Game:

Anyone who was a gaming adolescent in the 90s will likely have fond memories of Rare’s original game-changing N64 shooter, and many of them will likely also recall the first attempt to cash in on that legacy, EA’s fairly lamentable Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. You could therefore be forgiven for expecting that this latest game to bear the Goldeneye name would be another cynical attempt to shift units off the back of a fondly-remembered (though now rather decrepit) classic, thudding onto shop shelves to fatal sounds of broken dreams.

Thankfully, this one is really very good.

Eurocom have taken the eminently sensible approach of completely remaking Goldeneye 007 with a modern sensibility, attempting only to recreate the spirit of the 1997 game rather than hewing too closely to its specific details. As a result, the new title features a number of mechanics and locations that feel familiar and yet also fresh at the same time. The most immediately obvious deviation is in the gunplay, which takes a more Call Of Duty-inspired approach, with a small dash of Killzone’s cover-shooting mechanic thrown in for good measure.

As in those games, aiming down the sights is the most accurate and effective way of dropping enemies, and doing so while in cover will cause Bond to pop up over the top of it. The controls are robust and accurate, with the motion controls providing an especially pleasant sense of tactility. The game can be played with absolutely any controller available for the Wii, and there is an embarrassment of customisation options available, allowing you to adjust sensitivity, turning speed and auto-aim to suit your play style.

The replacement of Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig has had a ripple effect on the tone of the whole story.

The narrative has received a spit-and-polish to bring it more into line with the Bond universe of Daniel Craig and to remove the World War II-based motivation for the villain. This is generally quite successful – the script is tight and the narrative flows clearly and logically from one location to the next, with voice-acting of a generally high standard. There is, inevitably, something of a disconnect between the older style of Bond narrative, with its supervillains and giant satellites and mercenary armies with attack helicopters, and the more restrained, brutal world of the franchise since Casino Royale, but Goldeneye 007 generally does a better job of straddling that line than the next-gen James Bond title Bloodstone.

Aside from some vaguely familiar locations, the main elements that have survived the re-imagining from the N64 days are the adaptive stealth gameplay and the scaling of objectives relative to the difficulty level. Large chunks of every level can be completed stealthily by using only silenced weapons or the new brutal melee takedowns, and sneaking around the periphery of rooms headshotting guards or battering their faces in against the edge of a desk before darting back into cover soon becomes an obsession. Exploration of larger areas usually reveals a convenient crawl space or a concealed silenced sniper-rifle you can use to pick off stragglers while crouched on a rooftop somewhere, and this richness of level design combined with the scaling difficulty system provides considerable replayability.

The stealthy approach makes it possible to almost entirely avoid open conflict, with a reasonably generous window of opportunity for eliminating alerted enemies before they rumble you to the others

As the difficulty increases, so do the number and variety of mission objectives that must be completed. This often means that playing the game on its highest difficulty setting will yield up whole areas of the level that it is unnecessary to visit on the lowest, providing a genuine incentive to attempt the hardest setting and offering a more extensive experience than simply making the enemies tougher to kill.

Of course, perhaps the main reason that the original game is so fondly remembered today is its splitscreen multiplayer, which was a tense, riotously enjoyable experience that still has yet to be surpassed in many ways. Eurocom have made a game attempt to bottle some of that magic here, but it was always going to be an impossible mission. Commendable effort has gone into the level design and weapons sets, never simply aping the Rare game, and there are modes piled upon modes, as many customisation options as you could wish for. Played with a couple of friends, it is fast-paced and enjoyable. Online, it provides a sweet distraction for an hour or two. You’ll smile for a moment, but it’s never magic.

Review Round-Up

GRAPHICS – 3/5 – Not a beautiful game, as such, but an impressive achievement considering the hardware. Some striking use of colour and lighting effects helps to make up for any technical deficiencies. Characters’ faces are a little inert, but the movement animations are very good, particularly in differentiating a character who has been killed from one who is merely injured.

