, então talvez isso possa mudar minha nota.

P.S.2: Acabei de zerar o jogo, e as últimas missões não foram grande coisa, lol.

Right so, you know those dullards on Twitter who have heard someone's spicy take and then parrot it back to their mates, thinking they're dropping some absolute truth bombs when the reality is the only thing they're dropping is other people's opinion of them? You know the ones. The ones who give it "ACTUALLY, every Sonic game was bad." Those ones.

Well, I was one of those with Goldeneye. Wait, let me explain. I had my reasons.

So, obviously as a man well into his thirties, I loved Goldeneye when it first came out. Bought it day one and I might as well have glued the fucking thing into my N64 for at least the next year. We all know the deal - it brought revolutionary 3D first-person shooter multiplayer into the domain usually reserved for Mario Kart and also happened to have a really entertaining single player portion to boot. The three main difficulty settings that add new objectives into each level, requiring you to fully explore them and experiment with Bond's gadgets in order to succeed couple beautifully with unlocking cheats by beating par times - basically speedrunning levels - meaning Goldeneye constantly required you to refine your approach to each of the levels.

Great times, great memories are attached to Goldeneye, so of course I tried to replay it in more recent times. This is where the problems start to appear. On original hardware, the framerate is extremely poor (exponentially worse in multiplayer, which can almost become a slideshow in some instances) and on emulation, there's something not quite right about playing N64 games without an N64 controller.

So, when I heard it - "Goldeneye was a bit overrated" - that was my go-to line. Whenever this legendary game was discussed, I'd always be the one to bring everyone down a few pegs, to let them know to leave it as nostalgia and to not go back. Leave it in '97. If it can't hang with shooters in 2021, was it really ever that good to begin with? Besides, Doom 64 was better.

Earlier this year, the long-rumoured XBLA port of Goldeneye was leaked online, allowing anyone with an Xbox 360 emulator (or native hardware, if you had a badboy machine) to play a fully re-textured, 60FPS locked version of Goldeneye with controls that are reworked with a now-standard dual analog controller in mind. With all of those issues I had when trying to replay it now removed, all of the stuff that Goldeneye does well - those missions, the near perfect difficulty curve, great atmosphere, satisfying, varied weapons - all gets a chance to shine once again and it turns out that Goldeneye is a total breath of fresh air when compared to the millions of shooters post-COD4 that are still riffing on that formula.

I was an idiot for saying it was overrated and whoever it was who I saw saying it in the first place is also an idiot too.

Your enjoyment of Goldeneye is going to depend heavily on how much leeway you can give it for being an early console FPS. PC FPS games were more established by this point thanks to Doom and Wolfenstein laying the groundwork, with mouse and keyboard controls making these games a breeze to play. Serious reconsideration had to be given to the mechanical feel of first person shooters when 3D gaming hit the mainstream, and nowhere were the growing pains more pronounced than on console. It doesn't help when the controller you have to work with looks like it was made in a clown factory, too.

And yet, Goldeneye still plays perfectly fine today... if you're willing to accept it for what it is. Yes, the addition of a right stick helps tremendously as evidenced by the leaked Project Bean, and those emulating the original have the option of a mouse and keyboard hack. It goes a long way to make Goldeneye more enjoyable, but also highlights the fact that the game was balanced around having a single analog stick. In some ways it trivializes the game, and in others it makes it far less agonizing (especially in the later levels or 00Agent mode.)

On its default difficulty, Goldeneye is a briskly paced shooter where you're more or less jogging to the end of each level. Higher difficulties add additional mission objectives, some of which are downright obtuse. Losing a life means starting the entire level over, and when you're dealing with aggressive enemies that deal a lot of damage on top of mission objectives that can easily be botched, you end up with a hell of a challenge. But I like it. When you start to figure out the rhythm of levels on 00 it just feels good. Dying is almost always a learning experience, and it's very rewarding when you start to develop a route you have confidence in.

On the more technical side of things, Goldeneye suffers from a lot of the same issues other N64 games do: the framerate is generally pretty terrible, everything looks muddy, the draw distance is abysmal, and the lighting is overly dark. It's sometimes hard to tell what the hell is even going on, and this can result in some cheap deaths. I don't want to be "that guy" that preaches the superiority of CRTs for retro gaming as there are some solid upscaling options on the market, but playing Goldeneye on modern displays is a bad time. My Retrotink did little to alleviate how crushed the blacks were, making levels like the statue graveyard almost impossible to play without heavily boosting the display's brightness. Alternatively, you can try Project Bean, and honestly that might be the best way to go if you want to enjoy Goldeneye today.

I have a lot of fondness for this game, but there's also a lot you need to look past, and if you want to play it today you're going to have to jump over a few hurdles. Or just emulate it.

One of those games people talk more about the console it's on than the game itself when discussing it.

Anyways, stellar atmosphere, Grant Kirkhope and Graeme Norgate produce what is in my mind still one of the greatest OSTs in a first person shooter. This is honestly like half the reason I'd bother to keep playing it, maybe a hot take but it's good enough that imo it hard carries a lot of the game's struggles (but only so far)

[something about controls/difficulty section:]
A lot of people like to groan about the controls but they're REALLY not that bad. The game is deliberately designed around a shooting gallery style of play to compensate for the N64 controller's single analog stick. No, the problem comes from some really questionable game design choices otherwise; I was breezing through the game on 00 Agent until it came to a screeching halt with Bunker (or Return to Bunker, I forget), playing on the leaked XBLA port/remake via Xenia. It's little things that add up, like making explosions a lingering effect that still hurts you a lot if you scrape them, or enemies' cloth caps tanking a headshot from you (massive pita for Bunker/RtB), or deciding to fill up large open rooms with enemies that can nearly one-shot you; not even the KBM emulation build will save you from that one. I also just think the KBM build is generally a lame way to approach it, I'm all for options/accessibility in games but I would never go out of my way to recommend it, it utterly trivializes what good challenge was carefully designed around the controls while still not being a remedy for more core issues (as stated earlier)

All in all it's a fascinating game from a historical context (but specifically only for console..?), hard carried by its godtier atmosphere. Unfortunately held back extremely hard by questionable mission design in the latter half.