Video Game / GoldenEye (2010)

aka: Golden Eye Wii

But now my time has come.
And time, time is not on your side.

The One With… Daniel Craig in a reimagining of the classic N64 game.

GoldenEye is a Video Game Remake of Rare’s iconic 1997 FPS game of the same name, itself an adaptation of the 1995 James Bond film of the same name. It was developed by Eurocom, published by Activision, and first released on the Wii in November 2010 alongside Blood Stone.

The story and setting have all been brought into the 21st century and the then-current Bond, Daniel Craig, takes over the original Pierce Brosnan role (although the writer of the GoldenEye film was brought on). Considering Craig's 007 is a darker, grittier agent, the overall tone of the game reflects this difference. As a result things like Janus' motivations have changed as the character's backstory involving a Lienz Cossack father would make him at least 71 years old and Valentin Zukovsky is no longer connected to the KGB.

Naturally, considering the original was groundbreaking 13 years prior, the gameplay has been significantly altered to reflect modern advancements in the FPS genre.

Heavily inspired by the much loved multiplayer of its predecessor, the game also features not only the classic four player split-screen gameplay of old but adds 8-player online to the experience. The multiplayer also includes 8 classic Bond characters (Jaws, Baron Samedi, Oddjob, Francisco Scaramanga, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Red Grant, Rosa Klebb, and Dr. No), several classic and brand new game modes, and even enhanced versions of classic multiplayer maps from the original game. A special edition of the game is also available with a "golden" Wii Classic Controller.

A Nintendo DS version made by n-Space was released alongside the Wii game. While the plot is the same, the levels are radically different and the gameplay has some changes to accommodate the DS.

There is an Updated Re-release, Goldeneye 007: Reloaded, on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. They were originally meant to be released alongside the Wii/DS version, but the latter versions were released first as a nod to the N64 version.

A synopsis of the updated story can be found here.

Preceded by Quantum of Solace and followed by 007 Legends.

---

The Nintendo Wii game contains examples of:

• Adaptational Dumbass: In the movie and the 1997 game, Natalya is captured in St. Petersburg along with Bond because the two get jumped by the Russian authorities after narrowly escaping a helicopter explosion. Here, she gets captured because she disobeys Bond's instructions to remain safe in the car, goes charging in, and is swiftly apprehended.
• Adaptational Modesty: In this game Xenia Onatopp wears a white blouse and light armor vest and shorts, which is significantly more modest and practical than the midriff-bearing black latex crop top she wore in the original N64 game. Her Combat Sadomasochist tendencies are also significantly downplayed.
• Adaptation Deviation: The final battle is moved from Cuba in the movie and 1997 game to Nigeria here.
• Adapted Out:
  • There is no update of Alan Cumming's Boris in this version (though a mook of the same name is playable in multiplayer), while Joe Don Baker's Jack Wade is replaced by the much less prominent Sky Briggs.
  • The DS version leaves out the Nightclub level, which also means Valentin Zukovsky, who dies early in the level on the console versions, gets the boot in that version.
• A.K.A.-47: Averted for some of the arsenal. Unlike the original, guns like the "AK-47", "WA 2000", and "P99" are labeled as such (the latter two probably due to Walther's licensing deal with the Bond films). Everything else, though, has a made-up (or generic, in the case of the hand grenade) name.
• All-or-Nothing Reloads: Played straight for every weapon except the SEGS 550, PT-9 Interdictus and Drumhead Type-12 shotguns, which all reload one shell at a time, allowing you to interrupt the reload at any time and still fire so long as you got at least one shell into the gun.

• Artificial Stupidity: During the final boss fight, 006 often tries to take cover behind barricades even when you're standing right behind him shooting him in the back. Eventually he'll often stop bothering and just stand in one spot while you shoot him.
• Attack Drone: Some levels have drones that automatically fire at Bond should he be caught in their line of fire. However, the protagonist can use his cellphone to alter their programming, causing them to shoot at enemies instead.
• Autosave: The game automatically saves whenever the player makes it through specific sections on each level.
• BFG: The Masterton M-557 is a fully automatic shotgun and is quite effective at range, but the recoil causes severe muzzle climb.

