Despite being an N64 owner for most of my life (Wow, what a scary thought), I never actually got around to seriously playing what many consider to be one of the greatest games of all time. No, I have played (and beaten on multiple occasions) Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, and if the title didn't give it away, I am talking about Goldeneye. Why did I never get it? Maybe because I was about 5 when it came out, and back then I was too busy sucking at Mario Kart to notice. Anydangways, I picked it up at a local used media store (It's called CD World) for around $9 along with Resident Evil 3 for the Gamecube (which cost more than $9. Yes I am a sucker).

Starting off, the game has copious amounts of auto-aim to compensate for the fact that nobody had thought of the dual stick setup for First Person Shooters yet (not that it would work on the N64 paddle). It actually works quite well. In fact, I rarely needed to swich to the rather clunky manual aim, but maybe that's because I am playing on the "agent" difficulty and all the enemies kind of just stand there and let me shoot them. The levels are actually pretty short, but I'm pretty sure this was the first game to have objectives other than "shoot dudes and get to the end" These Objectives are occasionally confusing, and on the Statue level I somehow failed the mission because of a missed cue or something, and only later found out that I had to put my weapon away during a scripted event. But whatever. The point is, I enjoy the Single Player even though I have no nostalgia for the game, which is perhaps an indicatior of how awesome it was in 1997.

Presentation wise, the graphics are... not great, even for an N64 game. All the enemies are blocks connected to other blocks, but at least the guns look ok. The Music is good however, even if I really can't think of anything more to say about it. Also, I have never seen Goldeneye the film, so I have no idea if the game stays faithful to the plot of the movie. Maybe I should. Or maybe I shouldn't.

The Multiplayer is nothing more than a novelty at this point, with games like COD4 and Halo 3 having online for a bunch of people, instead of 4 person split-screen. Nonetheless, I and 3 other willing participants decided to play it. Obviously it doesn't hold up as well as the single player, but running away and seeing your timed mine go off right as the guy passes it is still satisfying. Speaking of that, we also played Diddy Kong Racing, which I am pretty sure is the best Kart Racing game on that generation of consoles. And you can't snake.

So, as you can see, I enjoyed goldeneye. Now maybe I should actually get around to finishing it. The End.

This blog is dedicated to Billy Mays, who would have been way into Goldeneye had he known it existed. (IT HAS 64 BITS OF POWER! THAT'S TWICE AS MUCH AS A PLAYSTATION! AND ALL YOUR FRIENDS CAN JOIN IN TOO! IT'S A GAME FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! ORDER NOW AND GET A VHS OF THE MOVIE ABSOLUTLEY FREE! ONLY $19.99 WITH SHIPPING AND HANDLING)