It is clear why this game is one of the all time greatest games. It's cinematic, it looks good, and its impact on the FPS genre paved the way for later games such as Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. A movie tie-in game has no right to be this good. The two biggest downsides for this game are that the controls are not very good because they were still figuring out 3D aiming and the N64 only had one joystick. The second complaint is the framerate, the framerate can lag a lot sometimes. Nevertheless this is definitely worth the play whether you get it on N64, Xbox Series X, or Nintendo Switch.

I finished Goldeneye two times now in my life. Once 2 years ago and today on the hardest difficulty. Both times on original hardware but with different controllers. The first time was with one of those "better, enhanced etc." controllers, which reshape the N64 gamepad layout to a more modern one. And it was awful. Through the whole game I felt like I could never learn how to precisly aim, making me die over and over in a level I already knew how to beat, but the execution was near impossible. I really didn't enjoy expierence. I stopped playing after the main campain and made peace with the thought, I would never touch this appearently poorly aged game ever again. At least on OG hardware. I tried the keyboard and mouse emulator mod. While the extrem precision I gained was nice, it just didn't feel right. The enemy AI clearly wasn't bulit for this control method. Fast forward 2 years later and I finally replace the old stick of my original N64 controller with a new one, which gets as close to the original sensetivity as possible. And the first game I try is Goldeneye. And it's like night and day. My shots finally land, the precision aiming finally works and Goldeneye suddenly is actually fun now. After the inicial testing I decided to fully complete the game on the hardest difficulty. Goldeneye is still really hard in sometimes even a bit unfair. But during this run, it actually felt like I was only fighting the level design and not the controls. I have no nostalgia for this game, but with this playthrough I learned something important about Goldeneye and retro games in general. Some games belong to their console, they have to be played with their original control method to be fully appreciated. I never hated the N64 controller. But after finishing Goldeneye, I actually like it. It's layout may only work with these old N64 games, but it works way better than people think. And Goldeneye has aged. But more gracefully than I initially thought. Play it, but with the trident.

When it came out, there was nothing quite like GoldenEye 007.

20-something years later, there's still nothing quite like GoldeEye 007, for better or worse.

This was the game all the stinky boys played, huddled in front of the biggest TV any of our parents had. We brought our Nintendo 64's to school and played it there.

While it's far from perfect, it's hard to think of any other games except for Perfect Dark that scratched that same local multiplayer FPS itch on N64.

The graphics were just fine for the time, and the controls felt pretty awkward no matter which control scheme you used, but the gameplay was (and is) addictive, and there are so many variations on the James Bond theme song, and most of them are still stuck in my head.

me sinto um chato em dizer que golden eye "envelheceu", primeiramente porque esse jogo é muito querido por todo mundo, e (pra mim) usar isso como argumento de crítica é um anacronismo muito forte, criticar algo falando que envelheceu é compará-lo com obras atuais, o que não faz sentido, qualquer fps dessa época vai ser velho e ruim se seu único referente do gênero for warzone (vale pra qualquer jogo e gênero). Porém eu amo ser hipócrita, então digo, 007 envelheceu bastante.

não estou dizendo que ele é ruim porque envelheceu, pelo contrário, ele é ótimo no que se propõe a fazer, tem IA manera, multiplayer e etc, o que faz dele velho é justamente ser uns dos primeiros fps pra console. Minha crítica é a dificuldade e o level design, não é nem o mapa que é ruim, é o que você faz nele que me incomoda, um desperdício as missões serem andar até o final do mapa, e a Natalya, a partir do momento que ela aparece a dificuldade do jogo cresce dum jeito horrível, caralho, quantas vezes eu já falhei missão porque a bonitona desfilava na frente do tiroteio e matavam ela.

ou seja, golden eye envelheceu pq é muito difícil desassociar as influências atuais (que foi meu caso, é minha primeira vez jogando), mas se jogar como uma criança de 97 que nunca viu nada assim antes, esse jogo vai ser do caralho, mesmo com seus problemas.

a mão do bond segurando a arma na capa faz parecer que a boca dele é gigante

I am generally unwilling to return to analog-stick, single-digit-framerate console FPS games, so caveat that I played the source port on PC here. I imagine the score would be like half this if I'd replayed on the N64.

