You are aware of the penalty for terrorism in Russia.

Who's the traitor in your government?

What do you know about the Janus group?

Why did you set off the GoldenEye?!?

Stop it! Both of you! You are like... Boys with toys.

It was... Ourumov.

Hmpf... General Ourumov. Why would he do such a thing?

There were two GoldenEye satellites. He set off one to steal the other.

General Ourumov...

Minister Mishkin.

How dare you interrogate this man without my presence?!?

This man is a spy.

He killed minister Mishkin...

With his own gun.

Move!

Good luck, Mr. Bond.

"Good luck, Mr. Bond."

Welcome to the parallel universe of GoldenEye.

A world in which all the characters had their faces changed.

A world in which the French voice acting

reminds you of old 70's soap operas.

A world in which the stages, with a lot of imagination,

might make you think you're in the movie,

or in a remastered version of the game of '97 on the N64.

But it takes a lot of creativity.

To sum it up,

welcome to a game that shares nothing with GoldenEye but the title.

Except for a few nods here and there,

like this opening sequence you just saw,

which is a copy-paste of the scene in the movie.

A dialogue between the general Ourumov,

the russian defense minister Dmitri Mishkin,

and Natalya, which looks a bit like Natalie Imbruglia.

I don't know, but it makes me think of Natalie Imbruglia,

but I'm surely the only one.

I'll be honest with you: you never feel like you're in the movie,

or even in the original game. Never.

Except for a few nods, or some sequences that remind you of the movie,

because they directly refer to a specific scene from the movie.

They're the only sequences that make you think:

"Holy shit, I'm in GoldenEye! I had forgotten!

We're in GoldenEye, guys! Whoohoo, it's GoldenEye!"

And what I'm saying now is nothing.

What really bothered me isn't the fact that I didn't feel like in GoldenEye,

in spite of what you're watching on your LCD screen.

What's the worst is that you never feel like you're James Bond.

Either Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig, or Sean Connery, or Roger Moore,

or George Lazenby, or even Timothy Dalton.

And I didn't have to look for these names, because I'm a big fan of 007.

My father was a big fan himself, and we bought all the VHS.

I watched all the 007 movies, and I know them inside out.

So I didn't have to look for these names.

But what matters is: as a James Bond fan,

I can say that this game doesn't recreate a 007-like atmosphere.

I could hardly imagine I was taking control of 007.

There's no atmosphere.

Why? Why... I don't know...

Because this FPS is insipid. Because this FPS is classless.

The characters are two-dimentional...

The characters look like shit. You've seen their faces.

You've seen how Ourumov looks.

You've seen Dmitri Mishkin, who looks hopeless:

a cheap bureaucrat with glasses and a tuxedo.

What's that?

Only Natalya looks decent. All the others are pathetic.

Boris isn't even there anymore. Exit Boris, he's taking a nap.

Really, it's a total disaster.

Some of you might think that it's not important,

or that the copyright caused some issues.

Well, that part is true, but it doesn't justify everything.

First, nobody knows if it was a problem with the copyright.

We don't know whether they couldn't,

or didn't want to use these characters.

Well, I also think that it's a copyright issue,

that would be logical.

But it doesn't justify everything.

The artistic direction (that includes the characters),

is a total disaster.

And it's not because they don't look like the live actors.

They really are catastrophic, because of the screenplay,

and because of the voice acting.

It's pathetic, hopeless.

And what about the story?

The player never feels concerned by the storyline.

And it's messy as hell, you don't understand shit.

There's a briefing at the beginning of each mission,

but sincerely, you don't give a damn.

Actually, the player plays a FPS

that should've developed its storyline, but hasn't.

Eurocom guys couldn't care less about the storyline.

So I was sorely disappointed,

because I thought the scenario would be developed,

but not at all. GoldenEye on the Wii

is a very plain FPS that can be played in stealth mode,

or in slaughter mode.

The problem is that the stealth is extremely repetitive,

with an enemy A.I that is, to tell the truth, mediocre.

And when you want to play in open fight,

the game turns into a poor man's version of Call of Duty.

Because the gameplay is really poor,

you can't even throw grenades,

and Bond doesn't have any gadget whatsoever.

You play as James Bond, and there's no gadgets?

It's unbelievable! Unbelievable!

Where are the mines, the proximity mines, the remote mines, the timed mines?

Not even grenades! What's that?

You can throw grenades in every other FPS in the world!

Here, there are grenades, but only in multiplayer mode.

But for now, let's focus on the Solo mode.

In solo mode, there are no gadgets,

no grenades, nothing at all.

That's simple: when you want to be stealthy,

you equip the Walter P-99 with a silencer.

"The silencer!" That's right!

So, you try to take the enemies down with it.

And when a soldier triggers the alarm,

all the guards in the whole level come down to get you,

they all go apeshit!

When it happens, you grab your automatic gun,

and shoot everything up.

