GoldenEye: Reloaded (Xbox 360) | Published by Activision I Developed by Eurocom
Reviewed by MOX BORN AGAIN
The N64 was never seen as one of the classic gaming consoles. In fact, it's almost equally as under appreciated as the Game Cube. Even with that pretty harsh statement, there were some good games to play; Conker's Bad Fur Day, Mario 64, Mortal Kombat, Legend of Zelda & 1080 Snow Boarding just to name a few. One game that I particularly remember spending month after month playing, was 007 GoldenEye. This Bond game followed the film pretty closely was not only a great single player title it also offered what many others tried and failed horribly at, 4-player split screen. Our game of choice was license to kill on with the score set to unlimited. We would play from the time we got home Friday night until the early hours of the morning. When I found out that Activision was publishing a game that was named GoldenEye Reloaded, I was excited! After reading many reviews & previews, I found that this was a "re-imagining" of the cult classic game for the N64 generation. This phrase didn't mean a damn thing to me. I picked the game up expecting some minor changes, but I never would have imagined what I was getting myself into when I open my Xbox 360 tray and put the game in.
This game falls on its face in so many places it's hard to find a "good" place to start. The one thing that this game does right is the differences in it's difficulty settings. In most games when you select a difficulty that is higher or lower than the one the developers designed the game on, you get a sub par and some times frustrating experience. For example in Modern Warfare (it doesn't matter which one they all do it this way), when you select Veteran you are giving the enemies unlimited grenades. In GoldenEye Reloaded, I didn't realize that there were grenades in the game until the 3rd mission when someone threw one at me. Instead of increasing up the accuracy and grenade throwing, Eurocom gives you more objectives to do during the mission. You only need to complete the main objectives to move on to the next level, however in order to unlock the achievement all objectives must be done.
One negative about this game is that it suffers from an identity crisis. If you drop the name GoldenEye and the 3 or 4 main GoldenEye related plot points, this game would have been an easy solid game. But the developer decided to take those 3 or 4 plot points (Opening bathroom scene, helicopter, "fake death" of 006 & a few others) and stitch them together with really poor choices of story and character interaction. A great idea would be to drop those key points from the old game, drop the title and give it something new like. "Behind Enemy Lines". Is it perfect no but lets face it, taking one of our most prized childhood memories and completely turning it on its side and only giving us a few instances of what it once was is just out right mean! On top of that, the 3 or 4 plot points that are somewhat true to the original are spread just far enough that you actually start enjoying the game play and then it pulls you right out with the "oh yeah this was what it was back on the N64" and you want to beat yourself with your controller.
MI6 was probably the scrap paper that Eurocom found in the Infinity Ward's dumpsters when they were first brainstorming for Spec-Ops back in 2008. MI6 offers 2 game variants. Both of which are very simplistic and feel like a last minute add on. Online multiplayer is a laggy mess & feels unfinished, textures are low rez & washed out. This not only makes the game hard to play but, hard to get better at because you are constantly trying to contend with the spotty online connection. Meanwhile you are looking around and thinking "I could be playing something that at least looks nicer than this".
All in all rent this game for 3 nights, finish the single player, and take it back. By no means spend more that $8 on this game. If your thinking of buying this at $60, stop go buy a N64 and 007 Golden Eye at your local second hand shop and enjoy the game as it was meant to be played. (Hell if you have a standard def tv and you want the full effect plug that sucker in too!)
