GoldenEye 007 review
Splitscreen isn’t the only way to play multiplayer, though. Goldeneye also features an incredibly robust online multiplayer component that takes the industry-standard (grumble…) class creation tool and combines it with the stellar maps that have been put together for this game to create something that is fantastically unoriginal, yet still a blast to play. Much like Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, Goldeneye uses “Loadouts” to allow players to choose a main weapon, side-arm, gadgets, etc and have their own custom classes that they can choose to play as during games, but it is worth noting that you can only change your loadouts’ weapons/perks/etc when you are not in a game/party. In the match lobbies, Eurocom opted to remove the option to modify loadouts, possibly in order to avoid players having essentially unlimited loadouts to choose from. This is not something that bothered me so much, but I know it’ll be a big turnoff for some gamers.
If you get the Golden Gun, mofos better start to run.
One thing that I discovered while playing Goldeneye for Game Night with you folks this past Saturday was that it has no option to create private games, and I cannot tell you how obnoxious this is when your max party size is four people. For those that don’t know, Game Night here on NintendoEverything gathers up gamers from all across the world to play Wii online together for a few hours a week in an attempt to bring together our community and to take advantage of the under-used Nintendo Wifi Connection. When we got online in Goldeneye, however, things were very hard to accomplish.
We got everyone together, registered friend codes and all that good stuff, but when we went to make a party so we could all play together, we were upset to learn that we can only have a max party of 4 people, and we certainly had more than 4 people that wanted to play! “No problem”, I figured, “I’ll just create a private game and we’ll all join that.”
Of course, there is no private game option available.
What we ended up having to do is get one party of four to join a game, then rapidly tell the rest of those who wanted to play to join whatever game we chose before it filled up with people we didn’t know. This worked most of the time, but occasionally we would end up leaving behind one or two people, which meant we all had to quit the game and try again. If there is one thing that is truly “bad” about Goldeneye on Wii, it’s this. Now perhaps I missed the option to create a private game, and someone can correct me on this, but I looked for quite a while and had no luck with my search.
Unfortunately, Jaws’ teeth have no practical use in the game.
There is a leveling up system in the online that goes up to a level I’ve yet to achieve, and you gain experience points for doing just about everything you can think of online. Each kill is worth 5 points, melee kills are worth 10, killing everyone on the opposing team during the course of a game is worth 50, and many, many other things. Of course, these points don’t go towards who wins the match and who loses, rather just to your XP count, but it’s cool that the game notifies you when you do something impressive that you wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
Additionally, the class system in Goldeneye is essentially the same as Call of Duty’s: Pick a primary weapon, a side arm, 3 “gadgets” (perks), and a weapon attachment. This makes the online feel rather unoriginal, and it almost seems like Activision (the game’s publisher) really tried to push Eurocom to make something that would appeal to modern gamers a bit more, which is alright. I’m not a huge fan of it, but it certainly isn’t a bad thing at all!
Contrary to popular belief, that mountain in the background is the REAL enemy. Bond is smart for trying to take it out.
There are about 10 maps or so (I don’t feel like going back to look for the exact number; sue me), and I was surprised to learn that not all the maps in splitscreen are the same as what you see online. The most notable difference is in the updated “Complex” level, which in the splitscreen is merely one small, but tall, multi-tiered level. The online version of it, however, includes some outside hallways, and even a few rooms that aren’t in the splitscreen at all. This really made me a little bit upset, because it began to seem like the online was really where the focus was, when it should have been on the splitscreen. Fortunately, it doesn’t change how fun either option is; it’s just a little weird to see things that like coming up in games.
If you can look past the issue of not being able to make private matches, the online of Goldeneye easily measures up (and often surpasses) anything else on the system for online play, Call of Duty included. The maps are really great, weapons and perks are abundant, and the gameplay has gotten a much-needed upgrade to offer some of the best online shooting available this generation as far as I’m concerned, though many people out there may disagree.