SOUND – 3/5 – The soundtrack is pretty much what you would expect from a Bond title, save for one extremely ethereal ballad played during a shootout in a Spanish nightclub. Nicole Scherzinger provides a convincing cover of the theme song. Daniel Craig stays true to videogame form and delivers a performance that suggests he was probably trying to read a newspaper during the recording.

GAMEPLAY – 4/5 – Intelligently modernised without losing the essential charm of the original, the game provides variety and flexibility, with a campaign that generally paces its objectives and battles extremely well. The last couple of levels run out of steam somewhat, but the only egregious irritation is an extremely poorly-judged boss battle very near to the end.

LONGEVITY – 4/5 – Robust and highly adjustable multiplayer modes provide a solid complement to a campaign which is deep and encouraging of experimentation. There’s plenty to see here, and more than one way to see it.

OVERALL – 4/5

Eurocom have achieved that rare thing: a remake which understands and respects the core of the original experience, but which never makes the mistake of simply trying to repeat it. Rare’s original N64 version has clearly been the subject of careful consideration here, and all the right lessons have been drawn from it to create a shooter which echoes many of the things that were well-loved about the older title while wisely modernising the elements that don’t stand up so well in the cold harsh light of today, 13 years after its release. Those fearing a callous exercise in corporate-driven graverobbing can breath a sigh of relief. This is a game made with love. Nothing more, nothing less. Only love.

- Elliot Mears

Game

There has been something a of a resurgence of light gun games in recent years thanks to the release of the Nintendo Wii. At one time back before the days of flat screen LCD televisions there seemed to be a genuine excitement amongst the masses about the release of the latest Namco TIME CRISIS game, or Sega’s HOUSE OF THE DEAD series. There was little cooler than being able to stand in your bedroom and recreate the arcade experience, holding a plastic gun in your hand, and taking careful aim as you shot people to bits. The latest generation of high definition consoles appears to have moved away from recreating that old school arcade experience, and the representation of light gun shooters have come off particularly worse for wares. Just look at the PS3 TIME CRISIS game to see how far the genre has fallen. However, while the PS3 and 360 have seemingly abandoned the light gun shooter, they have found a new home in the casual arms of the Nintendo Wii.
DEAD SPACE EXTRACTION is the latest light gun game to be released on the Wii, and is a prequel to the excellent DEAD SPACE that was previously released on PS3 and 360. While the original DEAD SPACE was heavily influenced by games such as RESIDENT EVIL 4, and movies like EVENT HORIZON and John Carpenter’s THE THING, this game takes a lot of inspiration from classic light gun games and blends it with the style and sensibilities of it’s high definition predecessor. The story is a prequel, dealing with the events that unfolded on the planet Aegis VII when a large number of the colonists go insane following the unearthing of a stone monument known as The Marker. The colonists begin to kill each other, and the dead bodies are mutated and reanimated in to deformed Necromorphs. You are tasked with escaping the colony and making your way to the spaceship Ishimura that is in orbit of the planet. Impressively the game manages to maintain the high level of dismemberment, despite the Wii’s technological limitations. In order to perform the most damage you need to shoot off the enemy’s limbs. Just shooting their head’s off rarely has the desired effect, and can often make the creatures go in to a blind frenzy. Other features from the original game such as Zero Gravity sections and telekinesis make it through intact, making it feel like an authentic Dead Space experience. All of the weapons from the first game, such as the flame thrower and the force gun, are included as well as an all new pistol. In order to activate the secondary fire mode, you need to twist the remote sideways.