That said, the core design principles here are flawless. Contemporary players might complain about vague objectives, but honestly nothing is that complicated or vague. Importantly, the objectives are varied and the nonlinearity helps in contrast to CoD's dull, arbitrary "Hold X to place C4" nonsense. I do agree that it's brutal in combination with the lack of checkpoints, though. Still, there is some charm in optimizing your path through a level and finally perfecting it. It's also short as hell; I beat the entire thing on the hardest difficulty in a couple of hours.

Ultimately deserves its place in the pantheon. Assessing in retrospect, you have to factor in the context that Duke Nukem 3d and Quake had just come out the year before. The notion of a slower-paced tactical FPS just did not exist yet. It was the first majorly influential game to incorporate aiming for enemy weakpoints and a sniper rifle! Wild.

not the game ppl think it is Shimmy shimmy yay, shimmy yay, shimmy ya (drank)
Swalla-la-la (drank)
Swalla-la-la (swalla-la-la)
Swalla-la-la
Shimmy shimmy yay, shimmy yay, shimmy ya (drank)
Swalla-la-la (drank)
Swalla-la-la (swalla-la-la)
Swalla-la-la

Even though I'd already played some LAN PC shooters like Quake and Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, this felt really incredible for the time. Splitscreen multiplayer shooter on a console blew my mind, and I had such a blast playing it at friends. I don't know if I ever played the campaign in the 90s (I was a little young for the Brosnan Bond movies), but when I finally did about 10 years back I found it a really solid translation of the movie. The additional objectives on higher difficulties was a great touch, and really made you feel like a spy. Some of the later levels were pretty darn frustrating, like keeping Natalya alive while she fiddled with computers for ages, but I still had fun. Perfect Dark definitely felt like it refined a lot of the ideas put forth here, but I wish we still got movie tie-in games like this once in a while

Assim como GTA 3, Goldeneye é um jogo extremamente antiquado com uma base de gameplay extremamente sólida. Imagino que em um controle de N64 esse jogo era um pesadelo, mas quando você usa um controle de Xbox ele fica uma DELÍCIA. A fluidez do movimento e a facilidade de atirar, na minha opinião, fazem dele um dos melhores jogos de tiro que eu já joguei. Porém, tem muita coisa aqui que não envelheceu bem, principalmente os gráficos, mas isso é esperado de um jogo de mais de 20 anos atrás.
Enfim, joguem Goldeneye em um setup moderno, aí você vai entender o porquê de ser um dos jogos mais apreciados de todos os tempos.

The epitome of Keep It Simple, Stupid. Absolutely rules when you can focus on run and gun FPS mayhem... where it falters is when it tries more complex objectives, many of which end up obscure and unreadable without either looking them up or simply having prior knowledge from spending way too much time with it back in the 90s. The game will often not do much of anything to communicate how you're intended to complete some of these objectives (or in some cases even identify what they actually are), and doesn't really have a way to without spelling it out entirely and ruining the exploration. This, combined with some questionable level design, can make the game needlessly frustrating from time to time. Control on anything above Agent? Those turrets are absolute misery, it becomes a truly godawful level. Caverns, the most linear and basic level in the game, will be the easiest thing to run until the very end where horribly placed inept (or seemingly suicidal) enemies at the end regularly throw a grenade at you that they almost always manage to blow themselves and the radio up with. Most of the levels are fun to play through, but some of these little moments just hamper an otherwise very enjoyable game.

What's most impressive to me is that it is a hell of an adaptation of the movie. Watched the movie for the first time two or three years ago, and it makes it very easy to appreciate the care the game took in adapting the various locales and setpieces... it's an achievement by Rare just how authentic it feels to its source. I watched the movie 25ish years after playing the game and could identify almost everything as a discrete moment from the game. Even with N64 graphics, you can identify things with ease, it's insanely readable and shows the care that Rare handled this with. Excellent work.