goldeneye is another gaming and system staple that i had basically no real experiance with prior to this, i owned a copy i found in a thrift store and i'd played and loved other rare fps games which i always thought made up most of the studios best output despite me not really being that big on fps games but i'd never really gotten around to playing it but much like every other game i've covered alongside EP so far, i'm very glad i did, it was so cool seeing the ways it influenced other games i've played, getting to get real context for things from it like the japanese memes or the GITCY review of it and the game itself is also just good and does a lot of things i think even very modern FPS games could learn a lot from and a few it maybe shouldn't.

the main warning i will give before i go on is that this is a very unforgiving game, it's not so much difficult as it is just punishing, when you know what to do you can get through levels with very little friction outside of the difficulty spikes (like the shotgun guys on park, the escape on train or the final run on caverns) especially when you play on easy, but it's very much not tolerant of messups, especially later on when you have things like the turrets that can kill you in seconds or the hat guys resistant to bullet stun or the granade-spam in some levels, you don't have health packs here, just body armour that can be well hidden in some levels or on later difficulties may not exist at all so any mistake you make is more or less perminant for the level and it's rough on your first few runs of levels, hell on some like bunker 2 or park it rarely ever gets any easier even when you do know the tricks (like that single fire of your machinegun in aim mode won't alert guards or that straife running with C makes you fast enough to outrun guards) but it has to be said that even with this the game is still very fun to play and when you do finish a level it is very satisfying in ways few games have made me feel, i just wish it was less punishing because i did enjoy playing on normal, the games difficulty while it does buff stats also introduces new and fun objectives to the mix and this is one of the games best points, it's unique and cool and i wish more games did it, but doing these extra objectives does come at the cost of a challange that was far too much for me at many points.

the gameplay is also really fun, especially for an early shooter, i tend to be a little iffy on very early shooters, i've never enjoyed doom or wolfenstein at all and anything that plays like them is always a turn off for me to the point i usually won't give them a try, but games from this more advanced era i'm a little more open to, it can be a little awkward to control at first but once you get into the groove it's actually pretty smooth, especially once you learn tricks like the single shots or the straife run, sure timesplitters did this control scheme a lot better, but for a its time it's very impressive how well they managed to make a console control scheme work this well this early on, its easy to see why this caught on the way it did and things like the autoaim give it a very unique playstyle especially today because you can easily appreciate it as a novel way to control shooters, honestly i might even prefer the autoaim for non aimed shooting versus modern control schemes. the gameplay is helped by just how well designed a lot of missions are, there's a decent bit of variety in levels and the objectives you do are also super varied, my roomate even said it reminded them of a super early immersive sim with the use of gadgets and how you could do many levels out of order if you wanted to, as well as with the blending of playstyles with the shooting and the stealth. you do a ton of things beyond just shooting too, tank levels, said stealth missions (which can even be done fully unarmed in some cases as i did for my successful archives run) you'll have to hack into things, use a magnet to get items, meet and talk to npcs, free hostages and a ton more, it was a big differece versus the more standard kill hallways of many older fps games, it's all really cool, sure not every objective is fun, things like the janus meeting or having to guard natalia are annoying and finicky, but there's so much here that it's fine to me if a few aren't fun. there's also the multiplayer which is even more famous than the campaign itself, it's fun, a lot of fun, you got even more weapons to use and some really cool maps based on the campaign missions, you even have tons of characters to play as like old villains, it's a lot of fun, though i think timesplitters multiplayer spoiled me a little as this just didn't feel as fun to me and i didn't play a lot of it.

