GoldenEye is a FPS video game adaptation of the James Bondmovie of the same name, made by Rare for the Nintendo 64 (known by some as GoldenEye 007, after the box art).The majority of the game's missions are directly lifted from the film, with some slight alterations and omissions. Several hidden missions were also included for gamers good enough to reach them; these were inspired by other Bond movies. The game's split-screen multiplayer mode allowed players to control classic Bond villains (and, through the help of cheat devices, the other four Bonds), and featured many different gameplay combinations based on weapon selection and game rules, such as "You Only Live Twice" (two lives, last man standing), and "License to Kill" (one hit kills, no matter the gun, except the Klobb sometimes).In November 2010, a remake by Activision for the Wii was released. Click here for more details.
This game contains examples of:
Action Girl: Natalya, surprisingly, in the Jungle.
Adaptation Expansion: Several levels in the game take place in the 9 years between the movie's gun-barrel opening and proper start. However, a few things don't match up. Namely that fact that Bond never visits Severnaya in the movie (at least not in the present-day), and he never chases Janus through a cavern en route to the giant satellite dish; indeed, the resulting level makes no sense since Bond destroys pumps to stop Janus stopping himself.
A.K.A.-47: None of the weapons have real names. The AK-47 itself is called the "KF7" (with an appropriate "Soviet" appended sometimes), and the RC-P90 is in reality the FN Herstal P90. Interestingly, the actual weapon names can be seen in a few beta screenshots.
Always Close: The bomb in "Statue", justified by a proximity-triggered mechanism that sets the remaining time to 15 seconds if it was higher when you got close.
The bomb in "Train" on 00 Agent always leaves you with about four seconds to escape.
Artificial Stupidity: Enemies will not open fire unless they have a clear line of sight. Railings, glass, bottomless holes, and invisible walls count as obstacles for the purpose of aiming. This turns Xenia into an Anti-Climax Boss, as you can gun her down as she crosses the bridge (she treats the bridge as a corridor). This also stumps Jaws, since he'll never fire if you simply run up and down the staircase.
Natalya during the Jungle mission. If you're not aware of where she is while you're shooting with the AR33, she'll wander into your line of fire and end up getting a few hi-power rounds in the back of the head.
Artistic License - Ships: The La Fayette looks nothing like a La Fayette-class frigate and rather more like an American Kidd-Class destroyer. The Dummied Out multiplayer version of the map is even called "Destroyer."
Attack Drone: Drone guns are extremely annoying (and deadly).
Beating A Dead Player: In multiplayer, a dead player's body will still remain after disappearing which allows the other players to keep attacking it until respawn.
Big Damn Fire Exit: The Silo is a Timed Mission in which you must get to the elevator before the explosives you've planted go off.
Bling Bling Bang: The Golden Gun. Also, the Gold and Silver versions of the PP7.
Body Armor as Hit Points: When you pick up body armor, it will absorb all of the damage that you receive until it runs out. Body armor will even protect you against headshots and explosion burns.
Boom, Headshot: A frequent result of using the sniper rifle, and the quickest way to kill someone, especially considering that the sniper rifle isn't particularly more powerful than any other weapon. The game tracks all limb, torso and headshots as well.
Boring, but Practical: The Dostoveii is pretty average, but if you use it correctly (especially in multiplayer) it can be deadly. The same can be said for some other handguns and automatics.
Bottomless Magazines: Two of the energy weapons (the Moonraker Laser and Taser) have unlimited ammo. The Watch Laser however, does not.
The Can Kicked Him: The Facility begins in the vent above a bathroom, and you can easily kill the first enemy by shooting him in the head as he sits on the toilet.
There are also several bathrooms on the train level; while most of them are locked, you can still kill some people by walking in on them taking a dump.
Casual Danger Dialogue: Trevelyan and Bond when they first meet. Natalya also does this a lot.
The Cavalry: Averted. In the Caverns, one objective is to call in a team of Marines to help fight Janus, but in the Cradle you're totally on your own (just like in the movie).
Cherry Tapping: With the weaker weapons (pistols, Klobb, or sniper rifle) it's possible to shoot enemies quite a few times before they die.
Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Natalya will shoot someone, then comment on a nice plant.