That's how it works, from the beginning to the end.

There's absolutely nothing else.

Sometimes, there's a special sequence,

you saw it in the Direct Live, like when Bond gets in a truck,

but this kind of sequences is extremely rare.

Sometimes, there isn't a single one in a whole level.

The overall game is really generic.

I thought there would be a lot of phases like that, but no.

But since there's only a few of them, so much the better.

Because these shoot'em up sequences

that have no other purpose than pacing the game

tend to annoy me, so that's a good thing.

And just in case you hadn't noticed it yet, this review's in voice-over.

I thought about it, I tried to do it while playing, and...

It worked, but I played poorly,

and it was laborious... It actually sucks.

I won't review every game in voice-over,

but sometimes it's better this way, I'm calmer.

This way I can really tell you what I have in mind.

So, this GoldenEye... Well, I told you my opinion.

What I liked the most is the overall gameplay.

Stealth-like, or slaughter-like.

However, I just told you it was shit.

Yes, but it's the core gamelay,

that's what you do 75% of the time.

Roughly speaking, when you start a level,

you try to be stealthy.

By the way, I think that half of the enemies are free kills.

Some of them flat out give you their back.

They ask for it!

They don't even look at you, so you can sneak behind them,

and kill them in no time, by snapping their neck, for example.

Half of the enemies do that. Maybe they're looking for stuff?

And the other half does rounds. And when I say "rounds",

I mean they're litterally going circles.

So you plan your approach, you see how the rounds work.

You try to get behind the enemies, or shoot them in the head,

hoping that it won't screw up, because the hitbox is poorly made.

Sometimes you're sure that you'll reach your target,

and the soldier isn't even hurt.

He turns back, fires at you, and calls all his buddies.

That's absolute bullshit. It happened to me several times,

and I think all the players faced the same problem.

It's horrible! You aim between the eyes,

and the guy isn't even hurt! He could at least be stunned for a moment,

like on the Nintendo 64 game. The soldier should at least get hurt.

But here, he gets shot in the head and fires back in a split second!

And the damage recognition system was better on N64,

which is a shame, considering that this game came out 13 years ago.

Here, the damage recognition only works for the head.

It barely exists for the other body parts.

To sum up, it's this infiltration side of the game that I liked most.

So, what happens when you get spotted?

You can get spotted because of a camera,

you basically need to shoot them to avoid that.

You also can get spotted by a guard,

and that's where it becomes nonsense.

They don't even have a... How can I put it...

A walkie-talkie or anything like that.

They spot you, and they say:

"I have a visual on the target!"

and all the guards are instantly warned.

There's even an extra squad that comes out of nowhere.

It's lame!

Even if the guy is alone with nobody in a 50 yards circle!

Actually, if you miss your headshot, you still have some time to kill the guy.

I mean: you have two seconds to take a guard down.

Let's say it's three seconds.

No matter which body part you hit, you have two or three seconds.

If you can't take him down within this time limit,

which includes shooting him four times,

he'll call every guard in the area, and some more reinforcement.

And at this point, you're basically screwed,

and you enter the "slaughter mode".

You take cover to regenerate your health, then take cover etc...

And what I'm telling you now is actually the core gameplay.

So why did I like it?

Well, because the game difficulty is coherent.

I beat the game on Agent mode, the intermediate difficulty level.

After that, there's the 007 level, and the Classic 007 level.

And on Classic 007 mode, your lifebar doesn't fill up automatically.

The enemy A.I doesn't change, but when you get hit,

there's the same HUD as on the N64 game.

There's the lifebar on the left, in a quadrant,

and on the right, the bulletproof vest gauge.

And the bulletproof vests only exist on Classic 007 mode.

But it's an interesting challenge. And I don't even consider the time attack!

The time attack is the last difficulty level.

It's the same as the Classic 007 with a time limit.

Like 5, 10 or 15 minutes to complete the whole level.

And it's a totally crazy challenge.

Only the hardcore ones can complete all the levels on time attack mode.

It's extremely difficult.

I managed to beat some levels, even though I struggled a lot,

but I gave up on the other ones, it's extremely hard.

But the Classic 007 mode alone is very difficult.

Sometimes, you can't avoid getting hit.

You can't avoid it, and it forces you to find bulletproof vests.

If you don't, it's nearly impossible to finish some levels on Classic 007.

Anyway, since the levels are pretty long,

it takes 30 minutes to get through some of them.

The first time you explore them, it takes like 45 minutes.

So, since the levels are that long,

don't even bother trying to beat them stealthily.

It's almost impossible.

Even if you know the level by heart...

You'll always screw up a headshot at some point,

or be spotted by a patrol you didn't see,

or trigger an alarm for some reason.

It always gets messy, you can count on it.

You'll always trigger the alarm, and you'll be forced to switch on "Slaughter".

And on slaughter mode, you can't avoid getting hit.