the standout above all else for me though was the music, rare i can find are really hit and miss with music, either they make one of the best osts of their era like with donkey kong country or they make my least favourite soundtrack in any game like with banjo kazooie (this isn't bait i actually really dislike this games ost and it's the main reason i have never finished it, i might finish it one day but it will be on mute i really cannot stand that games music) but here it is an absolute hit, most of the games tracks are pretty great, they all fit the bond motif in really surprising ways and they're mostly all just really catchy, even if you havent played this you've probably heard at least a few, some i didn't even know were from this that i've heard a ton before like the elevator theme. dam, runway, severnaya, silo, frigate, archives, control and caverns are a bunch of my favourites but the whole ost is hit after hit that it's kind of wild to me how they managed to do it all. it was by grant kirkhope (who also did the banjo ost i hate, but also some good music like perfect dark and viva pinata, as well as for more modern games like kingdoms of amalur and a hat in time) and greame norgate (of killer instinct, perfect dark and my beloved timesplitters) and they both really fired on all cylanders here, its an all timer ost and it really deserves its reputation. the game also looks really good too, super varied environments like dams, snowy forrests, sunny skies boats, jungles, facilities and even the streets of russia, there's even a spooky abandoned looking park level that managed to unnerve me a little, the characters also look a little funny, they're real faces put on characters a little like siren but instead of looking offputting like in siren they look silly here, but it does undeniably look pretty good for the time and the console this is on, i was pretty impressed by some of them like boris, it is worth noting though that at least on real hardware in pal regions the game runs at like, single digit frames, this doesn't bother me since i kind of enjoyed the chaos it gave, but i know not everyone would feel that way, so i should mention it, i loved it though, it was so chaotic and fun. the levels don't really follow the story of the movie very well though, or even at all sometimes with levels like depot, you can kind of follow along if you haven't seen the movie, but it also doesn't super try to be all that faithful here, important characters in the movie show up like for one level boss fights here, it's just not focused on it. i did watch the movie though, my first bond movie and i did enjoy it, boris was fun and it was a fun little action movie, if a little too long for me, i'd reccomend it if you've only played the game and haven't seen it, the game really doesn't convay the story well as you'd expect.

the game is shockingly long it is worth mentioning, not if you were to one run it, it's maybe only 4 hours long if you're really good at it, but for me with all the death and repeats i spent easy 15-20 hours here and i didn't even unlock one of the bonus levels, i did do aztec though and it was fun, but i just wasn't good enough to unlock egypt, maybe one day with cheats i may, but it was a very long game for me and i need a break from it! for ports for a long time the original was your only option, but these days? you have tons of them, the xbox version (the official one not the cancelled remake for xbla, which you can play via an emulator) looks really good but i will warn that the button cheats don't work in it, but if you own rare replay, and odds are if you own an xbox you do, it's free with it so it's probably the best ver to go for for many, there'a also the switch online version but it's behind a large paywall with the expansion pack and for that price i'm not sure it's worth it since you don't own the game, but it does have rewind so that's something, otherwise i do think the original version is fine, a physical cart is super cheap and won't even run you £6 these days, but do know about its issues going in. there was also a remake in 2010 which made it play more like call of duty, but people seem to like it well enough and there's a sequel for ps2 that looks super fun, i really want to try that one. rare went on to do a few more fps games, though with their own IP in perfect dark and it's sequel zero, two of my favourite shooters and maybe even their best games, they also did some other cool games like kameo, star fox adventures and viva pinata and these games all own, which i can't say for every rare game, people seem to live sea of thieves though, so they're doing fine enough nowadays.

EP this week did something you'll sadly need to start expecting a lot of, focusing overly heavily on sports games that nobody really remembers or cares about, sure sometimes there'll be a sega game in there or something like the infamous high heat baseball 2003 episode but usually it's like, madden mcfifa baseball stuff and this week had that, i don't know or care about these baseball games and neither do you realistically, though one is one of those aformentioned sega's and did have a japanese release which i think i do own with Pro Yakyū GREATEST NINE '97 aka world series baseball 97, the other two are made by sony and EA and the former is seemingly part of the series that would become mlb the show so thats neat i guess. the star of the show this week is the one major game they covered, goldeneye and yeah it stole the show, the whole ep is covered in it and it's easily both the best game here and the only one you've probably played, but i think the ep does still say a lot about the industry at the time, namely with the fact the sports games here had real variety, 3 developed by wildly different teams and it's just not something you really see to much now, two of these series aren't even around anymore.