GoldenEye - out now on Switch & Xbox

[metallicfrodo]

I think I probably played GoldenEye once when it was originally released, so I have no nostalgia for it, and I have to say that I've been pleasently surprised by it. Have done the first 4 levels or so and enjoyed it.

 

What I didn't enjoy so much was having to do the bottle level a second time because I went to check out the door in the Bottle room and found out it was the exit and I insta failed the level. That's certainly something I can't imagine would happen in a game nowadays. 

[K]

One of the most influential things about this game is the way that it chopped the traditional single-player FPS game up into lots of small chunks, let you replay them at will, and recorded your best times and the difficulty you completed them on. That seems like quite a minor thing in some ways, but it feels like a huge step in others - previously, FPS campaigns were a long-form thing, where you started out at the beginning and played it all the way to the end. It might be divided up into levels, but the expectation was that you'd play through them in order, rather than replaying specific ones to improve your time, unlock certain things, or just because you liked them. It had a flat difficulty level too, so that while there was some variation - Control is definitely harder than Dam - there was consistency between playing through all the levels on particular difficulty.

 

That feels like quite a big thing, which must have directly inspired the structure of Halo and Call of Duty, which packaged their levels up into specific, replayable segments that let you complete the game piece by piece on progressively harder difficulties. That sort of mosaic structure, where you go through level by level until you complete it and then do it again at a higher difficulty level, feels like it came from Goldeneye. Without it, maybe people wouldn't be talking about being able to complete No Fighting in the War Room on Veteran, or Truth & Reconciliation on Legendary. 

[Haribokart]

2 hours ago, dave7g said:

Yeah, I went in one brown door and out the other, then in the same brown door and out another for what seemed like an hour

 

What a stud!

[Dapple]

1 hour ago, K said:

That feels like quite a big thing, which must have directly inspired the structure of Halo and Call of Duty, which packaged their levels up into specific, replayable segments that let you complete the game piece by piece on progressively harder difficulties. That sort of mosaic structure, where you go through level by level until you complete it and then do it again at a higher difficulty level, feels like it came from Goldeneye. Without it, maybe people wouldn't be talking about being able to complete No Fighting in the War Room on Veteran, or Truth & Reconciliation on Legendary. 

 

And without it, I wouldn't have needed to (badly) Polyfilla a hole in the plaster wall of the house I was renting at the time.  Frustration with many, many attempts on the final level - 00 Agent difficulty - lead to my right heel making contact with said wall.

 

I did it in the end, though.

[dave7g]

Ah now, I beat the game on my n64 when I was a lad. Just got lost easily this time is all.

[b00dles]

Doom always had your times and a "best" as well though, I can't remember if quake did but for some reason that idea did go out of the window. 

 

Then again, that was also around the time when map size was more important than the ability to do anything in it. I'd much rather have a really dense, intricate small level than a sprawling (but very pretty) "corridor". 

 

Not that I've ever been one for speed runs or anything of the sort but it's an interesting element to the evolution of the FPS.

[RFT]

10 hours ago, b00dles said:

Doom always had your times and a "best" as well though, I can't remember if quake did but for some reason that idea did go out of the window. 

 

Then again, that was also around the time when map size was more important than the ability to do anything in it. I'd much rather have a really dense, intricate small level than a sprawling (but very pretty) "corridor". 

 

Not that I've ever been one for speed runs or anything of the sort but it's an interesting element to the evolution of the FPS.

Doom had a par time and showed you your time, but never recorded what your best was.

 

And also, you couldn;t drop in to a mid-episode level without using cheats. You could choose to Start E1: Knee Deep In the Dead, E2: Shores of Hell, or E3 Inferno but not go straight to E1M5.

 

And I think Doom 2 meant you had to start at MAP01 entryway and that was it, there was no episodes, so no dropping in anywhere without cheats.

 

I think Quake was the sameas Doom 1 iun regards to structure and par times, but I don;t recall if it logged a best time. The problem is that it's been so long since playing the actual original.

 

It's odd to think how with Doom and Quake being on PC the cheats / console were so much a part if the way you'd interact with the game, lkike the first thing I'd do on loading quike would always be to type "¬+mlook" to turn out mouselook as it was in the game, but not an actual option in the menus for some reason.

[Art Vandelay]

If I ever succumb to degenerative illness in old age that robs me of my mental faculties I'm fairly certain the one and only thing I'll still remember are the cheat codes for Duke Nukem.