• Blown Across the Room: Enemies in singleplayer will be blown backwards a good distance when shot with any shotgun or with the Wolfe. 44 Magnum.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: 007 Classic mode provides the player with body armor that functions in a manner identical to the 1997 original. The DS port has body armor show up as a rare pickup on all difficulty modes.
• Bottomless Magazines: The DS version gives you infinite ammo for your P99. You still have to reload, but you never run out of magazines.
• Bowdlerise: An inverted example. The nude female swimmers/dancers in the Wii opening credits appear as completely featureless, shadow-cloaked silhouettes, but Reloaded adds just enough lighting effects so you see everything.
• The Can Kicked Him: While infiltrating the chemical weapons facility, James exits the air vents through a hole directly above one of the bathroom stalls. An unlucky guard is using the toilet at the time and is quickly incapacitated by Bond.
• Classic Cheat Code: Unlockable Cheats are once again available in this game, as well as cheat codes for Invisibility Mode, Tag mode, and Big-headed mode here.
• Composite Character: Irina, Zukovsky's mistress whose singing was like strangling a cat (in Bond's words), shows up in this game after being left off of the N64 game. In this game, she's a waitress at Zukovsky's nightclub whom Bond catches trying to sell him counterfeit vodka and also Xenia in disguise, which is how she gets close enough to assassinate Zukovsky and frame Bond for it.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: In online objective-based modes (like Black Box) only. While your faction's Mission Control will tell you to stay on task, you don't really have to as at worst the match will end with a loss to you and you can go on to the next match (unless the host quits). Some people choose to ignore the objectives and just focus on killing enemies to farm them for extra XP. One notorious tactic in Black Box is to get the box to somewhere well-guarded and then go to town on your opponents (and keeping them from the box) for the entire 10 minutes per match.
• Cycle of Hurting: In team multiplayer. The spawns are bad because when someone dies, they respawn around a teammate's location. When everyone on a side is taken out, the other side can gradually confine the opposing side into a small section of a map and go to town on them. The most infamous map you can ''Spawn Lock" on is Outpost, but Industrial and Jungle are sometimes prone to this.
• Death by Adaptation: Zukovsky in the film goes on to help Bond in The World Is Not Enough. In the game, he was killed by Xenia.

• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Zukovsky and Sky Briggs are killed merely over a minute after you meet them. And Ourumov is betrayed by Xenia rather than you having to take him out.
• Dynamic Loading: The loading screen usually informs you about various tips about the game.
• Elite Mooks: Any mook wearing a flak jacket is going to be much harder to kill. They also wear balaclavas and have dark, ominous voices.
• Enemy Chatter: Some mooks and NPCs will have scripted dialogue with each other. The player can take advantage of their distraction by quickly shooting them before they have the chance to react.