Cold Sniper: Bond gets a sniper rifle in the Surface level.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Enemies seem to follow a Law of Chromatic Superiority where green mooks are regular soldiers and aren't much of a threat, brown mooks are officers (and seemingly the weakest, given that they almost exclusively use pistols) and black mooks are Janus operatives and are by far the most dangerous. Blue mooks (Spetznaz) zigzag this trope though, what with some being stronger than green mooks and others being even stronger than the black ones.
Their AI is about the same regardless, it's the weapons they pack and their level of armor that makes them more or less dangerous.
Composite Character: In multiplayer mode, Oddjob is much smaller than other characters. In Goldfinger, Oddjob is not much shorter than Bond. For the game, he was likely combined with Nick Nack.
Computer Equals Monitor: In some levels. Averted in others where you must physically destroy the mainframe.
Deadpan Snarker: Q Branch and Moneypenny in the mission briefing screens.
Natalya gets a few snarks of her own in.
The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Look straight up and fire a rocket launcher. If you wait a minute or so around the same area, you will eventually see the rocket fall back to the ground and explode.
The slides of all the semi-auto pistols lock back when out of ammo. Similarly, the grenade launcher's cylinder and the Cougar Magnum's cylinder and hammer work every time the trigger is pulled, detail rarely seen in games of the era.
Diagonal Speed Boost: Speedruns more or less require that you strafe everywhere.
This actually comes in handy in the Runway level, as chucking a grenade at the guards by the desk in the side building will blow up the desk up, the filing cabinets and the guards.
Or he may die without even falling. That depends on how the player kills him.
Distressed Damsel: Natalya gets captured how many times in this game?
Let's see. First in Severnaya, where Bond meets her in the same predicament. Then at the Statue Park in St. Petersburg. Then after the Russians arrest them. Then Ourumov gets ahold of her, leading to the tank chase, and you only recover her two missions later. That's four in total, before she takes a level in badass.
Do Not Drop Your Weapon: Enemies will continue clutching their guns until their very last hitpoint is taken away. Blasting It Out Of Their Hands will make them recoil as though shot, but they'll still hold onto their weapon.
Dual Wielding / Guns Akimbo: Almost all of the game's weapons can wielded with both hands using cheats. (it's possible to do this in single-player mode without them, but only if taken from an enemy carrying both).
Jungle features Xenia with a grenade launcher in one hand and a machine gun in the other, allowing you to use them once you manage to kill her. Unfortunately, ammo for the two weapons is virtually non-existent in the level, so you're not going to be able to have a whole lot of fun with them.
Dude, Where's My Reward?: The cheat unlocked for beating the Train level on 00 Agent is the Silver PP7, a decent gun which is in no way worth the difficulty of getting it. The much better Gold PP7 can be unlocked in the Cradle on Agent, which is also much, much easier.
Dummied Out: This game contains some of the most well-known examples of this trope, such as All Bonds mode, the Citadel map, and the castle in the Dam level.
Easter Egg: One of the programmers hid a ZX Spectrum emulator in the game's code just to see if it was possible.
Inverted in 'Jungle'. Natalya is armed with the Cougar Magnum and has suddenly become an extremely good shot. In addition, enemies are more likely to target James, which often results in Natalya killing more mooks than you. Doesn't work on the drone guns, though.
Everything Fades: Enemies just disappear when they die, although their guns don't. There is even a limit to the amount of bullet holes, explosion marks, and destroyed objects allowed in-play.
Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Most of the really cool guns belong to enemy soldiers, including the RC-P90, Automatic Shotgun and Grenade Launcher. Luckily you can pick them up for yourself after killing them.
Game-Breaking Bug: Or game breaking cheat in this case. The Invisible Bond cheat makes you become just that. Sure, enemies can't see you and won't fire at something they can't see, but mission critical NPCs also can't see you, so they won't talk or give you what you need, making the mission Unwinnable. Then again, you're probably not playing the game with cheats to actually complete the missions, so this isn't a problem for most.
There's also a button-code that allows you to toggle invisibility on and off, so it's not as debilitating as that. but it does result in Guide Dang It when the code is never mentioned ingame.
Get Back Here Boss: The fight with Trevelyan is a deadly game of tag where he runs all over the level shooting at you while you evade gunfire from his mooks.
The Guards Must Be Crazy: Enemies will walk right past dead bodies and ignore bullets whizzing by their heads, since they only attack if they see you (or if you make a ton of noise). On the other hand, they also appear to be rather deaf and nearsighted.
