A blatant cash-in trying to use the name to bring up memories of the N64 game, this certainly had a lot of competition in the first person shooter genre. Not only does the name invite comparisons to the classic GoldenEye, but Rogue Agent also came out two weeks atter Halo 2 and one week after Half-Life 2. In this, you don’t play as Bond, but another 00 Agent that became unreliable and brutal after getting shot in the head by Dr. No. The game prided itself on letting you play and evil and brutal character.
Rogue Agent stats off on a simulated mission to getting into Fort Knox and stopping Goldfinger from setting off a bomb. Your helicopter goes down and Bond is killed. You get introduced to the main mechanics, which focus heavily on dual wielding: you can mix and match any of the single-handed guns in the game, firing them independently. This system works well, and would be good in a better game. You fail this mission and M blames you for the death of virtual Bond (who is somehow the best spy even though all his villains are still alive) and for the bomb going off – even though you’re not actually responsible for either, and you did nothing particularly “evil” that slowed you down. You then accept an invitation from Goldfinger to join him, because we know an organisation like MI6 would just let a violent, dangerous person that knows all sorts of secrets just leave with no issues.
Joining the organisation (the game wants to use SPECTRE but the licensing was still strange, so avoided the name itself), Scaramanga, who is surprisingly voiced by Christopher Lee, has created a special replacement eye that is equipped with features, such as seeing enemies though walls. Obviously, Scaramanga loves the colour gold, so your fancy new eye is gold in colour….a golden eye. Yup, the name “GoldenEye” is the nickname of the character you play as, that’s the weak justification they went with.
Goldfinger reveals his new creation: the OMEN, a weapon that can dissolve anything biological. Dr No launches an attack so you need to fight your way though waves of men, blow up the base and escape. You’ll notice an arrow on screen at all times showing where you need to go, because the level design is so bad that it needs it, with lots of copy and pasted corridors and no sense of direction.
Next you get sent to Hong Kong to assassinate Dr No. As Goldfinger doesn’t own a single sniper rifle, he relies on someone placing one next to the firing spot. This turns out to be a trap and you need to run across rooftops to escape – well, walk across rooftops. This feels like a game that where your should be speedy, brutally moving between enemies, but movement is really stiff. You get blocked by low walls and just walk slowly.
Other attempts at making you feel “evil” are using environmental hazards to kill enemies and taking hostages, neither of which feel particularly different from other shooting games . When you’ve finished with a hostage, you just throw them forward slightly and they die – no neck snapping like other games where you take hostages. You also only ever fight other baddies – MI6 never get involved.
Goldfinger has moved the OMEN to his casino and it gets attaceked by Xenia. No idea why she’s working with Dr No, but at least she’s from GoldenEye. Each level has a nice setting, but you never really do anything different in them, and the levels repeat so often that you’re tired of them by the end. You’ll also encounter some generic goons that have names when you hover over them, these take more hits than standard enemies. You reach the vault and set off the OMEN as you leave, although it must be a small blast as Xenia is unharmed.
By this point, you’ll have likely finished experimenting with combinations of guns as there aren’t many at all. A pistol, SMG and shotgun along a few guns with specific uses, like one that shoots little remote control bomb and a poison one that stuns enemies (on you, it slows you down and is very annoying). While the dual wielding is the game’s defining feature, I found myself sticking to double handed guns as much as possible.
Oh look, it’s a dam. Specifically Hoover Dam, Dr No has a secret base inside (why? because they needed a reason to have a level involving a dam). He has a bomb inside so that the US government doesn’t attack him. You’ll blow up a lot of vehicles in this level, but it’s mostly the same as everything before it. Your objective is to get inside and blow up the bomb yourself – probably the most evil thing you do, and it’s in a cutscene.
After you send the bomb down a put to blow it up, Goldfinger’s right hand man comes running at you and you throw him down the pit (all in a cutscene). I looked online to find out what just happened, and it turns out nobody else really knows. As you escape, Xenia knocks you out and it jumps back you you being in control and she’s in a aircraft shooting at you. I have no idea why.