• Every Car Is a Pinto: Trucks have conspicuous fuel tanks which blow up when shot. Even more standard cars blow up with enough damage.
• Flunky Boss: The final boss isn't much of a threat by himself: he simply follows a pre-set path around the room, stopping behind specific pieces of cover to blaze away at Bond with an automatic weapon. The real threats are the minions (and, eventually, the helicopter) he summons as backup, who have real AI, grenades, and endless reinforcements waiting in the wings. The kicker? You don't even kill Alec; you just weaken him enough until he flees, then you chase him for the real final showdown.
• Foreshadowing: Overlaps with "Continue Your Mission, Dammit!" — at the beginning in Arkhangelsk, Bond wants to take a picture of an arriving helicopter for MI-6, reasoning that it looks like a model designed to survive EMPs and that the commander of an out-of-the-way Russian outpost having one is bad news. Alec implores him to press on. Why so impatient, 006?
• Frameup: Happens to Bond twice in the game: first for the death of Valentin Zhukovsky, then for Russian Defense Minister Mishkin.
• Genre Throwback: "007 Classic" is a throwback to the old-school shooter games with static health and armor that regenerates through pickups strewn throughout the level.
• Gun Accessories: An array of Modern Warfare-esque gun add-ons are now available, like underbarrel grenade launchers, reflex sights, ACOG scopes, and more.
• Harder Than Hard: "007 Classic". A throwback to the days of a health bar and controller-throwing difficulty.
• Hollywood Hacking: You can hack into drone guns, defense mechanisms, door locks, and the like with the push of one button on your Smartphone. In fairness, it's James Bond's Smartphone, so naturally it's going to be full of Hollywood Hacking gadgets.
• Hollywood Silencer: Bond can attach a silencer to his P99, and some weapons you pick up will have silencers. While it makes the classic "fwip" sound, enemies will still notice if you shoot at them and miss.
• I Can Rule Alone: An interesting example because it isn't necessarily what the villain would have wanted. Janus says that Bond would have made a formidable ally but his loyalties to his country are too strong and so instead he determines he must be eliminated. It's not so much "I Can Rule Alone" but rather "I Have to Rule Alone".
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: You have your Operative (Easy), Secret Agent (Normal), and 007 (Hard) difficulties, and then you have 007 Classic, which removes the regenerating health and adds body armor throughout the levels as a call back to the N64 game.
• Informed Attribute: Tanner states that Zukovsky's "only" identifying feature is a facial scar. When we see him, however, his arms and chest are covered in tattoos. Bond also mentions offhandedly that he gave Zukovsky the scar in question - wouldn't they know more about him from Bond's report of whatever happened then?
• Ink-Suit Actor: In addition to Daniel Craig lending his likeness to Bond, Alec Trevelyan, Xenia Onatopp, General Ourumov, Valentin Zukovsky, and Natalya Simonova are modeled after their voice actors (Elliot Cowan, Kate Magowan, Laurence Possa, Alec Newman, and Kirsty Mitchell, respectively).
• Insecurity Camera: If you are spotted by a security camera, additional reinforcements quickly arrive. However, shooting out the cameras doesn't warrant any reaction from whoever's on monitor duty. Nothing will also happen if you kill a guard near the vicinity of a security camera.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Averted; you can jump over walls and objects that are about chest-high, but there are a few pieces of rubble in Memorial that you can't vault over.
• Interface Screw: Some of the weapon models are very big, most notoriously the Talon HL 450◊. While the Ivana Spec-R is a small assault rifle, when mounted with a thermal scope◊, the scope itself is as big as, if not bigger than the gun itself.
• It's Raining Men: The game swaps out 007's bungee cord for a parachute - which he jumps off the dam without, and uses the water flowing out of the dam to break his fall instead.
• Just Plane Wrong:
  • The Russian Federation doesn't have Ch-53s (in Dam^* granted, this case is noted by Bond, so one of the objectives is to take pictures of it so MI6 can figure out why it's there) or OH/AH-6s (in Tank). Plus the SAM launchers are American MIM-23 HAWKs rather than the more likely SA-19/SA-22.
  • Sky Briggs says the pilots he wants to introduce flew Cobras for Blackwater. AH-1s aren't used by military contractors. The Blackhawk would be more fitting as there is a civil variant.

• Limited Loadout: Unlike the original, Bond can only carry his P99 and two other weapons. You can also only carry two weapons in multiplayer mode. The DS port pares it down to the P99 and one other weapon.

