Innovation is not quality, folks. Being the first is not being the best.
Matt, while the game is still generally well-liked, it is kind of hip these days to diss on GoldenEye, like it is to diss on FFVII. He's not all alone, there are lots of people who either
A - Forgot, never saw, or changed their mind about what was so great about the game in the first place.
B - Just never properly understood what they liked about it, and therefore now conclude that they must have been wrong in thinking it was good back then.
This, apart from those who never liked it in the first place. There's got to be a few of them around, somewhere.
Cybren wrote:If memory serves, Turok used the stick to aim and the C-buttons to move. Which was inherently superior to Goldeneye requiring you to hold a button to use the stick to aim.
I think Matt made mention but nobody's clarified this completely. In fact, GoldenEye's default controls
mixed it up to maximize both hands. GoldenEye's levels and autoaim were both designed with the default control scheme in mind - limited verticality in the levels and a big boost to vertical autoaim. Therefore,
horizontal aim and movement forward and back were assigned to the analog stick (which, being an 'outie' instead of an 'innie' was poorly suited to aiming purposes anyway) while
strafing and vertical aim were assigned to the C buttons.
It's crazy to think about it now, but it would be hard to claim they didn't think hard about the
best possible control scheme for their game - particularly considering the numerous control options they made available to the player. I know I played Turok before GoldenEye, and I never did get to like the Turok controls.
What else is so great about GoldenEye? We've mentioned the
approachable multiplayer.
I actually liked the single player just about as much. The levels are just
the right length. The objectives make sure you're
never doing one thing for too long. Stealth is critical to success, but
one slip doesn't end your game - a balance modern stealth games STILL have trouble striking.
The levels are
big enough to get lost in, but small enough to clear if you're a little OCD. Respawning enemies, indeed monster closets in general, are used sparingly and appropriately. This offers you the chance to
memorize the best path through a level (or get someone to tell you - how rarely we can give people gaming advice these days without simply spoiling the solution), if you don't happen to have the mad skillz necessary to get by without a plan. And really, who's to say what the 'best' path really is? Most GoldenEye levels were amazingly open,
many paths were often workable, with objectives able to be carried out in any order the player might want. Even
the final boss, rather than some big monster in a grand arena, was a frantic game of cat and mouse on the antenna cradle.
And how about that
difficulty system? Agent gives you just enough errands to keep you interested without making the game complicated for beginners. Once you've learned the level layout,
Secret and 00 Agent each stacked on additional criteria for you to satisfy (and sometimes change your path entirely) making each level a new experience, giving you an excuse to try the hard mode other than mere bragging rights. And if that's not enough challenge for you, how about trying to
unlock all the cheats? Extra bonus features perfectly designed to be desirable without emasculating people who couldn't beat some cruel 'super ultra triple-0 agent' mode.
Don't forget the legends. Who could forget the scandal over the '
classic bond' models being removed from the game? Were they really in there, hidden somewhere? What the heck kind of weapon is a
Klobb, and why does it suck so much? Is it even humanly possible to get the cheats from the Facility or Archive levels? What on earth does
AC -10 mean?!
Obviously, legends do not make a great game - but they spring up around them, or at least they did in those days. GoldenEye was not merely 'popular'.
GoldenEye 007 was beloved. And rightfully so, if you ask me.
That all said, despite it's historic importance, I actually have to
agree completely with Cybren that it's no longer representative even of console FPS titles. It's a
good introduction to console FPS multiplayer, and it was one of the first, which are big reasons it became part of the zeitgeist -
but it's no longer the best introduction, and certainly not the best overall or most exemplary console FPS multiplayer that exists.