In order to find the location of Crab Key, Dr No’s hideout, you need to attack “The Octopus”, a secret underwater base where members of not-legally-SPECTRE buy their weapons and make deals. The level starts with a hologram accepting you, while enemies suddenly start shooting you. The AI is quite decent, and they’ll use environmental hazards against you, but form this level onwards I noticed they quite often took each other hostage, and I have no idea what that’s supposed to achieve.
This level looks the nicest, with the evil lair them in overdrive and an octopus motif, but unfortunately has the came copy and pasted bland corridors as all the other levels. You do get to spend Goldfinger’s money, which is somewhat amusing.
Time to take on Crab Key. You’ll have to use your eye’s hacking ability in this level to activate bridges. You set up some bombs than disable Dr. No’s satellite, before defeating Dr. No himself in boss fight where you have to hack a bunch of buttons and then shoot him. As you head off to escape, Goldfinger says he doesn’t trust you and say he’s going to kill you. Luckily, you’re right next to Dr. No’s hanger bay.
After this, Goldfinger takes control of the organisation’s volcano lair by vaporising everyone with the OMEN. Scaramanga has a plan: first, you must free the prisoners in the detention centre (even though a second ago, it was stated that everyone was wiped out), then fight your way to Goldfinger.
It’s very hard to distinguish between allies and enemies, but there’s no consequences for killing them and they aren’t helpful anyway. You also encounter a new weapon based on the OMEN: a weapon that an vapourise enemies in one hit (other than the stronger enemies, who require multiple hits). While this sounds good, enemies have these and can also fire them repeatedly (much faster than you can) and you also die in one hit, so most deaths will be a shot from somewhere you haven’t seen.
Once you reach Goldfinger, he dies in a cutscene and the game is over. No final confrontation or anything.
For a game about you being a brutal, violent bad guy, it’s just a very generic shooting game with no blood or anything more violent than any other. You only ever fight other villains, and there are no innocent civilians in the game. The “dark and gritty” attempt at gameplay just doesn’t do either properly, and it at odds with the cheesy and silly story. This is a very poor game where the only enjoyment is how bad some parts are.
The game also ahs a basic multiplayer mode, which has a level based on the end of GoldenEye (the actual GoldenEye). It’s uses the same tedious gameplay, but catching each other out on the death traps provides some entertainment.
Rogue Agent stats off on a simulated mission to getting into Fort Knox and stopping Goldfinger from setting off a bomb. Your helicopter goes down and Bond is killed. You get introduced to the main mechanics, which focus heavily on dual wielding: you can mix and match any of the single-handed guns in the game, firing them independently. This system works well, and would be good in a better game. You fail this mission and M blames you for the death of virtual Bond (who is somehow the best spy even though all his villains are still alive) and for the bomb going off – even though you’re not actually responsible for either, and you did nothing particularly “evil” that slowed you down. You then accept an invitation from Goldfinger to join him, because we know an organisation like MI6 would just let a violent, dangerous person that knows all sorts of secrets just leave with no issues.
Joining the organisation (the game wants to use SPECTRE but the licensing was still strange, so avoided the name itself), Scaramanga, who is surprisingly voiced by Christopher Lee, has created a special replacement eye that is equipped with features, such as seeing enemies though walls. Obviously, Scaramanga loves the colour gold, so your fancy new eye is gold in colour….a golden eye. Yup, the name “GoldenEye” is the nickname of the character you play as, that’s the weak justification they went with.
Goldfinger reveals his new creation: the OMEN, a weapon that can dissolve anything biological. Dr No launches an attack so you need to fight your way though waves of men, blow up the base and escape. You’ll notice an arrow on screen at all times showing where you need to go, because the level design is so bad that it needs it, with lots of copy and pasted corridors and no sense of direction.
Next you get sent to Hong Kong to assassinate Dr No. As Goldfinger doesn’t own a single sniper rifle, he relies on someone placing one next to the firing spot. This turns out to be a trap and you need to run across rooftops to escape – well, walk across rooftops. This feels like a game that where your should be speedy, brutally moving between enemies, but movement is really stiff. You get blocked by low walls and just walk slowly.