Averted with the jailer in the Bunker, whose reaction to Bond trying to pull the "sick prisoner" gig is simply to state "You must think I was born yesterday".
Guns Do Not Work That Way: Rare didn't seem to understand the layout of the P90; the magazine becomes a huge white block that's wider than the gun frame, and the weapon ejects right instead of down. Additionally, certain guns have an incorrect magazine size. In the RC-P90's case, it has 80 bullets instead of 50. This is probably because Rare entered the amount of ammo as 50 in hexadecimal, which is 80 in decimal.
Hand Cannon: The Cougar Magnum is ridiculously overpowered, to the point of being able to shoot through metal doors.
Harder Than Hard: Beating the game on 00 Agent unlocks 007 modes, which can be customized to be as hard as the player wants. (1000% damage? Sure, Why Not?)
This has led to the custom License to Kill (one-shot, one kill applies to both the player and enemies) and Dark Agent (all maxed out stats) difficulties.
High Speed Missile Dodge: Rocket launchers fire rather slow projectiles to compensate for how much damage they deal.
Hollywood Hacking: Apparently, Natalya can hack into an advanced, secure network and disable a multi-million dollar piece of military equipment in about three minutes.
Hollywood Silencer: Silenced weapons are very quiet, though because of the rather strange mechanics they're not much more effective than single shots with unsilenced ones.
Hostage Situation: Several levels, including Frigate, and (most annoyingly) Train.
Implacable Man: Jaws especially, but also Trevelyan. Both shrug off gunfire and keep firing away at you.
They actually coded to have a very high HP value and not flinch from getting shot. After this surplus HP is gone, they'll return to behaving like a normal enemy soldier (flinch from getting shot).
Incredibly Obvious Bug: Twice. You plant a "covert" modem in the dam at Arkhangelsk, and a tracker "bug" on the Pirate helicopter in Monte Carlo. Both are the size of your head.
Not to mention planting it at the dam requires placing it directly on the monitor.
The Infiltration: Several levels, including the Bunker, and Jungle.
It Will Never Catch On: Nintendo funded Rare to develop the game, but they eventually eventually dropped support because they thought the game would never sell well enough and the game simply had too many bugs to iron out. Despite Nintendo cutting funds for the game, Rare picked up the slack and paid for the rest of the project themselves so the game could be finished.
Just Between You and Me: During your meeting with Janus in Statue Park, he delivers a Motive Rant before dispatching his bodyguards to kill you.
Just Plane Wrong: The "Pirate" helicopter isn't a Eurocopter, it's an Apache.
Knockback: Waves of enemy soldiers will become Goddamn Bats due to their shots pushing you back and preventing you from firing your gun for a second because you got hit.
Luck-Based Mission: Unlocking Invincibility in "Facility" depends on the random location of Dr. Doak.
"Control" is partially a Luck-Based Mission as well, since a lot depends on which side the guards come from, whether they breach the bulletproof glass and if they shoot at you or Natalya.
"Aztec" depends entirely on whether the guards at the beginning throw grenades at you or not; if they do, you will die.
Made of Explodium: A legendary example of the trope. Everything that isn't level geometry, glass or an enemy can be made to explode. Yes, including doors, under certain conditions.
This was partly due to the fact that the game creators couldn't implement a satisfactory physics system into the game, and thus the only way to make objects destructible in-game was to make them explode.
Made of Iron: Bond himself, but also Janus, Xenia, Jaws and any other "boss" characters can shrug off multiple gunshots and even explosions.
Also, due to the graphics limitations of the N64, nobody will disintegrate into a spray of bloody chunks even if you blow them up or shoot them in the head with a shotgun.
When you set Enemy Health at 1000%. Hilarity ensues when you empty a full clip into someone's head and they're STILL ALIVE.
The Mafiya: Zukovsky's criminal gang and the Janus syndicate seem to have a Mob War of sorts going on between them.
Meaningful Name: Janus (Roman god with two faces) and Xenia (Greek for "foreign" or "strange").
Mega Manning: Further to the Guns Akimbo entry above: picked up a grenade launcher and an RCP90? Want to dual-wield those particular weapons? Well not until you've killed that one enemy who can actually do that.
