I had Goldeneye as a teenager and I loved it. It was a super thrilling game that was like basically nothing else on the N64 and set the bar for console shooters at the time.

It has been teased for years as something that could show up on Switch and Xbox (and other platforms before that) but hasn't made it because it is a licensing nightmare, with not just Microsoft and Nintendo (who can play nice together these days) but also movie studios and likely actors involved, as well as composers etc...

Now someone has done that work and the game is out. I played through the dam level, which was pretty mind blowing as a youngster even though I'd already played more technically impressive games on PC and...

It's barren and unexciting. It just made me want to play more modern James Bond games and wish someone had gotten it right in recent times (I kind of liked Bloodstone but since then there's been like nothing.)

Is anyone actually planning to play this? Is anyone excited?

Don't get me wrong, it's great for game preservation that it's out, and I'm sure some people will get a nice nostalgia kick, but I think this would have hit much harder in 2008 on Wii and 360 than it does today. It's just so...old and creaky and FPS games have gotten so much better. Maybe if it had online? But even then.

Going from Hi-Fi RUSH to this just made me glad that we have modern video games and the medium has matured so much.

Goldeneye is Important™, but it has been a very long time since it was a good video game to play. Like, just 4 years after it came out you have Halo completely redefining the console shooter. Forget about playing Goldeneye in 2023, it was antiquated in 2003.

No, not really.

Listen I don't wanna take away the respect due to Goldeneye for its past but I also think that a lot of people are just pretending that it's still remotely relevant in 2023.

Goldeneye was cool. I remember being a kid at a party watching the "older kids" play it and wishing I got a chance to play it. I think its good that it exists for preservation as all things, but I certainly have no desire to play it again even with nostalgia.

It is interesting what transcends the grip of time and what does not.

Super Mario World? That shit cant be topped!

I think the Deadspace Remake is interesting in this regard - I'm eager to play the new one eventually - but the original holds up just fine. Can it be made better? I think so - but how much better can it be?

I feel like Goldeneye exists in a different conversation because Goldeneye HAS been remade... constantly. Its being remade every year since it came out in the form of the shooter genre and I dont know if remaking goldeneye with modern tech would even be enough to return it to glory as it would also need to be as better now against its contemporaries as it was back then and I dont see that happening. People never stopped chasing that dragon, its probably one of the most popular genres if I were to guess.

Deadspace? We'd probably need to open that list to decades of games to match whats come out in the last few years of shooters.

Its pretty much a museum piece at best to be honest. It really represents a moment in time that unfortunately cannot be replicated except for a very select few. Out of those few I feel alot will not be too happy about the modernized analog directional viewing or the very muddy visuals. The flaws of the "port" heavily outweigh any of the nostalgia factor that it could have offered. In my opinion, it's just an attempt at a easy cash grab for them and to make matters worse it doesn't really feel or play like the original on almost any level. Sometimes things should be left in the past or played in its natural state i guess .

Its part of an era that can really show its age, early 3D has probably held up the worst. A Goldeneye remake would have pretty great it wouldn't take a lot to modernise because of the games structure.

I'm also really curious how Hi-Fi Rush does.

Not just early 3D but Goldeneye was before FPS controls were standardised.

That Hi Fi Rush though, everyone get on that cause that’s the good stuff. You can do Metal Gear Rising parries on a beat so it’s Basically Perfect.

@berserk007: I think it's weird to call it a cash grab considering that it came out on two subscription services and on Xbox you get it free even with no subscription if you have Rare Replay, a game released like a decade ago and that has often been dirt cheap since then. That's some real dumb cash grabbing. I think it's much more about generating good will and because there are people at the companies who are passionate about the game.

I woud also guess that it plays very much like the old game if you have a Switch N64 controller to play it with. Modern controllers just do not emulate that style well. Also anyone born after like 1985 would hate having to play Goldeneye with its original control schemes.

@junkerman: I don't think it's fair to say that Goldeneye got "remade" with every new console shooter. There are old FPS games that hold up well. Doom (the original) is the most obvious example. That game still plays great and its atmosphere even holds up well thanks to well drawn sprites and the AMAZING sound in that game (Iconic soundtracks don't really age.) Duke Nukem 3D is still a decent time. Quake still works, not quite as well but it's still cool.