[K]

I think one of the key differences between Goldeneye and stuff like Doom was that you didn't keep your weapons between levels, so each level was a self-contained challenge. So yeah, you could skip to E1M7 using a cheat, but you'd start off with just a pistol when the level was clearly designed on the basis that you'd have almost all of the weapons, and would have a variable amount of armour and health. You could try and complete it on that basis or you could try to complete it using the IDKFA cheat, and those were clearly loads of fun, but neither option had quite the fine-tuned satisfaction of improving your times on Goldeneye.

 

Also, I kind of suspect that the practice of giving multiplayer maps in Call of Duty short, one-word names was influenced by Goldeneye.

[Fry Crayola]

4 minutes ago, K said:

So yeah, you could skip to E1M7 using a cheat, but you'd start off with just a pistol when the level was clearly designed on the basis that you'd have almost all of the weapons, and would have a variable amount of armour and health.

 

I'm not sure that's true, because death in Doom strips you of everything but that pistol, and these guys were pretty tight with their designs. It was a rock hard challenge, but it was always beatable.

 

Just to note, I don't think any of it invalidates your point, as Doom was always intended to be a flow from level to level, rather than a series of challenges. That "jump in to replay any level whenever you want" was usually something hidden behind a level select cheatcode at the time.

[K]

5 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

 

I'm not sure that's true, because death in Doom strips you of everything but that pistol, and these guys were pretty tight with their designs. It was a rock hard challenge, but it was always beatable.

 

Just to note, I don't think any of it invalidates your point, as Doom was always intended to be a flow from level to level, rather than a series of challenges. That "jump in to replay any level whenever you want" was usually something hidden behind a level select cheatcode at the time.

 

Surely most people reloaded a save game if they died in Doom? It must be possible to do every level with a pistol start, but that's definitely not the way I played it. 

[Popo]

It never entered my mind that it was id's intention for the player to continue on with only the pistol after dying.

[Strangelite]

I've just learnt that the Xbox Multiplayer mode still doesn't have all the maps for 4 player's (which was the case on the N64 because of frame rate) - *sigh*

This is a poor conversion job, I know it's down to the license, but god...

[Fry Crayola]

2 hours ago, K said:

 

Surely most people reloaded a save game if they died in Doom? It must be possible to do every level with a pistol start, but that's definitely not the way I played it. 

 

My memory is likely coloured by having played it on the PS, so there's no save game to reload.

[scottcr]

42 minutes ago, Strangelite said:

I've just learnt that the Xbox Multiplayer mode still doesn't have all the maps for 4 player's (which was the case on the N64 because of frame rate) - *sigh*

This is a poor conversion job, I know it's down to the license, but god...

 

it's a brilliant emulation job - you're looking for a different game

[K]

22 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

 

My memory is likely coloured by having played it on the PS, so there's no save game to reload.

I played it on the PlayStation too, I’d forgotten there was no save function until you mentioned it. There must have been some way of restarting the level with all your gear when you died - I can’t believe I would have completed the game if you had to do a pistol start every time I died. The alternative is that I put the level password in again every time I got killed, which is equally implausible.

 

But thinking about it, maybe I did? It seems intolerable now, but then again so does playing Monkey Island 2 with its eleven disks. 

[Fry Crayola]

We put up with a lot back then.

[Kryptonian]

2 hours ago, Strangelite said:

I've just learnt that the Xbox Multiplayer mode still doesn't have all the maps for 4 player's (which was the case on the N64 because of frame rate) - *sigh*

This is a poor conversion job, I know it's down to the license, but god...

 

Are you saying it doesn't have maps that weren't in the original either?

[Strangelite]

3 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

 

Are you saying it doesn't have maps that weren't in the original either?

no, it's 100% the same as the N64 - which basically limited what maps could be played with 4 players split screen. (you can't play archives etc) - but they've taken away the button cheat-codes from the Xbox version that allowed you to unlock them... I figure they restricted these maps because the framerate tanked on the N64, but that's obviously not the case with the XSX...

 

[Kryptonian]

13 minutes ago, Strangelite said:

no, it's 100% the same as the N64 - which basically limited what maps could be played with 4 players split screen. (you can't play archives etc) - but they've taken away the button cheat-codes from the Xbox version that allowed you to unlock them... I figure they restricted these maps because the framerate tanked on the N64, but that's obviously not the case with the XSX...
 

