I won't call this a review since I don't really address a lot of the primary features or positive aspects of the game. This is more of a rant of disappointment.
So the more I play this, the more disappointed I get. Of course, when I heard it was coming out, I knew it wouldn't measure up to the old game, but I thought it would at least be a nostalgic experience for us teen N64 players.
It's not.
Activision has the rights to the Bond franchise, but they don't own any of the rights to the original Rare game. I guess they had to make this game different enough from the original so it wouldn't look like any copyright infringement, even though Rare's game mostly used content from the movie in the first place. Activision seems they used neither the predecessing game nor the movie as their reference, for the layout of the levels all the way to the plot - it's so different that it's like they created their own complete story from scratch. Oh, and just because you see Jaws and Baron Samedi as selectable multiplayer characters, don't get your hopes up - it's not an indication that the Aztec and Egypt bonus levels are available in the campaign; they're not. But they felt it necessary to include those bonus characters, along with Oddjob, anyway. Because, y'know, it just wouldn't feel like the original game if they didn't include them. :|
In the end, it truly just feels like I'm playing a bad Call of Duty, which seems to have been a much bigger inspiration and influence anyway, with a sort-of James Bond skin.
For the gameplay... They placed check points in the game. So throughout a single mission, you'll run into 10-15 check points, the most recent of which you'll return to if you die. This seems to be pretty commonplace in FPS games now to keep the smoothness and have the game less broken up, but in this case it just seems to be a quick workaround for parts of the game that they didn't take time to balance. The levels are longer, so check points can make sense... But it just seems like they can get away with having stupidly difficult parts because they can just drop a check point right before it; the player can't complain because they didn't have to play the whole level again. I just can't help but compare it to the original Goldeneye, which certainly had its difficult parts, but was balanced enough so it wasn't like you'd die at the same stupid part, 10 minutes into the level, and have to play the whole thing over and over again. They actually worked on the N64 Goldeneye long enough to balance it. Well... MOST of it; the N64 version's Control level on 00 Agent difficulty may be the exception.
The game also has waypoints - indicators on your map and even directly on your screen that tell you exactly where to go to progress through the level. How much more linear can you be? Exactly like any of the other military FPSs out there.
Something else to add: Throughout most levels, there are various points of no return. You'll go through a door, and some explosion will cause a support beam to fall and block the door behind you (for instance), so there's no way to go back. I'm against things like this on principle, because it just adds to the linear "game on rails" feeling, and it takes away more of the element of exploration, as if the waypoints weren't bad enough. I'd prefer to have open levels, but whatever: I can deal with it if the gameplay is good enough.
However, many of your mission objectives are things like, "Gather 5 pieces of intel throughout the level." If you know you're approaching the end of the level pretty soon and you have 3/5 pieces of intel, you can rest assured that you missed one. On N64, no biggie - go back and find it; you might run into more baddies, but you can still accomplish the mission. Not so on the Wii - the points of no return plus the check points force you to accept your failure before you've even finished the level because there's no way to go back and search for what you missed. And the waypoints don't direct you to the secondary (and often mandatory) objectives when you pass them - they simply give you a sense of urgency and lead you further into the level, causing you to miss things. If anything, the waypoints direct me where to AVOID going, so I ensure I don't miss anything.
Next, the Wiimote controls are... Well, they just don't feel as good as they could/should be. I know how good first-person controls can be because I've played Metroid Prime 3. This game is just choppy-feeling, though. At first, I saw how much was customizable and how many options there were, but I realized it's just a dog-shit-contaminated batch of brownies. Throw it all away.
You can resize the "dead zone" in the middle of the screen, which is the area in which you can point without the character turning. That's kind of nice, but I find that when I move the cursor from the dead zone into the turning zone, it's very abrupt. It's hard to turn just a small amount, while still leaving the turn sensitivity high enough so you can turn quickly when needed. Sometimes I turn when I don't want to, and sometimes I try to turn and it doesn't happen.
There's an option that will, when moving your reticle cursor around in the dead zone, shift your view slightly in the respective direction. Effectively, it gives you more to work with inside the dead zone, but feels sloppy in combination with the turning functionality of the cursor.
Another feature: When you look down your scope to get more precise shots (Aim Down Sights), it sort of automatically tries to focus your view on an enemy that's close to your aiming reticle (Aim Down Sights Snap). It's nice to get a close view on a guy quickly, but much of the time I end up relying on it and it fails me during a big intense gun fight, and I end up zooming in on a completely different part of the screen while the group blows me away.
All these extra features that are supposed to give a bit more smoothness to the game are OPTIONS, though - options that I fucking turned off because they irritate me to no end. All I did was bump up the sensitivity, turn off all the extra options, and shrink the dead zone to be as small as possible. It's as close to the natural feel of Metroid Prime 3 as I can get, but still leaves me wanting.