I think Goldeneye suffers from a few things. The first is its attempt to be "realistic." Realistic graphics with 'real' people always age the worse. Goldneye's guards look like low poly abominations where Quake's shambling horrors still look like shambling horrors because they were always very stylized. They aren't scary anymore (if they ever were) but they don't look laughable.

The second is the control scheme. It was never good. Quake's controls are pretty close to modern standards.

The third is the N64's cartridge format that forced a bunch of compromises even at the time in terms of what could be included. No voices, limited textures, limits on the music etc... It's a 12 megabyte game. That's ridiculously small.

N64 Goldeneye wasn't very good when it released. I can't imagine it's gotten much better by whatever modern implementation it's getting. And I certainly don't want to pay the Switch online ransom of 70 bones or whatever, just to find out.

My enthusiasm disappeared when it was revealed how restricted this release would be, no PC version despite the popularity of emulation and fans striving to decompile and preserve old games, online multiplayer only on Nintendo, i guess we should congratulate them for navigating the licensing nightmare and getting SOMETHING out, but it's not Rare's 360 remaster project and you'd struggle to call it complete, this only fuels fans to release something better.

Also Goldeneye is awesome and fun and you're all out of your god damn minds.

Edit: Now that i've seen more reactions to this release it's confirmed how half assed it is, it's almost like the two versions were made by different teams, the Switch version is straight up emulation with minor changes, it has widescreen and runs at a higher resolution but they haven't included a control layout for modern controls, it also has some very minor texture issues related to the emulation and aliasing, the Xbox version supports 4K and has a modern control layout enabled by default, but has no multiplayer and apparently has some performance and texture issues, oh and both versions run at 30fps, and the hud and text are in their original resolutions and haven't been updated.

You also can't buy it standalone you HAVE to have a subscription either to Nintendo's retro service whatever it's called or Gamepass, what a celebration of this insanely influential game, historically lauded and revered, shoved out in this half baked state tacked on to subscription services, not that you should be buying this version of it anyway.

It's been possible to run Goldeneye at high resolution widescreen 60fps for over a decade through emulation, that they're not even supporting 60fps in this release is amazing to me, it feels like the least you could do especially considering fans did it so long ago.

If it was the remaster/remake thing that leaked last year, I would maybe be at least a little interested to try it at some point, maybe. Original Goldeneye in 2023 though? No thanks.

I played it when it came out and I was eleven

The only way I would boot this up is if it had Avatar: The Last Airbender style easy to get achievements. It was entertaining to see it pop up in my library though, because of Rare Replay.

It was good as a console release in 1997, but was kind of underwhelming when compared to PC shooters at that time, and it certainly did not age well since. I liked it when all I had was Nintendo consoles, but I've since become more aware of gaming as a whole, since then. I also used to think that Doom was bad because I had only played it on SNES, until years later. Turns out the original PC version was way better than the SNES port!

It's worth maybe playing for a few minutes for the nostalgia, but outside of that, meh.

If you're playing this on the Switch Online Extra tier then you already know what you're getting into because you have the whole N64 package in there. Maybe this game hasn't aged great, but which N64 titles have? According to the trailer you've got online multiplayer and it seems to run at a 60 fps which is a pretty big upgrade over the original. I'll definitely give it a try again.

On the Xbox its existence may be a little more critically examined because it's either a paid product on itself or it's a game on Game Pass that doesn't exactly compensate for the lack of new AAA releases. I'm not saying it's a zero-sum game but too many bad and/or old games may have an influence on the perceived value of Game Pass. I don't think they're doing poorly yet but that's something to be considered.

@apewins: I do not understand your distinction between the Switch Online Expansion subscription and the Game Pass subscription. They are both subscriptions and Game Pass always has a huge variety from the indie to the AAA. Hi-Fi RUSH released basically at the same time so it's not like it took another slot and claiming that it is compensating for an AAA release seems...incredibly wrong? Most Game Pass games are not AAA and there's no evidence this took any slot. Like you seem to have just made all this up out of whole cloth.

