YMMV / GoldenEye (2010)

• Awesome Music: The whole score. They got David Arnold, composer of many of the modern Bond films, to co-score it with Kevin Kiner, and it sounds exactly like the movies.
• Best Level Ever:
  • This game shines with its stealth levels, having just the right balance of difficulty and fairness. Severnaya: Outpost and Nigeria: Jungle are two of the best examples.
  • The Tank level in St. Petersberg is still as chaotic and awesome as ever, which makes it a real shame that it's the only one.
• Common Knowledge: Contrary to popular belief, the game does not run on the Infinity Ward engine but rather the same EngineX that was used for PS2 Quantum of Solace. Reloaded doesn't either and instead uses EngineXT.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Once people get to Level 45 or higher in Wii's online play, don't expect many of them to use anything else but Strata, Masterton, and Ivana. Very rarely you'll see Anovas from high-level players and that's only due to the Ivana not being able to use the Grenade Launcher attachment.
• Contested Sequel: While the game received good reviews from critics, some fans of the original game derided it as yet another Call of Duty clone.
• Game-Breaker: In the Wii version's online play, certain equipment you can unlock once you get your level to and past 45.
  • Level 45 grants you the Strata SV-400, a powerful SMG with a fast rate of fire. Its only con is it'll eat through ammo quickly. There's a reason it's called a game changer.
  • Level 52 grants you the Masterton M-557, a fully automatic shotgun with a fast rate of fire. The only cons are the severe muzzle climb after firing for awhile and its slow reload, which can be addressed with Speed Loader. This weapon can utterly destroy a Black Box in a matter of just seconds. That's how powerful this gun is.
  • Level 53 grants you the Proximity Mine which will detonate once it detects any movement from enemies. Its only con is enemies can shoot your Proxy from afar or blow it up with their explosives, if they see it. Since you get your grenades and mines restocked when you die and respawn, it basically guarantees two free kills per life.
    • Most would say use Mine Sweeper to counter this, but that only marks mines on your radar as tiny red X's and doesn't tell you if those mines are friendly or unfriendly. Also, the time it takes to read the radar is usually enough time for someone to kill you.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • The shootout in the Barcelona nightclub, with this playing in the background. It's quite catchy, too.
  • The tank mission, where the Russian Air Force is constantly bombing you in a futile effort to stop you.
• Most Wonderful Sound: That quiet yet extremely satisfying "WOOSH" sound that plays every time you land a successful headshot while in stealth.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The screams and gunfire in the background in the Bunker level. Even after Natalya says everyone else is dead, the screaming never stops. The music is also quiet and ominous, supporting the Nothing Is Scarier feeling.
  • Xenia's death is horrifying, even if she had it coming. As the helicopter she is attached to is shot down by Bond, Xenia realizes she is about to be dragged into the abyss below and panickedly tries to release herself from the rope, but fails. She spends the last seconds of her life clinging to Bond's leg and screaming in despair, before falling to her fiery death below.
• Nintendo Hard: 007 Classic Mode. Harkening back to the original GoldenEye, it removes the health regen and replaces it with the classic dual-health bar system (the yellow one for player health and the blue one for body armor). That may not sound bad at first, but you'll need body armor more than ever because you take damage very quickly. And any health you lose stays lost, even if you restart at a checkpoint. DO NOT pick this mode unless you're either a masochist or an expert at the game.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: The game currently has a rating of 85.30 on GameRankings and 81 on Metacritic, and is generally regarded as the best single-player FPS for the Wii.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The leveling system in the Wii version's online play. To put it in perspective (depending on your choice of mode and your fighting capability and available gear): The faster modes like Black Box may yield up to 250-500 XP a round where the longer modes (rounds that could take up to 10 minutes each) may yield up to 1000 XP a round. The highest level in the game is 56 and takes about 1.4 million XP just to reach. And, if you have a bad game - such as other people abusing Game-Breakers - your earnings may get down to a paltry 50-200 XP a round regardless of mode. This is why leveling was made faster in Reloaded.
  • The titular Heroes in Heroes mode. It's clear that the developers intended for the heroes to become juggernauts and turn the tide of battle; however, because the game's damage to health ratio is heavily in Rocket Tag territory, there's absolutely no way that the Heroes will do enough damage in their respective lives to make up for the HUGE 10-point bonus given to the opposing team when they die. Effectively, the team that uses the most Heroes in Heroes mode is almost certainly going to lose as a direct result. For this reason (and the high point totals), Heroes mode eventually became heavily used by the Wii community as an extended version of Team Conflict and for level grinding, with most experienced players eschewing the Heroes themselves altogether.
• Scrappy Weapon: In online multiplayer, the Sigmus is considered the worst weapon in the game with a small magazine (an automatic with only 20 bullets per magazine), poor damage, poor range, and poor accuracy. Since it's the only gun you have for custom class building when you begin online play at Level 1, most players ignore using the Sigmus in favor of the default loadouts (including the more favorable Sigmus 9 and Stauger) until they level up enough to unlock more guns and equipment to start custom loadout building.
• That One Achievement: One combat accolade in Wii's online play, Injury to Insult, can be a royal pain to achieve as it requires you to kill enemies while you are blinded by Flash Bangs. The catch is kills toward Injury to Insult only count during the five seconds the white flash is on your screen due to a Flash Bang going off near you. Kills when your vision is blurry after the white flash fades do not count to Injury to Insult. If you want this accolade be prepared to run Distraction for a long time to blind yourself since Distraction is not a common gadget used by other players. Another very difficult accolade to get is "Improvised", which is gotten by killing another player by the impact of a thrown grenade.
• That One Level:
  • Anybody who played through the single-player campaign looks back with a shudder at one section of the Barcelona level - the kitchen. During Bond's escape from the club, the only way to the exit is through the kitchen. There are three separate entrances, all of which are guarded, making it impossible to sneak in undetected. And the thugs inside fire from all angles, taking cover as well as a human player can, and basically force you to fight them one at a time. When you finally make your way to the exit, you'll feel like the real James Bond.
  • In multiplayer, Sewer. Put simply, most of the map is far too dark, especially on the Wii version, making it difficult to get around, let alone identify and track targets (especially ones in dark clothing). The Reloaded edition of the game increased the level's brightness significantly, but not enough to completely solve the problem.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Being a reimagining of a classic, this was an inevitable outcome. The biggest source of complaints were the changes to the story and the characters. Some choices made sense, such as the removal of Janus' Cossack backstory, which just barely made sense at the point the original film was released, but others like Onatopp were altered to the point they were basically In Name Only versions of the characters. The biggest change was Bond himself being portrayed and voiced by Daniel Craig, which some fans greatly disliked because they expected Pierce Brosnan to retain his role.
  • You can't use the Rocket Launcher in Online Multiplayer (outside of hacking the game).
  • Boris does not return at all (though one of Zukovsky's mooks who shares the same name is playable in multiplayer).
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Commonly thought in regards to Janus' motivation change. In the film, he wants to get revenge on Britain for their betrayal of the Lienz Cossacks, which is a motivation which strikes the right balance of being historic and personal enough to make him broadly understandable, but also distant enough for his subsequent supervillain plot of using the GoldenEye to wipe out the UK economy to come off as selfish and disproportionate. In this game, his new motivation is a desire to get back at the international financial system for causing the 2008 recession, which ties his actions much closer to his motivations and makes him seem a lot more reasonable than was probably intended.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: When you fight Janus at the end of the game, instead of wearing a black suit and ballistic vest like the original he's dressed in a white shirt with a green-grey sweater on top and khaki pants, which makes him look more like a suburban dad dressed for church services than a terrorist mastermind.

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