Of course, with the lack of lock-on that Metroid has (just hold the "Z" button, and you'll lock-on to an enemy, keeping the center of your screen focused on it until it's dead or out of range), you have to be a lot more precise with your shots. I've found it hard to be precise with my shots. Why's that? Because of all the 10-12 pre-set button configurations, none of them allow me to change "Fire Weapon" to the "A" button instead of the "B" button. I know "B" is the "trigger" on the remote and all, but I can fire much more quickly and precisely with "A" than I can with "B." The button schemes simply swap around which buttons will reload, open the menu, switch weapons, aim down sight, crouch, and pretty much every other goddamned action in the game EXCEPT firing your weapon. It would have been so much easier to just allow free button mapping. So, I eventually resorted to turning on the auto-aim for the last few levels, although I hate doing that because it just feels like I'm making the game do my work for me. Additionally, auto-aim isn't available in multi-player. Why get used to a feature I can't use when playing with/against other people? I was so frustrated by all of it that I almost pulled out a Gamecube controller or a Classic controller to play with, since those are also options (which is cool for those used to the dual-joystick setup).
To top off all the controls business, there's a hundred options and a billion different setups - maybe a good thing, but you have to go through about 6 sub-menus anytime you want to make adjustments (Pause > Options > Control Settings > Wii Remote Presets > Customize > one of many submenus > possibly another submenu > adjust). So it's almost too much of a hassle to switch anything - by the time I go in and adjust something, then exit each of the menus, save changes, and get back out to the game, it's been 30-45 seconds and it's hard to make a comparison with what the controls were before.
As far as the enemies themselves, don't you dare try to kill anything without having a silenced weapon, or let any guys see you and fire their non-silenced weapon, or do anything in any way to alert them. Everybody in a 10 mile radius will hear about it. Instantly. And they'll know exactly where you are. There are no "stages" of alertness by the bad guys; they don't "I think I saw something..." or "What was that?!" or "Ohmygod hit the alarm!" No sir. If they even catch a glimpse of you through a small crack, the shit's hit the fan - they'll know immediately what they saw and they'll alert everyone. Not only that, but if you do something remotely, like hack a drone gun from a distance with your smart phone so it starts shooting guys, or shoot a gas tank from a distance with a sniper rifle, it's the same effect - everyone finds out and magically knows exactly where you are. Seriously, there's more realistic AI in the original Goldeneye.
Not to mention that if you ever ARE discovered and you don't kill the guys before they can yell, "We found him!", EXTRA baddies appear as reinforcements - not just the 10 people that will be alerted, but 2 or 3 additional aggressive guys that only appear when you alert someone. So, you have to do everything in your power to remain stealthy. Unfortunately, I have found it difficult thus far to remain stealthy - most enemies you run into are in groups of at least 2 or 3 that notice right away when one of them is taken down.
And once you're exposed a single time in a mission, it's no longer a stealth mission. You got a room full of guys blasting at you - you clear them out and head into the next area. Well, the guy in the next area was already alerted by the gunfire he heard, so he starts shooting right away. This alerts guys in the next area, so they'll start firing when you get to them; it has a domino effect the rest of the level. Maybe this is more realistic and what would happen in a real life situation, but it's not conducive to making the game enjoyable - it's actually pretty infuriating. It's better to just kill yourself or start at the last check point if you're ever spotted. And if you run out of ammo for your silenced pistol, you're completely screwed.
On the other hand, there have been plenty of times where I've been stealthing my way through an area, and I've killed a guy standing right next to someone else, and the other guy doesn't even notice. This lack of consistency is what gets my adrenaline pumping more than anything - the gamble as to whether or not attacking someone is going to alert the entire country of Russia to my presence.
Again, this just feels like a bad Call of Duty; Goldeneye 007 on the N64 was essentially an arcade-style FPS - fast-paced, exciting to watch, with sensible AI that wasn't connected to a hive mind even on the hardest difficulty. This game just feels like it's trying to regurgitate the success of FPSs on other systems & PC, forcing you into an inevitably non-stealth mission, while butchering the Wii's control potential.
Then, the graphics really leave something to desire. I'm not even comparing it to other consoles or PC because I know the Wii is not set up to be a powerhouse in graphics. Problem is, I've seen prettier games on the Gamecube. Metroid Prime 1 was beautiful in its time, and still looks crisp and smooth even now. Additionally, MP runs consistently at a beautiful 60 frames per second. This game's frame rate is like the N64 - standard NTSC 29.95fps maximum - and it gets choppy during times when the screen is very "busy;" the game will even have little half-second pauses in the middle of a gun fight when I hear the whir of the disc drive trying to keep up with the action. Also, the quality of the images, scenes and models themselves is certainly no better (worse, in fact) than the early products of the Source Engine, like Half-Life 2, which came out in 2004. Why, for a game that looks relatively lousy, does it run like molasses in winter?
I haven't even mentioned some of the real technical issues - the game has frozen on me. Twice. I've also seen some real buggy stuff - I got stuck in a corner once and was completely immobile, then had to restart the level. One enemy I saw was stuck in a run animation, but his figure was flashing all over the screen, like the game couldn't physically place him on a surface or something. The game wasn't totally cleaned up before they rushed it out to shelves for the holiday season.
While I'm going on about every other aspect of the game, I may as well address some of the positive things. The sound and music are decent enough that they didn't catch my attention. The voice acting, while being done by professional actors, is mediocre. That's it.
Don't buy - rent if you must. I planned on hanging onto it for the party I'm having next week, but forget it. Not worth the few extra bucks to hang onto it for the additional days - it's going back to Blockbuster on its due date.
~A
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