It's also free if you have Rare Replay on Xbox so you don't even need Game Pass to get it free. I suppose there you will say they might have added a different free Rare game to a nearly decade old product they often sell for peanuts.

I played a ton of Goldeneye back in the day on the N64, and it's definitely an important game in the history of FPS games on consoles...but I don't want or need to play it again. I especially don't need to play it with what I'm going to assume is an incredibly awkward controller mapping like the majority of N64 games on Nintendo Switch Online.

@bigsocrates: there are lots and lots of reasons people are interested in games aside from what enjoyment may be had from it at one specific time. This game being rereleased, even in its funky form, is a damn miracle and really important for the history of the medium.

Ive played a bit of both versions. The switch version controls like a nightmare, the xbox version is much more playable. neither of them "feel good" to play compared to modern games, but that's almost irrelevant to why i'm interested in them now.

@bigsocrates: The Switch expansion pack contains the Nintendo 64 and Sega Mega Drive. If someone is paying for that pack then it's obvious that they are into those specific retro games and Goldeneye is a pretty big piece of the generally woeful N64 library. The pack also contains some DLC for modern games but if you don't care about the retro offering then you're probably better off buying that DLC separately. On the Game Pass though, Goldeneye doesn't exactly stand out in a positive way, never mind that there is a platform jump (how many Xbox players have nostalgia for an old Nintendo game anyway). Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they did what deals they needed to do in order to get this done but they probably would have been better off just sticking it into the Rare Replay and not do a whole lot of marketing for it on Xbox.

I'm not against playing it, but if I did it would be mostly from an academic perspective. Like I'd be interested in playing this for the sake of thinking about this game versus shooters of only a few years later versus shooters of today.

I have played a little bit of this game at some point, the first level or so, and I remember thinking "man this really doesn't hold up". It doesn't even hold up as much as Wolfenstein 3D and it certainly doesn't hold up as well as Doom, a game that will be fun as long as computers exist.

@apewins: Rare Replay is on Game Pass so it would have ended up there anyway. In fact that might be why it is there.

As for how many players have nostalgia for N64 games on Xbox...Goldeneye was a huge hit at a time when there were only really two consoles in the West (Saturn barely made inroads here.) Plenty of N64 kids ended up on Xbox.

The marketing thing was probably just to make it clear that this wasn't only going to Nintendo.

It may be more popular on Switch than Xbox but putting it on Game Pass didn't take a slot away from anything. This month has been pretty stacked for Game Pass anyway.

I'm struggling to find any logic in this. Are you actually saying that, instead offering this release as a free extra for their subscription service that millions of people already pay for, they should have instead kept it locked away as part of an Xbox One game compilation that originally released over 7 years ago? And on top of that, they should have kept it quiet, like some sort of no marketing stealth release?

Why even bother getting the deals done to get this on Xbox at that point? Xbox Game Pass is a great value that gets regular day 1 AAA release and has a solid catalogue of AAA and indie offereings at any given time. Goldeneye releasing on it does not impact that value proposition in any way. Anyone that is interested can play it, those that are not can happily ignore and play all they stuff they presumably subscribed for in the first place. There is no reason whatsoever for it to not be on game pass, especially not in favor of it being a Rare Replay exclusive. I still cannot imagine the thought process in thinking that would make any sense at all.

@ll_exile_ll said:

I am answering the question that was presented in the original posting of this thread. I am surprised about how quickly this went from "nobody cares about Goldeneye" to "everybody cares about Goldeneye".

If you think that Game Pass continues to be amazing value, then good for you. I disagree on that especially considering the recent output. Yes Pentiment is good but you can just buy it outright instead of renting it for roughly the price of a one month subscription. But that is beyond the scope of this thread and I am not interested in going there at this time.

That still doesn't explain how Goldeneye not being on gamepass would somehow be better. It didn't take the spot of something else, it is just a bonus for those that care. Everything MS releases goes on gamepass. If want to gripe about the value of gamepass, as you said that's another conversation, but I still fail to understand how any game being put on gamepass could possibly be bad.

@ll_exile_ll said:

It doesn't explain that because I never said that. Rare Replay is on Game Pass and obviously this game belongs in that collection and the enthusiasts would have found it there just fine.