• More Dakka:
  • The Vargen FH-7, successor of the infamous RC-P90 from Nintendo 64; though its magazine capacity has been reduced to the more realistic 50 rounds (equipping it with High-Cap Mag extends it to 63 rounds) and it lacks the 'shoot through ten mooks in a row AND two steel blast doors' power that its 64 counterpart had. It's still quite the bullet hose though.
  • The Beretta 93R (called the "Kunara V" in-game) is a fully-automatic handgun. In real life, this weapon is fired as a three-round burst, which is its primary fire in-game, but can be set to full-auto when you pick it up. Eats up a lot of ammo, though. Reloaded restricts it to burst-fire only.
  • The DS version features the Vepr-12 shotgun (a close relative of the Saiga-12) as the "ARP Shotgun" with a ludicrous 50-round magazine capacity and a three-round burst, neither of which the Vepr-12 has in Real Life. Also, all assault rifles besides the AK-47 have 50-round magazines.
• Nostalgia Level: There are few small areas that are very reminiscent of the N64 game, such as the guard tower at the very beginning of the game and the bathroom of the facility level.
• Never Say "Die": Zig-zagged in multiplayer. Players are "eliminated" upon death, but during the Heroes gameplay mode all of the team captains heard Talking during specific events (M, Trevelyan, Ourumov and Zukovsky) will actually say "Our Hero Is Dead"!
• Not His Sled: Overlapping with Pragmatic Adaptation, a number of changes were made to the Goldeneye plot both to mix things up and to fit with the change in timeline.
  • The Big Bad's motivations are changed from getting revenge for Britain's betrayal of his Lienz Cossack parents, since such a motivation would have him in his early 70s by 2010, (Trevelyan's original actor, Sean Bean, was in his mid-thirties when he played the character, but Trevelyan himself was implied to be much older) to anger over the War on Terror and the Great Financial Meltdown, and how big banks made a killing while everyone else suffered.
  • One of the most iconic moments in the N64 game is at the end of Dam, where Bond bungee jumps to the bottom in the last cutscene. The game mixes it up twice: first by trading the bungee jump for parachutes, and again by having Bond captured at the end of the dam and forced to hand over his parachute, before making the jump without it.
  • Zukovsky is killed about three minutes after you meet him.
  • Ouromov dies like a bitch at Xenia's hand, rather than Bond having an epic standoff having to gun down the General himself.

• One Bullet Clips: Played straight in the same manner as Call of Duty, naturally. Reloaded adds the usual empty- versus mid-magazine reloading with separate animations for either case, whereas the Wii version went for a Dramatic Gun Cock for every reload.
• Optional Stealth: Just like the original, you can play some levels stealthily, using melee takedowns and the P99's detachable suppressor, or take on a more aggressive stance and engage the enemies in direct gun fights.
• Press X to Not Die: Several points in the game require you to press a button or make a flailing gesture with the remote/nunchuck to dodge obstacles, open doors, etc.
• Pretty in Mink: Xenia has a fur-trimmed coat◊. Although she's a villain, fur rendering is still a way to show off with the graphics, and thus this trope.
• Protection Mission: One part of the game requires you to protect Natalya from enemy gunfire while she tries to stop the Goldeneye satellite. This is a Call-Back to the Control level from the N64 game.

