This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

This is just an early aside (is it an aside if I haven’t started yet?), but I certainly wasn’t expecting to finish 3 games over the course of about 3 days and it wasn’t really planned. Like sometimes you have nothing going on for the day and you can churn out like 4+ hours of gaming over the course of a day in order to make a huge dent or finish a game that is close, but this wasn’t that instance at all. I finally finished “Judgement” and “Guac-a-melee” by maybe putting in an hour into each of the games before credits rolled. Those rankings will come up later, but those games were beaten after I finished this beauty heading into the weekend. I went from what seemed like a large gap between beating games, to now being backlogged in the ranking writing process. However, let’s get to the star of the show

I don’t normally do this, but I want to discuss my history with the game first. I was a Nintendo 64 kid, it was the first system that was truly mine in our household (I have an older brother and sister). Whatever that ownership does to ones brain, I played the hell out of every 64 game I had with very few exceptions (looking at you Hybrid Heaven). I made sure to get all the Stars in Mario 64, I got all gold medals in Blast Corps, and medaled all levels in Starfox 64 in order to unlock the new start-up screen and multiplayer characters. I would obsessively complete games back then, because as a kid/teenager you only get so many games a year (birthdays, holidays, saving up chore money, etc.). It was no different for Goldeneye. I completed every level, at every difficulty and beat the target times in order to unlock the different cheat codes that came with beating levels at certain speed. I did this feat well before I was very internet savvy, so most of those target times were beaten through intense trial and error about learning exactly what enemies had keys, and how to use the C button’s to strafe through levels faster and avoiding all encounters. I remember distinctly having that final save file with all the cheats unlocked playing on 007 difficulty and just overall exhausting everything I could with the game. On this playthrough I was amazed at some of the things that I still had memories of, but even more things that I had forgotten.

For perhaps the 2 people that don’t know, Goldeneye 64 is a first person shooter that follows the movie’s plot of the same name. You play as James Bond who eventually gets tasked with shutting down the Goldeneye laser, rescuing the girl, and squaring off against another agent. In this game, depending on the difficult you select, you will get objectives that you have to complete throughout each level that require a little more work than just shooting and walking through the level. For instance you might have to take pictures of important documents, destroy security cameras, hack certain terminals, or steal classified secrets. There are 3 difficulties at the start of the game that you can select, and each step up not only makes the enemies harder, but adds 1-3 objectives on from the previous lower difficulty. On Agent (easy) you might simply have to get to the end of the level and pickup an item, but on Secret Agent (medium) you will have to do those two things in addition to destroying all security cameras and planting a tracking device. It is a fairly good way to make playing through the game at different difficulties feel a little bit fresher assuming you start on the lowest and work your way through. On the first level there is a whole underground area that you wouldn’t need to even see playing on Agent, that you will then have to explore on harder difficulties.

While the missions obviously tell the story of the game, each mission acts as a standalone to the ones before and after. Weapons, ammo, health, or armor does not carry through from previous levels, so there is never a need to save specific weapons for late game moments. If you find a grenade launcher in a level, the only reason to not use it, is because you are afraid of the splash damage it might cause. While this means that you can’t paint yourself into a corner by finishing a level nearly dead, it also weans out any advantage you would have by conserving ammo and avoiding fights. It took me a good few levels to get this through my head, because I instinctually want to conserve, constantly in fear of running out in the moment that I might need it. However, its worth noting that this game is old school, before some of the benefits that we have now gotten accustomed to. There are no mid-level saves or checkpoints, there is no replenishing health, and the game doesn’t really hold your hand at any moment. I played the game at Secret Agent difficulty, because I don’t hate my life, and there are objectives that you just have to fail before you learn otherwise. In the first level on Secret Agent you have to throw a sensor onto an object to download data, but you only get one sensor and it is possible to throw it away and not get it back. The game doesn’t have an objective marker or throw up any big arrows as to what it wants you to do, you might throw it on something and realize you screwed up and have to start the whole level over to try again. You will either respect that madness or play this game with a guide in your lap. Yes, there is a briefing ahead of each level, should you read it all, but they don’t always send you a picture of everything you need to do.

The game also employs a weird way to re-spawn enemies. In some levels, enemies will re-spawn as long as you have not cleared out a room. Think of Gauntlet having a spawner that needs to be destroyed before it stops spitting out enemies. In this game the spawner is another enemy, that as long as that enemy does not die, more enemies will re-spawn from them. It’s hard to explain, but essentially this is a tactic that prevents you from sitting in one spot and goading all the enemies into charging you, as you sit back and kill them from a choke point. While those new spawned guards will drop ammo allowing you to repeat this dance for eternity, it will never stop enemies coming for you until you push forward and clear that room of its original enemies. Seeing as your health doesn’t re-fill and there are no health pickups in a level (only armor pickups) that war of attrition will never go in your favor.