Whens NOLF?

As for Goldeneye, Timesplitters with all it's challenges would probably be a better play in 2023.

@onemanarmyy: Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect are both on Xbox through backwards compatibility and purchasable digitally.

I guess I am in the minority around here, but I have been playing it on Xbox and still having a ton of fun with it. I know a huge amount of that is nostalgia, but I am still having a lot of fun either way. The updated controls on Xbox are also a really welcome change.

This new version doesn't come with C-Button support. And for that reason, I'm out.

@onemanarmyy: From what i remember it's owned in parts by Fox Interactive, Monolith, Sierra which was picked up by Vivendi, who acquired Fox Interactive before giving them to Warner Bros, who acquired Monolith, before Vivendi were picked up by Activision.

I recommend NOLF Revival though some bugs remain.

I think it's cool it got released. I think going back and remembering all the good times I had with this game as a kid will be cool.

I only ever played the MP at friends houses as a kid and maybe tried the campaign once or twice. I fired it up through xcloud and played the first 2 levels. The input lag seemed worse than everything else I've ever tried to stream. But I can still see the appeal, even today, and am reminded why this game was so huge. Really though, it was the music that pulled me through the levels. I thought I'd just play the first one and then the track starts on the next mission and off we go. It. Just. SLAPS!

@bigsocrates: this is the most important information on this thread. Cannot wait to go buy timesplitters when I get home.

I've been playing through perfect dark the last few weeks, so jumping from that to Goldeneye has really just confirmed that I find perfect dark to be a better game in every aspect. It's cool that Goldeneye has online on the Switch, but it's a bummer they couldn't make something similar work on Xbox. Without online, this just doesn't seem like it will get the same response. Like most have stated, it's nice from a game preservation standpoint, but not as big of a deal as it would have been five-ten years ago.

Just came here to drop this

An engaging game from the past can be a engaging game. But was Golden Eye N64 really that engaging? It was important, but the game-play sucked. The levels were simplistic and dumb... the control was primitive and finger twisting.

The issue is that tons of people played Golden Eye, they remember it fondly. Yet, let us be honest, outside of "Nintendo" & "Rare" properties Golden Eye was the only game N64 had that was even mildly popular. The rose tinted glasses for GE are just so strong all you can see is pink fog.

So I played a couple of levels, as a newcomer to Goldeneye. The visuals don't really bother me (turns out it looks fine emulated in the browser) but the pace of it really suffers.

The way Rare/Free Radical approached the genre really pigeon-holed the speed you could play the game at. So you've got stationary enemies reacting to gunshots, making daft side hops and generally looking sluggish.

@monkeyking1969: You're right Nintendo put out the best N64 games, but that's also true for every console they've put out since.

However it did have non Nintendo/Rare games like Turok, Rogue Squadron, N64 exclusive wrestling games (wrestling was huge in the 90's), The World Is Not Enough, PS1 ports like Resident Evil 2, Wipeout, it wasn't a lonely system.

I don't feel like i have to defend Goldeneye its virtues are obvious but i do want to offer my perspective, PC shooters of the time were bombastic, ripping fast, bouncing off the walls going psycho blowing up demon spawn with fantasy weapons, Goldeneye was slower and more strategic especially on the harder difficulties, it was among the first of the realism shooters rendering "realistic" locations using real guns against motion captured soldiers, it had the first sprinklings of physics objects in games that i remember, harder difficulties increased the number of objectives the player had to achieve changing how the levels were played, all fully rendered in 3D, it had limited stealth, alarms, location based damage... it was impressive.

Quake was very very impressive and pushed 3D graphics to the next level but you know... it was brown, it was a brown corridor shooter that was mostly brown with environments that didn't resemble anything in the real world, then a year later Goldeneye comes out with secret facilities, Soviet libraries and naval frigates, it makes for better screenshots than monsters in a brown hallway.

The amazing shooters of the time were mostly from id and whoever licensed the Build Engine, for comparison the same year Goldeneye came out saw shooters like Outlaws and Rebel Moon Rising, good games but certainly not as impressive as GE, a year later Rainbow Six came out and pushed the "realism" shooter genre forward, it had some impressive AI moments but its visuals and gameplay didn't reach what GE was doing.