Ah, you meant the maps that didn’t allow 4 players? Was there a code for that, I thought it was a gamegenie(shark?) thing to unlock them?

 

Sorry, I misread your other post as it not having maps that were scrapped like that test one - citadel? - or something like that.

[Kryptonian]

This is what I half remembered:

 

http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/goldeneye_citadel.php

 

looks sketchy

[Strangelite]

5 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

Ah, you meant the maps that didn’t allow 4 players? Was there a code for that, I thought it was a gamegenie(shark?) thing to unlock them?

 

Sorry, I misread your other post as it not having maps that were scrapped like that test one - citadel? - or something like that.

Ahhhhh christ you might be right, maybe I'm mis-remembering and you needed a cheat cart, but i'm 100% certain I played archives with my mates on four players...... maybe we cheat coded it... 

edit:
http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/level files/archives.htm
"remember that if you have a gameshark you can play this level with 4 players."

 

[GokouD]

23 hours ago, OneDvBmbr said:

I ballsed up Control by killing Boris when he pulled a gun on me. Wasn’t until about 5 mins later that I realised however, when Natalya scolded me for killing her mate and the mission was failed. Had completely forgotten about that. Ooops.

I did the same thing to Mishkin in the Archives level. Don't pull a gun on me when I'm on a killing spree!

[GokouD]

On 30/01/2023 at 13:35, ZOK said:

I did get stuck on the second level, I couldn’t get into the bottling room as I didn’t have a keycard I needed…I don’t remember that ever happening to me before back in the day, but who knows.

 

I cba to work out where it was though so I quit.

I don't know if it always works, but I didn't have the key so I unloaded a clip into the bottling room window and the guards helpfully opened the door for me when they came out to kill me.

[Kryptonian]

4 minutes ago, Strangelite said:

Ahhhhh christ you might be right, maybe I'm mis-remembering and you needed a cheat cart, but i'm 100% certain I played archives with my mates on four players...... maybe we cheat coded it... 

edit:
http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/level files/archives.htm
"remember that if you have a gameshark you can play this level with 4 players."
 

your point still stands really though from a technical point of view - if it worked fine when unlocked why couldn’t they do it with these versions. I suspect the answer is Nintendo somehow though…

[Lorfarius]

5 hours ago, K said:

I think one of the key differences between Goldeneye and stuff like Doom was that you didn't keep your weapons between levels, so each level was a self-contained challenge. So yeah, you could skip to E1M7 using a cheat, but you'd start off with just a pistol when the level was clearly designed on the basis that you'd have almost all of the weapons, and would have a variable amount of armour and health. You could try and complete it on that basis or you could try to complete it using the IDKFA cheat, and those were clearly loads of fun, but neither option had quite the fine-tuned satisfaction of improving your times on Goldeneye.

 

Also, I kind of suspect that the practice of giving multiplayer maps in Call of Duty short, one-word names was influenced by Goldeneye.

 

Making of Goldeneye with interviews

[Strangelite]

22 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

your point still stands really though from a technical point of view - if it worked fine when unlocked why couldn’t they do it with these versions. I suspect the answer is Nintendo somehow though…

yeah, undoubtedly they wanted it to be identical to the n64 version... which they own the rights to, any "changes" would get legally complicated quickly... they removed the cheat codes so that the 'bond characters' cheat didn't work... 
I owned an NTSC version of an N64 so maybe that version had more MP maps... my memory is crap nowadays 👴

[Wiper]

27 minutes ago, GokouD said:

I don't know if it always works, but I didn't have the key so I unloaded a clip into the bottling room window and the guards helpfully opened the door for me when they came out to kill me.

 

I genuinely think one of Goldeneye's great strengths (and something an awful lot of later cinematic action games lose) is its gently emergent gameplay that comes from simple AI coupled with NPCs that can carry out basic actions beyond "shoot at player" across relatively open environments.

[bplus]

4 hours ago, Strangelite said:

Ahhhhh christ you might be right, maybe I'm mis-remembering and you needed a cheat cart, but i'm 100% certain I played archives with my mates on four players...... maybe we cheat coded it... 

edit:
http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/level files/archives.htm
"remember that if you have a gameshark you can play this level with 4 players."

 

Played GE to death in 4 player, we never noticed that archives unavailable in 4 player!?!

[teddymeow]

On 30/01/2023 at 15:43, OneDvBmbr said:

I ballsed up Control by killing Boris when he pulled a gun on me.

 

So, despite his claims, he wasn't invincible?!