Perhaps my skills were rusty, but I had a hard time believing that a game I beat so handedly in the past (and on the hardest difficulty) would routinely kick my ass nowadays. I’m not saying this is some super difficult game, as I was able to run through a whole playthrough in a short amount of time, but there are certainly some difficult points that can kill your level run and knowing you have to start all over might make you just put the game down and walk away for the day. There are some straight up bad levels in this game that are a pain at any difficulty, but especially harder ones. These levels either require you to hunt and peck for small details, or just offer a gauntlet of enemies with no armor in sight. Hell, I failed the level “statue” so many times because at the end of the level your girl is taken hostage, and your instinct in this game is to try and free her by shooting the guards holding her up, but by doing so she ends up getting shot and you have to start the level over. I tried being faster with my shooting, approaching from different angels, trying different weapons, before I finally realized that you are just supposed to get captured there. The level “Depot” and “Train” are a 1-2 combo of back to back bad levels for very different reasons. In “Depot” you have to hunt for all your objectives by navigating a maze of shipping warehouses looking for certain items, and in “train” you face an entire level of narrow corridors with no armor pickups. Its harder to dodge and juke enemies, when the hallways aren’t much bigger than you. I could talk about even more levels like “Control” and “Jungle” but I would be belaboring the same point, the game is about 40-50% bad levels. There is a reason that anyone who dips their toes back into this game, just plays through “facility”, because that’s the best level and it comes way too early.

I will admit though that I made this game harder on myself than I needed it to be, by playing on Switch. The game just does not feel the same playing it on anything outside of the N64 controllers. I felt the joystick was way too sensitive, but only when it came to aiming down the sights, which made shooting turrets a test of patience. I over relied on auto-aim for shooting soldiers because trying to use the reticule (which requires a button press, and for you to be stationary) would have killed me more often than not. The nostalgia of playing this on a Nintendo 64 might be clouding my memory here, and if that is the case then you can just ignore this whole critique, but I don’t remember having nearly the same problem with aiming of the controls in general playing it. However, seeing some of those target times that were required in order to get certain cheat codes means that I wasn’t stuck spending 2 minutes slowly lining up my aim to destroy a turret in a room that would have killed me otherwise.

Of course let’s be honest with ourselves here. The reason Goldeneye has a special place in anyone’s heart is because of the multiplayer. Back in the day you could gather 4 friends together on one screen and play competitive multiplayer on a console that just wasn’t done that often. People would come up with house rules such as; No oddjob, or slapper-only duels. This game was certainly the first I remember where screen peeking was a real concern. Well I have good news and bad news for you if you were nostalgic about the multiplayer. The good news is that it can still be the game that you remember it to be. The bad news is that games have come a long way since Goldeneye’s multiplayer that you realize that it can’t really hold a candle up to what modern games are doing now. Now don’t get me wrong, a game is not ranked on my list based on if other games do it better, because it would almost exclusively rate every older game below newer games because of it, but this game was of a time and place. The multiplayer maps are still pretty fun, and once you unlock all the custom characters that gives you a big selection of people to pull from, but this game thrives when its four people all in the same room playing against each other. Playing online is a nice addition, but it doesn’t feel the same as couch-coop can. I get it, not everyone has 3 other friends or family members who are willing to play this game in the same room at the same time, I don’t either, but if you are going to do a walk down memory lane with Goldeneye you have to get that setting back.

Without that feeling of playing next to each other, you are left with a pretty average single player shooter campaign and an online multiplayer mode that does not compare to so many other games. I won’t say that Goldeneye has aged like milk left out in the sun, but it is certainly a game that you can ignore if you have no existing nostalgia for the game. I would normally use my boys as a litmus test, but they were too young to play this game and something tells me that when they are ready in 2 years I probably won’t remember to put it in front of them. So with some sadness this is the first FPS that goes on the list, and it doesn’t stand up to the lofty position it has been in people’s nostalgia brain.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: no

Where does it rank: I think at it's best Goldeneye is a historic game that can help tell the story of console games and multiplayer and how it evolved, and that is high praise. However, unlike some of the other historic games, Goldeneye needs to be played with nostalgia glasses on to truly appreciate the game. Is there fun to still be had here, yes, but it comes from having played it in the past or experiencing something that used to be important. I can say that I liked playing Goldeneye 007, but its warts were way more apparent playing it now, then when I played other older games for this project. I have it ranked as The 75th Greatest Video Game of All Time.It sits between Dicey Dungeons (74th) and Sonic Adventure (76th).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Judgement 2) Lonesome Village 3) Guac-a-Melee

This game still looks a lot of fun to play, meanwhile, I'm hoping IO Interactive's future James Bond 007 game is going to be good.

Funny, Train was one of my favorite levels. I really liked popping out behind the plentiful crates and getting lots of headshots.

@gtxforza: thanks for the comment.. I think it is in good hands with the hitman team. I will be excited to see what they can do with a more charismatic main character and more gadgets.

@wollywoo: fair point, I just think of losing all that health at the beginning and then worrying about trying to make it to the end without dying. I mean it's not the worst level, but yeah it's not my fav, but that might be because I was so shite at aiming on this playthrough.

I had some fun with this release with the provisions that it was free (with a subscription service), a surprise drop so there weren't expectations, and that it runs and controls well on the Xbox. Good gunplay goes really far and there is something about the unreliable auto-aim and enemies reacting to hits that makes it feel chaotic in all the right ways.

I agree that the level design doesn't hold up, and even the famous 007 objectives aren't that interesting, most objectives are on your way anyway and chances are if you see anything that catches the eyes, you have to do something with it. The depot level for example feels a little silly given that once you know where the objectives are you can skip most of the warehouses. There are repeat levels too.

This game assumes that everyone has seen the movie given that there is absolutely no storytelling to tie the levels together, and the absence of the iconic theme song is criminal (even if it were a MIDI-rendition), I mean they paid for the license anyway.

@apewins: yeah the story is told through reading the in-between level information, which is not super effective. It might be on me, or the switch, but the controls felt off which forced me to rely on auto-aim way more than I wanted to. I still had fun with it, but I think my nostalgia glasses had me convinced this was going to be S tier and it's really a high B tier.