A year later Half Life changed the FPS genre forever, on consoles Perfect Dark would mark the next advancement in console shooters until a year later when Halo came out.

@monkeyking1969: That's not true. The Star Wars games were very popular, and so were the wrestling games and the Turok series (to some degree.)

GoldenEye was the third best selling title on the N64, Rare has four games in the top 10 source.

It's interesting that almost no one is defending GoldenEye. The game has not aged well, but I think it nailed a few things that many shooters screw up even now. For example, enemies *react* when you shoot them. This is so basic, but even now some games cannot meet this bar. I'm thinking of Mass Effect games, where when you shoot a guy you just plink away at their shield. ME2 was praised for its shooting, but for me it never felt great.

In general GoldenEye (and Perfect Dark) just had a different feel and loop than almost any other games. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. The enemies were dumb, and mostly just stood in one place and shot at you... but this lead to an interesting dynamic where you could shoot a ton of guys at once with effective "crowd control", like shooting round-robin style across multiple enemies so that they would each be wounded and no one would have a chance to shoot back. It just had a fast flow to it that (to me) is still satisfying. Would it hold up if I was playing it for the first time now? Probably not. But has it been made completely redundant by newer shooters? nah, not to me. But then again, I haven't played shooters for years, really, so I'm probably not the best judge.

so I bought the nintendo pass or whatever its called on switch before I even knew Goldeneye was supposed to come out (I needed something to scratch the itch that the still-unreleased Advance Wars remake was going to). I was excited to play it but AHHHHH the controls on switch are so fucked, unless nintendo patches it I'd have to go in and monkey around with control options to make it play halfway decent. At first I thought it was just an old game that played poorly but no, apparently the controls are legitimately screwed up and you'd need to switch the control sticks (plus some other junk) in order to have it play halfway decent. Really I was more excited for some couch multiplayer with my friends than single player anyway.

Oh well, back to Shining Force

I loved Timesplitters 2 when it came out, and it's on Xbox backwards compatibility, but a word of warning that these games came out before the industry settled on dual-stick FPS controls, so playing Timesplitters as a single-stick shooter is really rough nowadays and I couldn't complete even the first level. I wonder if Goldeneye at least gives you more options for alternative controls, I suppose I will have to try it since I'm subscribed anyway.

A Timesplitters trilogy with updated graphics and controls and online multiplayer I bet would do very well.

I've been playing on xbox and enjoying the experience. Goldeneye's approach to difficulty levels is still fantastic, offering up not just harder combat, but more varied mission objectives. Also its extremely generous auto-aim (made at a time when navigating an FPS on a controller wasn't set in stone) does a great job at making you feel like an assassin with a license to kill. There are some weird technical quirks - the frame drops are funny (and weirdly in the spirit of the original) and the onscreen text is overly blurry and clipped, but it's still surprisingly playable. Most importantly, shooting office chairs still results in fiery explosions which is tremendous.

The Xbox release is the first time Goldeneye has had halfway decent controls. That feels pretty major to me. Maybe one day it will happen for Metroid Prime, too.

EDIT: I would like to take full credit for Metroid Prime getting a re-release with good controls within two weeks of this post.

Finally got around to firing this up (on Xbox). Turns out when the game doesn't control like hot garbage it's kinda easy. Blasted through the first 5 or 6 levels on 00 difficulty and had a pretty good time zipping through the levels blasting down guards while they are still getting into place to shoot or just slowly raising there weapons up. I probably won't binge it again but I can see myself playing through a level every now and then and probably finishing it by the time the year ends.

@cikame: Yes i'm aware of that NOLF version. Especailly nolf2 is quite buggy and was quite hard to get working decently, but i did manage to complete both games and have a good time with it.

Nope

...but i am playing Persona 4 Golden on switch, which is arguably better. That being said, I spent hours upon hours playing multiplayer GoldenEye 64 when I was young lad. I appreciate them re-releasing it though, for archival sake.

@mistersims: I'm not sure releasing exclusively on subscription services via basic emulation with notable issues is great for preservation.