Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Setting aside our differences
Now this is a weird situation. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, Electronic Arts announced some time ago they were bringing a game called Goldeneye to the Nintendo DS this year. If I had heard this announcement at the time, an announcement that only revealed the name of a game that I happen to love and the name of a publisher I happen to hate, I would obviously be quite pissed. EA is already cashing in on the glorious Goldeneye name with a first person shooter release for all consoles this fall. To further soil the Goldeneye name with another release would be like dumping a bucket full of rancid urine on a grave because your bladder simply could not hold enough to really show your lack of respect.
According to this news story, though, the DS version may not simply be a quick cash in like the console FPS appears to be. Apparently, the portable version will actually be based on the N64 classic released 7 years ago this month. Setting aside my utter loathing of EA for just a second (yes, it is possible for me to do that), I began to think about what this game could be.
As many of you know, Goldeneye is tied with Perfect Dark as my second favorite game of all time. It is tied for second mostly for what it represents rather than how it plays. Compared to Perfect Dark the game just feels very old and sluggish. Compared to modern first person shooters like Halo the game is almost unplayable. With the introduction of dual analog control, graphics that don’t give you searing headaches and vehicular combat, the game is as much a museum piece as a game at this point. However, Goldeneye did essentially introduce multiplayer gaming and first person shooters to consoles, changing the landscape of gaming forever while being damn fun in the process. With a graphical overhaul and a few tweaks to the control, an updated version of Goldeneye would not only be able to compete with the best of the best first person shooters around, it may actually be superior to them.
Do I think that EA is capable of producing a game that would merely bring Goldeneye to the modern era without completely ruining what made it great in the first place? In a word, no. But, EA just happens to have a very good relationship with Free Radical, a company comprised of many of the original designers of Goldeneye. If EA is smart, and no one has ever said they are stupid (you do not become the biggest publisher in the world by ignoring mainstream needs), they have already handed this project over to Free Radical.
The question is not “Will I buy this game?” because, clearly, if EA is able to secure the Intellectual Property rights from Rare, meaning the same levels and characters would be present, I would buy this game a second after it’s release. The question, then, is just how good can this game be? It won’t have vehicles like Halo 2, no, but, using the DS’s WiFi capabilities it could very well be online. A game like Goldeneye, which encourages constant movement, contains completely balanced weapons and all but eliminates sniper dominance with clever level design, would be the perfect FPS to enter the online world.
While it is impossible to bring the control to the level we have come to expect, the possibility of using the touch screen to aim, like in Metroid DS, means this game could eliminate the problems people had with aiming vertically in the N64 version.
This game is still shrouded in mystery and probably will be for a few more months at least, but the idea of being able to play a modernized version of Goldeneye is just too good to be true. As this most likely will not actually compete with any Rare game, as Microsoft has forbidden Rare from making games on the DS, I don’t see any reason why Rare wouldn’t help out some old friends by selling the I.P. to Free Radical. For the sake of all the people out there who still think Rare’s N64 classic is the epitome of an FPS, please let this game be a reality.
According to this news story, though, the DS version may not simply be a quick cash in like the console FPS appears to be. Apparently, the portable version will actually be based on the N64 classic released 7 years ago this month. Setting aside my utter loathing of EA for just a second (yes, it is possible for me to do that), I began to think about what this game could be.
As many of you know, Goldeneye is tied with Perfect Dark as my second favorite game of all time. It is tied for second mostly for what it represents rather than how it plays. Compared to Perfect Dark the game just feels very old and sluggish. Compared to modern first person shooters like Halo the game is almost unplayable. With the introduction of dual analog control, graphics that don’t give you searing headaches and vehicular combat, the game is as much a museum piece as a game at this point. However, Goldeneye did essentially introduce multiplayer gaming and first person shooters to consoles, changing the landscape of gaming forever while being damn fun in the process. With a graphical overhaul and a few tweaks to the control, an updated version of Goldeneye would not only be able to compete with the best of the best first person shooters around, it may actually be superior to them.
Do I think that EA is capable of producing a game that would merely bring Goldeneye to the modern era without completely ruining what made it great in the first place? In a word, no. But, EA just happens to have a very good relationship with Free Radical, a company comprised of many of the original designers of Goldeneye. If EA is smart, and no one has ever said they are stupid (you do not become the biggest publisher in the world by ignoring mainstream needs), they have already handed this project over to Free Radical.
The question is not “Will I buy this game?” because, clearly, if EA is able to secure the Intellectual Property rights from Rare, meaning the same levels and characters would be present, I would buy this game a second after it’s release. The question, then, is just how good can this game be? It won’t have vehicles like Halo 2, no, but, using the DS’s WiFi capabilities it could very well be online. A game like Goldeneye, which encourages constant movement, contains completely balanced weapons and all but eliminates sniper dominance with clever level design, would be the perfect FPS to enter the online world.
While it is impossible to bring the control to the level we have come to expect, the possibility of using the touch screen to aim, like in Metroid DS, means this game could eliminate the problems people had with aiming vertically in the N64 version.
This game is still shrouded in mystery and probably will be for a few more months at least, but the idea of being able to play a modernized version of Goldeneye is just too good to be true. As this most likely will not actually compete with any Rare game, as Microsoft has forbidden Rare from making games on the DS, I don’t see any reason why Rare wouldn’t help out some old friends by selling the I.P. to Free Radical. For the sake of all the people out there who still think Rare’s N64 classic is the epitome of an FPS, please let this game be a reality.
More buzz (har har)
So, I need to mention this whole ilovebees.com thing, Bungie's cryptic, cracked-out marketing scheme for Halo 2. Every other gaming site on the net worth their salt has at least mentioned it in confused passing, and after exploring the whole crazy thing a bit more, I'm hooked. I could try and explain it all, but it would be in vain, and it's much cooler to explore everything yourself. Start here (watch the end closely). Then go here. Then read this (right side). Then scour various message boards for a million different theories. If you're stuck, check here. And if you want to fully submit to the mania, payphones are ringing around the country at certain times/locations. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best marketing scheme ever, even if it does get a little creepy sometimes. Not that it needs it, being debatably the most anticipated game ever, but anything that can get this many geeks into this much of a fervor is obviously worth the time put into it. If you're confused as shit, leave me questions in the comments, if you've got the basic idea, have fun!
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