In lieu of still owning an N64, and because I had a credit note from trading in Battlefield Hardline, I recently bought GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, Eurocom's re-imagining of Rare's classic 1997 first-person shooter. I'm dispirited by the homogeneous, post–Modern Warfare brand of FPS that currently predominates, and my hope when picking up the GoldenEye remake was to perhaps re-experience some of the old magic—the color, the vibrancy, and the naked experimentation that defined gun games during the 1990s. But it was such a bore, the mere skin of GoldenEye pulled taut over lifeless, joyless, humorless design, the kind we've gotten used to over the past decade.
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The Egyptian level of 'GoldenEye 007'One of your objectives is to retrieve that most prized of in-game weapons, the one-shot, one-kill Golden Gun. It's contained inside a glass case, in the center of what appears to be a featureless room. But the floor tiles are actually pressure-sensitive—to unlock the box containing the gun, you must walk towards it in a specific pattern. Make a single wrong step, and four sentry turrets will appear from the walls and kill you.It's an objective to be resolved, a concrete task for the player to visit and complete, and so it's emblematic of the revolution GoldenEye started in regards to how games are linearly structured. Today, whether a person is frustrated or thrilled by the roller coaster design of shooters, they have GoldenEye to thank. That's the game's basic legacy.The Golden Gun room is also so colorful. It's the crystalline example of GoldenEye's strange, distinctive flavor, its capacity for both novelty and aesthetic flair. Like the paintball cheat, Natalya's AI, or the hilariously rigid karate chop attack, the Golden Gun sequence is a part of this game's incredibly strong but not always purposefully styled identity and character. As much as what was supposed to be there, this game's personality rings out because of its flaws.
There are glitches, errors, and unfathomable moments, but over time—even at the time—they've become central to why I (and a lot of other people) remember GoldenEye fondly. This game is imperfect, but its imperfections are unique and amusing. You adore it not despite of its shortcomings but because of them. And to that extent, perhaps more than any other video game, it feels like a friend.But finally, the Golden Gun room shows just how much both video games and I have aged. The solution to the floor puzzle isn't hinted at. In fact, the puzzle itself isn't telegraphed at all—it's only through sheer trial and error that you can ever get that glass case to open. Modern games no longer tolerate this kind of opaqueness. Everything today is intelligible, communicated, and fair, and the Golden Gun puzzle comes from an era of game design that for better or worse—probably better—has long since been abandoned. When I look at it, I wonder what we, the players and the game designers, were ever thinking. I wonder whether GoldenEye's legacy will endure just one more hardware generation. And I wonder where the hell my last 18 years have gone.Follow Ed Smith on Twitter.On Motherboard: You Can Now Play the Bible Game Nintendo Didn't Want on the SNES