a recurring visit golden eye on the N64 road
Although not the first shooter to appear on the N64 (that distinction belongs to Acclaim Turok: Dinosaur Hunter), Rare’s 1997 masterpiece Goldeneye 007 Was the first to make friends of console PC owners a little jealous. how? With controls that were just intuitive enough to feel “right”, quality design and attention to detail that truly evoked the James Bond film it was based on, and some of the most varied and addictive multiplayer available in the genre (okay, maybe it was pretty much just the multiplayer) . While it certainly doesn’t hold up against its technologically superior modern counterparts, its influence on the genre cannot be overstated. Goldeneye 007 Proved to developers that creating fun first-person shooters on a console is not only possible but, having sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, potentially profitable as well.
From the opening moments running on the summit of the Russian Dam, Goldeneye 007 It felt different from the other first-person shooters previously brought to home consoles. For starters, running and shooting actually worked and worked well. That might not seem like a high bar to overcome, but it used to be almost revolutionary, and the main reason gamers on both sides of the aisle could sit back and enjoy action-packed secret agent action. Thanks to the N64’s analog stick and C buttons, navigating the maze of corridors while hitting hordes of enemies felt fluid and natural in a way that was only previously possible with a mouse and keyboard, and the joy of pressing the Z trigger to blast a few rounds into the back of some bastard’s head Poor thing felt so satisfying. For once players could forget about fighting the controls and fully immerse themselves in the game.
And what a brilliant game! Nadir packed the main campaign of golden eye With so much variety of missions and clever design the whole game feels fresh all the way to the end, even as it closely follows the plot of the movie. Mines are planted, computers are hacked, photo information is captured, laser watches are used, tanks are prevented – and many, many, multi People are shot on the way. There are moments of amazing action, sneaky stealth and everything in between. Little touches abound that took the existing shooting elements further than they were, like context-sensitive hit locations on enemies that could make them comically hop on one leg from a finger shot or plummet to the ground from one right between the eyes. Soldiers respond to gunfire, charge or trip alarms, and even walk behind walls in feeble attempts to avoid death. With so much to see and so many different ways to approach each stage, Goldeneye seems to have infinite depth, allowing players to experiment and have fun with every scenario that presented itself. Although the visuals have aged, moments like peeking out of a ventilation shaft and shooting an unsuspecting toilet man’s hat before kicking in his fellow toilet stall doors and ripping Kalashnikovs from their bleeding corpses will never get old.
Still, despite how good the rest of the game was for the time, the creativity and execution behind the game’s phenomenal multiplayer is what really drives Goldeneye 007 Into the annals of gaming history. On time doom LAN parties were all the rage on college campuses up until this point, the dorm room gaming spirit was better exemplified by sitting on an old couch and utilizing the N64’s four controller ports with three of your best Ball sponges Friends as they duke it out in some good old fashioned deathmatches. If the build-up kills in the usual way the old lady ever did (and really, she never did), then Rare has been kind enough to provide some aptly named variations after the Bond films. You Only Live Twice goes without saying, The Living Daylights There was actually a flag badge, and the man with the golden gun tasked the players with finding the hilal weapon, which would grant them a one-shot kill as long as they stayed alive. How many friendships were completely destroyed by these struggles is unknown (especially due to players who chose a certain short-cap injector), but just as many were forged.
What we know today about first-person shooters looks and plays differently, certainly more sophisticated, but the essence of what Goldeneye 007 The achievements are still there, and much of the genre’s popularity on consoles can be attributed to Rare’s masterpiece.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on May 24, 2017.