Putting a month between posts is a fun and accurate way to make sure that my posts are full of nutty goodness, nugget and mouth watering caramel. Wait, that's not what you want out of a blog... wait... no, that's like a candy bar. This post is starting to sound like a trademark infringing good time full of trans fats, complex carbohydrates and calories. Wait a tick: once again I went to food. Isn't this a videogame blog? Yeah. Ok.... back to the topic at hand.
There's a new game coming out. Slated for a Q4 release on Nintendo's powerhouse home console, as well as their powerhouse handheld. It's a complicated 13 year stretch of gaming drama that drove some people insane. Some homebrew developers attempted to make ports using the Half-life engines. Some other folks hacked the hell out of the original game and even inserted online play via a Gameshark hooked up to a PC. And the original developers essentially made a sequel to the game, despite the fact that they lost the IP. Another developer released a "sequel" that featured not only bad gameplay, but bad puns, bad story-telling and bad everything else. But us gamers. We've just been frothing at the mouth like rabid assholes demanding (with a passion that exceeds that of any rational man, woman, child, ape or pit-bull is capable of) that we get a new version or a sequel or something. We would not be placated by anything anyone gave us.
Well, guess what? We're getting it. Activision is re-imagining Goldeneye (which actually means this is the third developer to take the reigns of this magical IP). What a lot of posters on the internet seem blatantly unaware of is the 13 year history of the James Bond franchise and it's dirty relationship with the gaming public.
I'll start at the source, for those of you too young to understand (I just realized this game is older than most of the shit talkers on Xbox Live!). Every once in a while there comes a game that will help redefine a genre. In the case of First Person Shooters (FPSs) these are easily remembered and seminal games, be it John Romero's Doom and Doom II (if I have to tell you what consoles, you don't deserve to be on this blog), Rare's Goldeneye (1997, N64), Valve's Half-life (1998, PC) and Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4 (2007, PC) are all titles that come to mind almost instantly. But Goldeneye really cinched the idea of a "casual" FPS and offered gameplay that not only required you to have to think about how you played the game, but also varied each playthrough of the level. It offered cheats that would make the game interesting for replays and also challenged you to beat yourself. And the multiplayer.
The game offered beautifully modelled guns that looked and functioned better than anything you'd seen in any PC games before it. It gave you varied gameplay in multiplayer and singleplayer. It gave millions of gamers and casual players alike hours of fun in multiplayer and a bonding experience for friends. Everybody had their favorite gameplay options. Some preferred the dastardly "Proximity mines in Complex with one hit kills" while others still preferred the fast-paced and quick "You Only Live Twice with the Goldengun in Temple" and then there's the goofy "Slappers Only in Stacks" fun.
Wow, this is bringing back memories. Plus the game had almost 100 characters to choose from in multiplayer. Wow. It seems that Activision is only giving us a handful of characters. Weeping.
In those days (the days that some gamers recall as "the glory days") Rare was a well regarded developer. They brought us many N64 games that epitomized the system, such as Donkey Kong, Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark. These guys were defining what gaming would be. Fantastic. But turmoil and gaming politics changed then. EA was posturing to become a huge monster of a company and bought up the James Bond franchise, shortly after the end of the N64, Microsoft bought Rare and any hope of a Goldeneye sequel went down the drain. EA attempted to milk the James Bond franchise to death, with less than stellar releases like The World is Not Enough (N64, 2000) and Tomorrow Never Dies (PSx, 1999). These games both suffered from poor graphics and clunky gameplay. EA tried harder with later releases, making new "movies" out of their games and even bringing Sean Connery in for his final performance as Senor Bond. They even tried to bring back the "Goldeneye" franchise with Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (I'm not gonna bother to cite this piece of trash) and simply produced one of the worst FPSs I've ever played.
And so, the torch got passed. From EA to Activision. Activision's a distributer that tends to put out some great games and they respect their customers, rather than shitting on them like EA (hey, EA, fuck you! I can't redownload a $50 game I bought from you last summer!). But Activision gave us what we wanted: Quantum of Solace (2008, multiplatform) which did, essentially, to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace that Rare did with Goldeneye in 1997. It rewrote the movie into a cinematic game, but this time it was more fast paced. They took the fast action of Daniel Craig and turned it into a fantastic action game with some of the best voice acting I've experienced. The whole crew was there! It also rolled Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace together into one big experience and offered us a fun break from the action in the form of a vomit inducing poisoned sequence. I claim it's the best Bond game since Goldeneye.
So, now that I've got Doom and Perfect Dark on my Xbox 360 and older Zelda games downloaded to my Wii, why can't I get Goldeneye? I'm not 100% sure and haven't read this, but this is my understanding. Ready?
Nintendo owns the license and distro for the original Goldeneye.
Rare owns the Goldeneye property.
Microsoft owns Rare.
Microsoft does not produce, distribute or develop for the Wii.
Nintendo does not produce, distribute or develop for the 360.
Activision owns the James Bond franchise.
Ergo: nobody owns enough of the properties to produce a DLC version of Goldeneye 007 for either the Wii or the 360. But, I think that my head just exploded.
The new Goldeneye, being developed by Activision and released on the Wii and built (presumably) on the COD 4 engine, will be an entirely different beast than Goldeneye of yor. It features Daniel Craig (yes, the actual James Bond) lending his voice acting, likeness and attitude to the endeavor. This is another point that seems to be upsetting a lot of gamers. This awkward need to have everything identical. Activision can't produce an identical game for several reasons. Most of which are outlined in my above breakdown of who owns what. But with a change in Bond, we also have to expect a change in the style of the game (afterall, we can't have wet-behind-the-ears Daniel Craig 007 acting like veteran Peirce Brosnan 007) and so the gameplay changes slightly.
And people are bemoaning the graphics. Woah is you if you think this game looks like crap. You have been spoiled. This game is fantastic looking for the limitations of the hardware.
That's pretty much all I have to say on this subject right now. Hope you enjoyed my college level lecture on James Bond gaming.
EDIT: Goldeneye (Wii, 2010) is actually being developed by Eurocom, same as Quantum of Solace (360, PS3, PC). They are distributed by Activision.
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