GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (GameCube)

The choice of name is all the more puzzling because the game has nothing to do with the film or, save the first person perspective, Rare's magnum opus. In fact the rather unlikely reasoning behind everything is that you are an evil ex-MI6 agent who after a fight with Dr No is given an, err… golden eye by Auric Goldfinger.

The game's premise is such that all of Bond's greatest bad guys are still alive and caught up in a sort of underworld civil war, in which your character seeks to be the real beneficiary. Ignoring such nonsense though, and looking purely at the game, the AI seems quite good and the replacement of Everything or Nothing's "Bond Moments" with scripted "Death Trap" sequences is fairly amusing. Unfortunately though the developers seem to have forgotten that the original game was as much lauded (at least a year before Thief or Metal Gear Solid) for its stealth gameplay as much for its shooting and this element seems total absent from Rogue Agent.

The multiplayer is also unconvincing with no radar and rather sprawling level design. It might turn out all right when it's finished but at the end of the day this is no GoldenEye. -- David Jenkins

the bad side is the time it takes to complete it and that u can re heal which makes it far to easy to win but then u do need it for the shere amount of enermies u face.

your eye is a brillient wepon letting u create force fields,gravitational pulls looking through walls etc it is great.

u can have about 200 wepon combonations and can also knock enamies unconsious and then use them ase a shield or hurl them into there mates well i wont spoil it any more for u but i hope u will now run out and bie the game just to experience the stunning game play...


Find a better way to spend your hard-earned cash!   January 11, 2005
 8 out of 11 found this review helpful

When I heard that this game would soon be appearing for my Gamecube, (and PS2 and X-Box of course) my eyes lit up and I had many flashbacks of spending hours, even days, on my N64 playing the original Goldeneye to death.
After purchase of Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, I rushed home to play it. As I started up the game, I think my jaw almost hit the floor. Not in an admiration kind of way - I was disgusted at how the name "Goldeneye" had be used to market such a poor game, to fool gamers (as it had done me) into thinking this would be anything like the original game.
The main character, once a member of M16 alongside the lengendary James Bond, suffers in an accident whilst on a mission and is helped by Goldfinger, who - yep, you guessed it - gives "Rogue Agent" a Golden Eye. Hmm... So, having been rejected from M16, you must guide the "Rogue Agent" through the world of evil against the erm... other world of evil. It doesn't feel like a Bond game - it's more like a random first-person-shooter, and a bad one at that.
After each of the first few fantastically-easy levels (which sometimes don't even last 5 minutes, even on the hardest difficulty setting) our "Rogue Agent" acquires a new power for his Golden Eye - but each is as useless as the next, with only four to choose from, such as a magnetic field. The only fairly decent one is a shield, but this wears out after a few seconds and is rendered useless. But, with only 8 levels, the game is almost over by the time you gain your new abilities.
The levels are divided into a series of rooms, corridors etc which make the action come in short, sharp bursts - you enter a new area, take out a few guards that happen to be standing out in the open and then dive behind a piece of scenery whilst your energy bar refills.
Then there's the weapons - usually you associate a Bond game with cool weapons but there's none of that in Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. You can only carry up to two weapons at a time, plus your standard pistol (with unlimited ammo, of course!). The dual weapons is a nice touch, but makes up for very little. It allows you to hold a different weapon in each hand and fire them independently, unless that is, you have a two-handed weapon. The placement of weapons gives the game away too for instance, if you enter a new area and collect a large rocket launcher, you immediately expect a boss battle and as anticipated, in flies a ship or whatever.
The bonus element of the game is frankly quite odd - you are rewarded for head shots, (which would be expected) kills "in motion", explosive kills etc, which, as the rewards are never received, you find yourself trying to achieve them less and less until they are only awarded by accident. However, there is an award for using the scenery to get rid of the henchmen - for example you can lock them in a sauna, suffocate them with toxic gas or run them over with cargo transporters etc, which, at first can be quite amusing, but as you progress through the game, you often find yourself simply resorting to your fire-power.
I don't mean to be too negative about this game - some gamers will probably like it if they can ignore so many of its obvious flaws, but James Bond fans should steer clear of this one - it can be offensive! If you're looking for a decent first-person-shooter or Bond game, look elsewhere - this is just a poor first-person-shooter with the word "Goldeneye" slapped on the front.