GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[connery as bond]

Hello all. This game has been set up in tribute to twenty years of GoldenEye.

Game rules - +1 for your favourite and -2 for the one you want to mark down, Please ensure that your choices are Bold etc and always double check to ensure that no one has posted at the same time (a quick refresh is usually sufficient). Also, as there are plenty to choose from, I've started the game at 15 points. One vote per person per day.

Dam - 15
Facility - 15
Runway - 15
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 15
Frigate - 15
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 15
Statue - 15
Archives - 15
Streets - 15
Depot - 15
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 15
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15
_________________
Missions:
- Return to Arkhangelsk
- Q-Lab VR
- Mt. Hochkonig
- TBA

Last edited by connery as bond on Tue Aug 29, 2017 4:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

[pavarini]

Why not setup a strawpoll instead?

[K1lo]

Nice idea, but I agree an online poll would be better than manually tabulating the votes

[Johnny Thunder]

ummm...
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[Dragonsbrethren]

A poll would be boring because no one can justify their selections...

+1 Facility: While the dam is technically more impressive, the facility has always been my favorite, both in terms of background and setup. The slow paced beginning, navigating the duct, finding the vent into the toilet stall, seeing the soldier in the next stall, aiming for a headshot on him and getting his hat instead... Then the level opens up into one of the best segments for stealth gameplay in the game, allowing you to quietly pick off patrolling soldiers and take full advantage of being able to lure guards with sound...except for that one soldier who waits in ambush no matter how much noise you make.

Moving into the first secure section of the facility, the gameplay gets more hectic, it's not really possible to keep up a stealth run in this section, even if I always tried to instead of doing the smart thing and just switching to the KF7. The security room with dual consoles is another section of mission design that I absolutely love...they basically lifted this room for Area 52 in Perfect Dark, which was neat, since it wasn't officially featured in multiplayer in GE. Particiularly how they knew the limitations of their own engine and made the glass panes bulletproof, so the soldiers have to run out to shoot you when they "see" you. Subtle design that the missions often neglected...even this mission in the "quad" area! Speaking of the quad, it's just obnoxiously evil the way you get sealed in by the airlock with no chance of survival. And I give them credit for wonderful use of screen monitors to show the airlock door status, even if it was already seen with the dam's security gates.

The laboratories are great. This is the place where I'm going to comment on how wonderfully Karl Hilton took a bunch of disconnected scenes from the movie and made a wonderful game space from them, connecting them together in a way that feels perfect, with plenty of totally original creations in between them that hold up just as well. The minimize scientist casualties objective added some depth to a genre that, until this point, had mostly been about shooting anything that moves indiscriminately. Even if Trevelyan did totally blast that scientist in the back in the movie...

The bottling room is really nice, I love how the tanks were made destructible, even if it does change things significantly from the movie, where the mines destroyed that entire section of the facility. Also, the scene with Ourumov and Trevelyan is a brilliant piece of scripting and it's a shame this sequence is pretty much set up so that you never see it. I almost wish it were done as the outro instead, but after so many years of cinematic games, it's nice to go back to something that lets you retain control and muck things up.

And the level's multiplayer setup created some of my earliest GoldenEye memories...even if the duct spawn/bathroom was totally unfair. Perfect Dark gave us an escape route, at least.

-2 Streets: Watch this clip. I'll wait. Wasn't that awesome? Imagine seeing that for the first time in the theater in 1995! Now imagine playing Streets for the first time with that scene in mind and...getting a city-themed maze with a timer and a handful of obstacles. And it's even worse knowing the devs had bigger plans for the mission, with the incomplete path for Ourumov's car, the capability of the jeeps to move on paths, the extra civilian and car models, the unused textures... This mission could have been so much more than it was. At least they got the tank working! (But seriously, watch that movie scene again, Bond drifts a friggin' tank!) And then, when you do navigate the maze, the mission ends in nothingness. With so much continuity between parts of missions in GoldenEye, it's just a stunningly bad ending. And speaking of continuity, how did Natalya get captured again?!

But to keep this writeup from being entirely negative, the opening bit of the level design is really good! The archives, the lot, the alleyways where you meet up with Valentin (and reusing Valentin at all), that one section of building where you can jump through the windows and get a grenade launcher...it's all well done. It's really the sections after this that all start to feel too samey--unlike the facility, very few areas of St. Petersburg from the movie were reused. Some variety in environs could've really helped, since the concept of a timed city streets maze isn't exactly a bad one and it's not really something the game has done yet, unless you could the freeform mission flow of the two Surfaces.

I do really like the obstacle placement with the cars/jeeps. The blockades with soldiers armed with rocket launchers feel like they could've been lifted from a cut scene of the movie. And even the minefields are an alright piece of design, even if they're just intended to slow the pacing and are only a threat when first encountered. And hey, there was no Perrier product placement.

And while it's hardly relevant, I can't let it slide: GoldenEye Wii/Reloaded took the action movie route with its mission based on the tank chase...it's almost comically silly with Bond shooting down multiple helicopters. And it's still no where near as exciting as that scene from the movie, showing that the lack of dynamic action isn't this mission's only problem. Still fun, though.


Dam - 15
Facility - 16
Runway - 15
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 15
Frigate - 15
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 15
Statue - 15
Archives - 15
Streets - 13
Depot - 15
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 15
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15

[The Extremist]

A points-based system has too much going on. Another forum I post on has a much better game called Kill Your Babies. A list is given, and people take turns knocking one off for any reason until only the winner remains. A good way to handle it on a less busy forum like this one is to give everybody a turn, unless 48 hours go by without a knockout, then somebody can come in and take a bonus turn (one per person), and again if another 48 hours pass. This way as few as 10 people can do 19 knockouts.
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[bmw]

I'm gonna give +1 to Frigate and -2 to Caverns. The Caverns was just not a memorable level for me (in fact thinking back I can't even recall what any of the objectives were). The Frigate has always been been one of my favorites, from the atmosphere to the difficult rescuing of hostages to feeling like I was really on a ship. Other FPS games have done ship levels since then but Goldeneye was one of the originals.