Mercy Invincibility: Uniquely for an FPS, this is played completely straight, and one of the quirks maintained in GoldenEye Source.
Missing Mission Control: In some levels, they don't give you any useful information due to your being captured.
More Dakka: The RC-P90 is famous for this. The Phantom also holds a large magazine (50) and the ZMG has quite a rapid rate of fire. You also do not want to be in the sights of the heavy drone guns.
Nintendo Hard: 00 Agent. And don't even try getting all the cheats; you'll be pulling your hair out by the time you're done.
Nobody Poops: Averted in the same area as the movie.
On the Train, you'll encounter two Janus Special Forces who are each hiding in a private toilet stall. Just... what were they doing in those stalls while they were waiting for you?
No Fair Cheating: Playing with cheats on will not unlock anything.
No Problem With Licensed Games: For years, GoldenEye was considered the best licensed game ever, and even without considering the license, one of the most influential games of all time.
It helps that rather than being rushed to coincided with the release of the movie, the game went though a lengthy development process, releasing almost a full two years after the movie.
No Scope: The Sniper Rifle can be used as a (very unwieldy) pistol.
Noodle Incident: Mentioned by Q in the briefing of the Silo mission:
007, remember to treat the timed explosives with respect - you know what happened to 004 in Beirut.
Only Six Faces: The generic Mooks are pretty much identical, leading to Déjà Vu after you mow down the same set of machine-gun toting minions three times in a row. The strange thing is that the game has over 40 random faces, but only a handful are used per load.
Optional Stealth: The game had stealth elements, namely in silenced weapons and alarms that mooks could trigger. Some levels were impossible to complete in total stealth (think Control) while others were very difficult if you blew your cover (think Frigate). Most levels were easy enough to barrel through guns blazing even on the most advanced difficulty, though.
Outrun the Fireball: The ending of the Train; except, instead of the same six minutes Bond had given Alec, you have only one minute to cut through the floor and get away with Natalya (unless you're quick enough to graze Xenia before she and Janus get away after you've killed Ourumov).
Respawning Enemies: Usually caused by noise or alarms being set off; stealth is the best way to avoid them.
Bunker 2 on secret agent or higher makes you wade through droves of mooks with automatic weapons to complete 2 of your objectives. The only decent weapon you can get in this level is very, very noisy. Combine that with neverending guards and a lack of body armor in the level for a prime example of Nintendo Hard.
Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: It's difficult, but not impossible, to get enemies to run into each other's line of fire. This is made easier when they use Rocket Launchers or pull out the occasional Grenade.
Songs in the Key of Panic: Whenever a critical moment happens in a level, the music will often change into a faster version of the level's theme.
Speed Run: Time attacking was encouraged by the developers, since not only does the game keep track of one's best time on each level on each difficulty, but completing particular levels within specific target times (some lenient, some strict) unlocks bonus cheat options.
Stop Helping Me!: Natalya will accidentally shoot you if you get in her line of fire during the Jungle stage. On the other hand, you can also trick Mooks into shooting each other as well.
Bullets usually only hurt their intended targets. If someone gets in the crossfire, the bullets may stop. However, that isn't true of Rockets, or your own gun.
Tuckerization: The "Klobb" gun is named after Ken Lobb, a former Nintendo of America employee who helped develop the game.
Dr. Doak looks like and is named after David Doak, one of the developers at the time - who has a PhD in biochemistry, as a chemical and biological weapons expert might need.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Mishkin simply disappears halfway through the game, whereas he was killed in the movie. It's never shown what happens to Boris either.
What the Hell, Player?: If you kill Boris Grishenko in Control, Natalya will scold you and refuse to help you complete the level.
A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing: Some scientists will pull out guns and start shooting at you if they're wounded, as will Valentin.
Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Bond tries this on the guard watching his and Natalya's cell in the second Bunker mission. However, he's too Genre Savvy to fall for that. Of course, Bond's plan isn't to make him open the cell - but to use his magnetic watch to get the keys from the guard without him noticing. Well, this latter part is actually a weird case of Gameplay and Story Segregation (it happens in a playable section, no cutscenes, and you can skip this entirely by just using the watch, getting the keys, and knocking the guard out before any dialogue pops up).
The key is actually on the wall, not the guard. So Bond really was trying to get the guard to let him out.
0 reviews 