• Rage Quit: Of course the online aspect of the game would not be complete without people quitting. However, it gets worse when the host quits since the game immediately ends, screwing over anyone who would have legitimately won or anyone on the losing team who earned a lot of XP.
• Rapid-Fire Typing: Bond typing in the password to redirect the Goldeneye satellite. It looks like he doesn't even move his fingers.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The remix of deadmau5 and Kaskade's "I Remember" from the Barcelona level came from DJ Hero 2, another Activision title.
• Regenerating Health: Though the "007 Classic" difficulty mode brings back the health bar and bulletproof vests of old, Bond's health automatically regenerates in every other difficulty.
• Renegade Russian: General Ourumov and Xenia Onatopp, just as the in the old game and film. Ourumov became an under-the-table arms dealer out of jealousy toward rich, post-Soviet era oligarchs, while Xenia is a veteran of the 2008 South Ossetia War who left the Russian army and went mercenary.
• Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: Though it never reaches the point of having brass ejecting across Bond's field of vision; only one gun actually has a flipped ejection port (the Anova DP3), and even then it still ejects to the right. Otherwise it's just a gun with reversible charging handles in real life put on the wrong side (Kallos TT-9 and Ivana Spec-R) or the safety lever on the wrong side (AK-47, which is fixed in Reloaded).
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: The SLY 2020 is one, and is the only shotgun to be this. It's the most powerful shotgun in the game, has good range and uses a magazine as opposed to the other pump shotguns using individual shells. The downsides to it however, is that its accuracy is lower than the other shotguns due to it being sawn off, its magazine capacity is the lowest with 7 (though the other pump shotguns all have 8 and the Masterton has 12. The use of High-Cap Mag extends the SLY's magazine size to 9 rounds) and it has no iron sights.
• Scenery Porn: While the Nintendo Wii is hardly a graphical powerhouse, the graphics in Goldeneye 007 look stunning considering the system it's on. The impressively-destructible environments are immensely detailed, featuring impressive lighting and particle effects and some damn nicely-rendered textures to boot. The character models also look amazing, with full detail and stunning motion capture work; each key or major character has their own distinct look and come fully equipped with their own ranges of motion, subtle quirks and realistic facial expressions. And, as previously stated, this is all running on the Nintendo Wii at a mostly stable framerate (it drops a bit when too much is happening on-screen, but that doesn't happen very often). If that isn't impressive enough, note that Reloaded barely added much other than the increased graphical detail.
• Secondary Fire: Many of the guns have alternate fire modes, ranging from a silencer for your P99 to an underbarrel grenade launcher on some assault rifles.
• Sequential Boss: The final boss fight consists of three phases - a quicktime fistfight, then a straight-up shootout, and then another quicktime fistfight.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Padlocks can be shot off or broken with a melee attack, most commonly found on gun cases and cabinets.
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: In reference to the movie, the cutscene at the end of Facility has Ourumov shoot one of his mooks after said mook starts shooting at Bond while he's taking cover behind some warheads. And this is after Ouromov warned another soldier against shooting.
• Silliness Switch: Paintball Mode. Every gun will also have their firing sound changed to one when it is turned on in multiplayer, including the MJR-409 (the rocket launcher).
• Soundtrack Dissonance: "I Remember" by deadmau5 plays while Bond searches a Barcelona nightclub for a contact. When he later escapes the club in a hail of bullets, the song continues to play.
• Split Screen: The local multiplayer mode enables up to four players to play simultaneously, with the screen being split into four much like in the original.
• Stuck Items: The P99 is always in your base loadout and can never be swapped for something found on the mission.
• Take Cover!: The game doesn't have an explicit cover system but if you're crouched behind a solid object, aiming down the sights will have Bond stand up to see over the obstruction to return fire.
• Tank Goodness: One level has Bond chase Ourumov through the streets of Saint Petersburg while driving a tank, letting him plow through hordes of enemies with ease.
• Take Your Time: Aside from a handful of Timed Missions, this occurs throughout the game. It doesn't matter if Ourumov is stealing a helicopter or the research base is collapsing around you, nothing happens until you saunter to the next trigger point and advance the plot.
• Tap on the Head: The Quick Melee consists of knocking enemies out with either the butt of your gun or a punch to the face, depending on how close you are.
• Technology Porn: The mission briefing before each new locale is a cavalcade of tactical maps, personnel profiles, and target identifiers all spinning, sliding, and panning in rapid choreography.
• Tempting Fate:
  • In the "Dam" level, the two soldiers complain about the lack of action and excitement in their jobs, right before Bond and Trevelyan surprise them from behind.
  • Sky Briggs claims the helicopter in the Dubai Arms Fair mission "couldn't be in safer hands" as he walks through a door, only to be gunned down on the other side.
• The Unfought: Ourumov is killed and betrayed by Xenia during the train scene.
• Unorthodox Reload: Bond reloads some guns in an unorthodox manner, particularly in Reloaded, such as the "Iraqi" reload for the AK-47 when empty and the P99 reload.

• You Have Failed Me: Justified in "Facility" when an idiot mook shoots at Bond despite Bond being behind a bunch of explosives; Ourumov warns the mook, and then a second, even dumber mook fires again and puts all of their lives at risk. Ouromov hands out a very understandable field execution at that point.

---