Dam - 15
Facility - 16
Runway - 15
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 15
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 15
Statue - 15
Archives - 15
Streets - 13
Depot - 15
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15

[AL64inthedark]

Bunker 2 : +1
It's one of the best mission in the game. The first reason is that the level has a decent size. How the enemies are handled make it very interesting to play. You can really see the consequence if you make too many "noise". There's many different ways to make your way through the level, and the design is very nice. I especially love those metallic double doors, their textures always fascinated me. Maybe my favorite texture from all N64 games, it render so well.

Runway -2
None interesting mission that I just never play for fun when I play Goldeneye again (except if go for a full run obviously). I don't know why I would.
Back in the days it was funny to run over soldiers with the Tank but this gets old quite fast.

Dam - 15
Facility - 16
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 15
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 15
Archives - 15
Streets - 13
Depot - 15
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15
_________________
Listen to me
https://youtu.be/BzZ3k3NmhLM?t=25m51s

[connery as bond]

Monday

Dam is absolutely one of the best levels in the game. The music, the level design, the mysteries that have surrounded the level simce release, and the semi-fast paced/stealth mix worked great for the opening level of the game.

For me, there's not many levels I don't like to play, although I always find myself considering Statue one of the lessar levels. One of the best scenes in the film but a semi-boring level. Good rework of having Valentin there to rewrite his meeting from the movie, however.

Also, as written in the first post, feel free to vote once a day.


Dam - 16 (+1)
Facility - 16
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 15
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 13 (-2)
Archives - 15
Streets - 13
Depot - 15
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15
_________________
Missions:
- Return to Arkhangelsk
- Q-Lab VR
- Mt. Hochkonig
- TBA

[Wreck]

Not that I really like ranking the levels, especially choosing which one I dislike the most, but I may as well participate in this little game.

I'm going to give my +1 to Silo. I know the background is basically a lot of cut & paste, but it was still well done. My recent attempts on LTK mode made me appreciate it even more. It is a great map to run and gun on, with the countdown adding more tension. For it being completely new to the story, with no film basis, it's very enjoyable.

My -2 is going toward Depot. I have a few reasons for this decision. One is that there are so many buildings that serve no purpose in the mission. Out of all the hangars, you only need to enter two of them. And with the design, the garage doors don't close portals, which hurts performance. There should have also been more pre-placed guards. There's only maybe fifteen scattered over a few areas, and the rest are spawned in (and behave strangely). I think this particular mission could have been improved some.


Dam - 16
Facility - 16
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 16 (+1)
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 13
Archives - 15
Streets - 13
Depot - 13 (-2)
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 15

[Trevor]

Wreck wrote:

And with the design, the garage doors don't close portals, which hurts performance.

Why does everyone say this?
I have already posted this elsewhere but


Depot does close the hangar portals, agreed though the house has lots of windows, and the roofs of the hangars are double-sided

Trev
_________________

[Wreck]

You may be right on the regular hangars, but the large triple door garage does not. The train building also doesn't close portals at all (the lower door under the stairs is missing its portal). I thought I had more issues in Perfect Dark with this stuff, though. Might be where my memory is leaning.

[AL64inthedark]

Archives +1 :
Once again, I really like the fact that beeing noisy makes so many gards spawn. Sadly it's also very easy to trick the mechanism, as the how the objectives works, which makes it possible to just run, open door where Natalya is and getting away, leaving here all alone.
Still the map is nice and pretty realistic with all the props and glasses even in multiplayer where it was one of my favorite back in the days.
Also there's double DD44 which are so fun to play with.

Egyptian -2 :
Nothing really interesting in it, you don't even have to kill people. The trap to get the golden gun is boring to figure out, and annoying to do everytime you play the level. It feels like a rushed level, there were more interesting setup to choose with the James Bond franchise, but for sure it would have require way more work than to come up with this cheap labyrinth.
Still a better level than what I've done with map modelling at the moment tho (nothing ^^).



Dam - 16
Facility - 16
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 16
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 13
Archives - 16 (+1)
Streets - 13
Depot - 13
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 13 (-2)
_________________
Listen to me
https://youtu.be/BzZ3k3NmhLM?t=25m51s

[K1lo]

So hard to pick a +1! There are many good candidates.

Facility +1:

I love the layout of the level, it feels like a real, living space and is a lot of fun to play.

Streets -2:

As already mentioned by others, this is a disappointing level which just doesn't feel fun to play. The parts were there, but nothing interesting was done with them.

Dam - 16
Facility - 17 (+1)
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 15
Silo - 16
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 13
Archives - 16
Streets - 11 (-2)
Depot - 13
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 13

[connery as bond]

Wednesday

The first Bunker mission is awesome. Along with Facility, this level makes me feel most like a spy. The "under construction" aspect gives it a completely different feeling than Bunker ii. Not exactly a long or difficult level but I think this level (and Silo) shows how a movie-to-game can embellish and create situations that feel true to the story and characters.

Dam - 16
Facility - 17
Runway - 13
Surface i - 15
Bunker i - 16 (+1)
Silo - 16
Frigate - 16
Surface ii - 15
Bunker ii - 16
Statue - 11 (-2)
Archives - 16
Streets - 11
Depot - 13
Train - 15
Jungle - 15
Control - 15
Caverns - 13
Cradle - 15
Aztec - 15
Egyptian - 13
_________________
Missions:
- Return to Arkhangelsk
- Q-Lab VR
- Mt. Hochkonig
- TBA