It’s easy to see that this game is trading on nostalgia, but the question of course is how much does it constitute a betrayal of that nostalgia? I fell for it; Rare’s seminal Goldeneye game on the N64 was a staple in our household, as in many others. Well, actually, I mostly got this game because it came with a Wii Classic Controller Pro; the choice was this or Monster Hunter Tri, and I don’t regret my choice.

This is one of the earlier games in my collection since the Wii got me back into gaming, so that I had the controller option. I did actually have a good number of multiplayer matches with my brother when we still lived in the same town, but it’s taken me until now to see what the campaign is like.

I enjoyed it more when I dropped the difficulty down a few missions in. Missing some side objectives forced me to replay missions, and that was no fun. What was fun was seeing how the story reimagined the Goldeneye game, reinterpreting it into modern times with Daniel Craig instead of Pierce Brosnan with the requisite upgrade in computer technology and changing political landscape, while also adding a few elements from the movie that Rare missed out. Unfortunately missing is Sean Bean’s likeness and the character of Boris.

Speaking of changes, of course they’ve overhauled the gameplay to suit modern games, for better or worse: ironsights, regenerating health, quicktime events, a limit on guns carried, and so on. I don’t play these kinds of games so I had to get used to these conventions, not to mention the inherent gross violence in murdering countless mans. As with the original, stealth is encouraged with silenced weapons, but now there are melee takedowns. It may be necessary on higher difficulties but I got frustrated with the whole “all guards are magically alerted if one sees you” thing.

There’s a variety of weapons. Too many maybe? I liked to see which were equivalents to Rare’s selection, which are based on real guns but given fake names. Sadly missing (at least from the campaign) were throwing knives, grenades, and mines. I used the Classic Controller Pro that was included at first, but found the Gamecube controller which they kindly made compatible suited much better with its unique button layout, chunky triggers, and more responsive thumbsticks. The CCP’s sticks are just so loose!

Let’s make a few more comparisons, shall we? Of course this doesn’t have the all-pervasive fog of the N64 game, but there are other graphical limitations. There seemed to be this interlaced filter over everything that was distracting; coupled with the blurring they add when running or reloading made it quite a mess at times. Apart from that it looked quite nice, apart from the animations and faces in cutscenes. Still a step up though, except for the nostalgia for charming low-fi blockiness. The music had nothing on Norgate, Kirkhope, and Beanland’s excellent Midi tunes. Utterly forgettable, but I suppose the stealth/action transition served its purpose, if boringly.

My favourite part of this remake/reboot/reimagining/whatever is still how it takes the original game, the movie, and the “new Bond” stuff, puts it in a blender, and comes out with a different way to tell this story. That aspect of the game works. Apart from that, it’s a competent modern shooter. Its mistake was positioning itself in marketing too closely to the fondly remembered game from 1997. But I looked past that, and had a decent time with it. Plus the Classic Controller Pro is useful, if not a great controller.