My Top 15 Games of All Time: #6

Let's face it, if you owned an N64, you owned this game. We as gamers were bred to believe that all video games based on movies suck, though there are some exceptions, most notably this game. I remember many sleepovers when I was in middle school, where we would bring over our N64 controllers, get a couple 2-liters of Mountain Dew, and get our licence to kill.
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#6 - Goldeneye 007 - First Released August 25th 1997 (N64)

In today's industry, we are used to seeing movie-based video games released alongside the film for a promotional boost, and normally, as previously stated, they suck. Goldeneye the game came out a full 2 years AFTER the movie. In fact, 4 months later, in December, Tomorrow Never Dies would hit theaters, so maybe the game was getting us ready for a new (albeit not nearly as good) movie with a game based on the last (and one of the best) Bond movies.

Either way, childhood me (and many others gamers) always dreamt of life as a secret agent, and James Bond always was and will be the premier name when it comes to that. Smooth-talking, girl-getting, world-saving, shaken not stirred-drinking, gadget-wielding, ridiculously good-looking, he had it all and we wanted to be in his shoes, and this was the best way of doing it.

Worth noting, this was not the game the developers had in mind when they set out to recreate the James Bond experience. The idea was to make this an on-rails shooter, much like a Time Crisis or House of the Dead. I can guarantee you that this game wouldn't be on my list of all-time favorites had it been an on-rails shooter. Before that, the game was originally proposed as a 2D Side-scroller on the SNES, due to the success of Donkey Kong Country, but the team decided it wanted a 3D shooter for Nintendo's new (then still in development) "Ultra 64" system.

The game was shown at E3 1997 (full 3D shooter mode by the way) and showed poorly. The media figured this would be a flop and an afterthought. Just goes to show, you never know what you are getting until a full release. The first-person shooter was still a genre dominated by PC (some argue it still is today), so a console shooter was a bit of a novelty. That "novelty" feeling went away pretty quick after you drop down from an air duct and kill a guard in the men's room. It was Bond time!

The campaign was full of espionage, betrayal, women, villains, all the makings of a great Bond experience. The game followed the plot of the movie pretty closely, with all the characters from the movie. Again, it helps that Goldeneye the movie was pretty awesome, which made playing the game equally as awesome.

Of course, the game wasn't just about getting from level to level and telling the story. You wanted to do it as efficiently as possible, like James Bond would. Higher difficulties meant more objectives to complete, and doing enough objectives in the shortest amount of time will unlock cheats like "Big Head Mode" and (my favorite) "Paintball Mode". This put the replayability through the roof.

The star of the show here was, naturally, multiplayer. Up to 4 players could choose their favorite Bond characters (except Oddjob cause that's cheating) and shoot each other a bunch in some of the most iconic maps in video game history, like Facility and Complex.

Let's look at what not only set the bar, but CREATED the bar for console multiplayer shooters:

That takes me back.

And to think: the multiplayer wasn't added until very late in the development cycle and was described as "A complete afterthought".

After the massive success of this game, companies tried their best to capitalize on Bond and the Goldeneye name. No future Bond game could top this though. We as gamers just compared everything to this and nothing could beat it. Recently (As in 2010, so might be a stretch) Goldeneye 007 was released for the Wii and was a reimagining of this game, with Daniel Craig replacing Pierce Brosnan. It was actually pretty good and featured online multiplayer. A year later, it was HD-ified and released on Xbox 360 and PS3. I may have to play that game again.

However, like many things in life, the original stands as the best, and it is no different here. Goldeneye 007 for the N64 will stand as the best shooter on the system, one of the most fun experiences of my gaming life, a game that revolutionized the genre and made it console-friendly, and #6 on my list of all time favorite games. If you think that's too low, just wait until you see my top 5.