I was looking forward to the day when Rare’s Legendary Goldeneye made its appearance not only on Nintendo Switch Online but also on Xbox in Game Pass. Shooters just aren’t made like this one these days. Okay, actually she’s only ever done Rare (and later Free Radical with Time Splitters) like that. What do I mean by “like”? Well, the firm view of replayability even in solo mode. Because here we had a clever, modular mission design that became more complex depending on the level of difficulty and playful equipment that allowed different approaches from quiet to loud. That was just as fresh in 1996 as it is today, when most shooters pay homage to the spectacle god and often lose their powder in the first round. Added to this was a fabulous multiplayer mode to round out the package. So what could possibly go wrong?
Well, as it turns out, quite a bit. It’s been a tough few days figuring this out because neither version makes me really happy. It actually got off to a good start on my first steps on an Xbox One X: the game looks completely antiquated, of course, but it runs better than ever and the controls have been brought into the new millennium with a modern layout. As a result, the weapon always remains static in the image, instead of following the crosshairs like in the original when aiming manually, similar to a VR title. But it plays and feels good. The only problem is that Goldeneye doesn’t offer online multiplayer in the Xbox version.
Given that the people I wanted to play this quartet with have scattered across the Republic over the past quarter century, that’s tantamount to a complete elimination of this game mode. The Switch version, which can be played online but otherwise only uses the ROM of the N64 module, could help. This means that the developers have not done anything else here, the controls remain as they are. If you’re wondering what the problem is, if you’ve played the original anyway, you should simply hold the controller upside down when playing your current favorite title and then get in touch with me again.
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