Other attempts at making you feel “evil” are using environmental hazards to kill enemies and taking hostages, neither of which feel particularly different from other shooting games . When you’ve finished with a hostage, you just throw them forward slightly and they die – no neck snapping like other games where you take hostages. You also only ever fight other baddies – MI6 never get involved.
Goldfinger has moved the OMEN to his casino and it gets attaceked by Xenia. No idea why she’s working with Dr No, but at least she’s from GoldenEye. Each level has a nice setting, but you never really do anything different in them, and the levels repeat so often that you’re tired of them by the end. You’ll also encounter some generic goons that have names when you hover over them, these take more hits than standard enemies. You reach the vault and set off the OMEN as you leave, although it must be a small blast as Xenia is unharmed.
By this point, you’ll have likely finished experimenting with combinations of guns as there aren’t many at all. A pistol, SMG and shotgun along a few guns with specific uses, like one that shoots little remote control bomb and a poison one that stuns enemies (on you, it slows you down and is very annoying). While the dual wielding is the game’s defining feature, I found myself sticking to double handed guns as much as possible.
Oh look, it’s a dam. Specifically Hoover Dam, Dr No has a secret base inside (why? because they needed a reason to have a level involving a dam). He has a bomb inside so that the US government doesn’t attack him. You’ll blow up a lot of vehicles in this level, but it’s mostly the same as everything before it. Your objective is to get inside and blow up the bomb yourself – probably the most evil thing you do, and it’s in a cutscene.
After you send the bomb down a put to blow it up, Goldfinger’s right hand man comes running at you and you throw him down the pit (all in a cutscene). I looked online to find out what just happened, and it turns out nobody else really knows. As you escape, Xenia knocks you out and it jumps back you you being in control and she’s in a aircraft shooting at you. I have no idea why.
In order to find the location of Crab Key, Dr No’s hideout, you need to attack “The Octopus”, a secret underwater base where members of not-legally-SPECTRE buy their weapons and make deals. The level starts with a hologram accepting you, while enemies suddenly start shooting you. The AI is quite decent, and they’ll use environmental hazards against you, but form this level onwards I noticed they quite often took each other hostage, and I have no idea what that’s supposed to achieve.
This level looks the nicest, with the evil lair them in overdrive and an octopus motif, but unfortunately has the came copy and pasted bland corridors as all the other levels. You do get to spend Goldfinger’s money, which is somewhat amusing.
Time to take on Crab Key. You’ll have to use your eye’s hacking ability in this level to activate bridges. You set up some bombs than disable Dr. No’s satellite, before defeating Dr. No himself in boss fight where you have to hack a bunch of buttons and then shoot him. As you head off to escape, Goldfinger says he doesn’t trust you and say he’s going to kill you. Luckily, you’re right next to Dr. No’s hanger bay.
After this, Goldfinger takes control of the organisation’s volcano lair by vaporising everyone with the OMEN. Scaramanga has a plan: first, you must free the prisoners in the detention centre (even though a second ago, it was stated that everyone was wiped out), then fight your way to Goldfinger.
It’s very hard to distinguish between allies and enemies, but there’s no consequences for killing them and they aren’t helpful anyway. You also encounter a new weapon based on the OMEN: a weapon that an vapourise enemies in one hit (other than the stronger enemies, who require multiple hits). While this sounds good, enemies have these and can also fire them repeatedly (much faster than you can) and you also die in one hit, so most deaths will be a shot from somewhere you haven’t seen.
Once you reach Goldfinger, he dies in a cutscene and the game is over. No final confrontation or anything.
For a game about you being a brutal, violent bad guy, it’s just a very generic shooting game with no blood or anything more violent than any other. You only ever fight other villains, and there are no innocent civilians in the game. The “dark and gritty” attempt at gameplay just doesn’t do either properly, and it at odds with the cheesy and silly story. This is a very poor game where the only enjoyment is how bad some parts are.
The game also ahs a basic multiplayer mode, which has a level based on the end of GoldenEye (the actual GoldenEye). It’s uses the same tedious gameplay, but catching each other out on the death traps provides some entertainment.