007 is back, and it’s portable. Nintendo DS and Wii both features a remake of the original title released back in the 90′s for the Nintendo 64. The game was an instant classic and brought joy to many many many houses (and bond followers alike), creating a whole group of fans that were left wanting more. Well all these years we waited in the shades, when I saw the Wii trailer on the last E3 I was really happy that one of my favorite games was getting an upgrade! The game kinda did actually, but it’s not all diamonds and golden guns.

GRAPHICS:

Well this is kinda of a prowess at least in the DS version, I didn’t expected much if you want me to be honest. But the game actually surprised me in a good way. Hold your horses, I know the game has some SERIOUS graphic issues but all in all the game looks actually good. What are the issues you speak of you may ask? Well the models look…awkward, they move funny they don’t respond in a natural way and when you close in for melee kills you appreciate true horror as you see that they are one huge terrorist polygon! The engine works correctly, aiming is easy (I bought a DSIXL stylus to use with my NDSLite, this makes the game SO MUCH COMFORTABLE) if you play with the stylus. But just in case you found that your hands are not made to grab the console like that (you know using your pinky as a shelve, it hurts people)   you can change the control mode to buttons. Meaning you aim with your ABXY buttons. It’s much less precise and you can’t go into iron sights mode, that kinda sucks. Oh and the sectored damage is almost null so you can be nailing straight head-shots and still the enemies will walk it off.

Score: 7

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SOUND:

The voice acting works, although sometimes you begin to wonder if yelling through a cellphone in a stealth mission didn’t feel really double 0 agent to me. The guns sounded like…well guns, nothing spectacular here really, the game is ok in the sound department but just that, ok

Score: 6

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STORY:

I have encountered feelings here, on one side it’s the typical evil dudes/terrorist that has some stupid plan to blow everything up and get away with it, oh an become millionaires meanwhile. But it’s more focused into the Daniel Craig movies than in the original Golden Eye. Yeah, I know that the character in this game IT’S Daniel Craig but, nevertheless that’s just a skin, and as a re-make of a classic game such as Goldeneye I expected something different honestly. Anyway the game goes in a pretty straight line, and it doesn’t have so many turntable moments, not even close, it’s a call of duty kind of storyline. This is not a bad thing to say, but having a rich and old as hell franchise as the 007 branding it seems like a HUGE waste of resources. I can only think what it could have been.

Score: 5

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GAMEPLAY:

It’s ok, I talked about it up there in the graphics section. The controls works well with the stylus but it’s really hard to hold the console in a comfortable fashion. Button controlled scheme gives you more comfort but it’s REALLY hard to aim since the buttons aren’t analog, so a gentle tap will do you no good and certainly won’t help you hit things. I detected the Assassin’s Creed (first one) syndrome here. It’s fun the first time you do things (like closing the console to swing a metal door down or stuff like that) but eventually you realize that the 5 or 6 things you learn to do in the game are the only things you’ll ever learn and you’ll have to rinse and repeat those ’till the credits roll. The gadgets are seriously under-used and sliding keycards to put a password get’s too old too fast. A really positive thing though is the multiplayer mode… the game is fun and either in Lan or Wi-Fi mode you’ll have a blast. This is the true spirit of the Goldeneye series and at least I’m glad they respected THAT. If you’re like me you’ll be playing Multiplayer A LOT MORE than the singleplayer campaign.

Score: 7

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Here, have some gameplay!

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OVERALL SCORE: 6 (Good) Kind of a shame, a game that could be SO MUCH MORE than this, instead we have to settle for a half assed re-make that has some good moments but doesn’t deliver the experience we expected when we started playing. Anyway if you like Bond games, you’ll have fun anyway, and there’s Multiplayer that’s a totally different game!

‘Till next week

@Greenmousa, out