Despite the inferior graphics DEAD SPACE EXTRACTION maintains the same look and style of the original

Extraction is not entirely derivative of the original game and has a few new tricks up it’s sleeve. The game features a series of puzzles that take advantage of the Wii’s motion controls, requiring you to hack in to computer panels. Your task is to guide a laser beam along a set course without veering off of the path, and avoiding obstacles, similar to a Buzz Wire game. You can also create barricades at certain points by firing bolts in to the corners of specific pieces of metal. It is not much, but it serves to break up any monotony you may find in your typical light gun shooter. Having said that, there were a few instances in the earlier levels of the game where I found myself becoming impatient with the numerous scenes in which our characters stop and talk about how scared they are and how they cannot believe that this is happening. I understand that this is done in an effort to control the pace, build an atmosphere, and carry along the narrative, but I have reservations about just how suitable it is to have your character stand still and look at a group of people shitting their pants in a light gun game. Previous light gun games have been very heavy on the action, and less focused on the narrative. However, this only really applies to the first few levels, as the story elements that occur later in the game are far more interesting and surprising, and as such actually held my attention.

There is one new enemy type in this game – a head on the end of a long thin tentacle.

There are 10 levels to work your way through, and about half a dozen characters to play as. However, each character is tied to a specific level, so you will not be able to play as any character you like whenever you like. While it’s a nice touch, it does not really add much to the game, as every character tends to have the same sort of weapons. Speaking of the weapons, they can all be upgraded by finding specific upgrade collectibles in the story mode. At various points you will stop moving and be allowed to look around the room freely. At these points you can usually spot the glowing purple upgrade collectables, which can be picked up using your telekinesis. Other collectables include audio logs and text logs provided by the colonists, or the crew of the Ishimura. A series of challenges can be unlocked by making your way through the game. These usually involve making your way through a specific arena and killing as many Necromorphs as you can as quickly as you can. You also unlock episodes of the animated comic book that was released on Xbox Live and the PSN, which is a nice bonus. There are numerous difficulty settings to choose from with the highest being unlocked once you complete the game. The game will probably take about six hours to complete on the default difficulty, but due to the narrative nature of the game, and it’s linearity, you may find yourself with little motivation to return to the game once you have beaten it. If you are a fan of the original DEAD SPACE, and watched the animated movie, then you may find that this game initially treads a lot of familiar ground. You will be visiting numerous locations from the original game, which can bring with it one of two things; a pleasant nostalgic feeling, or a sense of familiarity which may in turn lead to boredom. For what it is worth, I found myself enjoying the game a lot more once the characters returned to the familiar setting of the Ishimura.

Yes, this is definitely Dead Space.

REVIEW ROUNDUP:

GRAPHICS: 5/5 The character models look very good, with some particularly decent lip syncing. The levels are well designed, and maintain the look at style of the original game. The enemies look suitably disgusting, with an impressive limb dismemberment system.

AUDIO: 5/5 Fantastically eerie music, and some excellent voice acting. The faint sounds in the space sections are particularly impressive. The sound design is of the same quality as the original game, which won numerous awards for it’s sound design.

GAMEPLAY: 3/5 The action can be very fast and frantic at times, and the shooting works particularly well. Each enemy is a puzzle of sorts, as you try to find the best way to dispose of them by shooting off a combination of limbs. The game is full of a number of great twists, particularly at the end of the first and ninth levels. However the game suffers a bit in the first few levels when you spend more time standing around looking at people freaking out, being led around by the nose, than actually playing the game.

LONGEVITY: 3/5 The single player will take a good 5 or 6 hours to complete as each of the 10 levels are fairly long. There are a series of challenges that are unlocked, as well as a series of higher difficulties. Yet, due to the narrative nature of the game, you may find little reason to come back to the story mode once you have completed it.

OVERALL: 4 weeping survivors out of 5. Fans of the Dead Space series will really enjoy this game, while it is still accessible enough for new players. There is a fairly nice variety in the gameplay, and the story is quite compelling, once you get past the first few levels.

[starreview tpl=16]

PRICE GUIDE (correct as of 12th October 09)

• Amazon: £22.10
• The Hut: £29.73
• Zavvi: £29.95
• Sendit: £29.89
• Play: £29.99
• Game: £29.99