GoldenEye Reloaded: It's Odd Job, Bitch!

When GoldenEye Reloaded was announced, I let out a long, drawn out sigh. Another remake we don't need that will probably fail at capturing the magic of the original and end up as a perpetual bargain bin title. GoldenEye was the first-person shooter back in the day, mostly because of the 4-player split screen deathmatches that are near impossible to find in current gen titles. At New York Comic Con yesterday, I got a chance to play the new GoldenEye, and the 4-player deathmatch no less. I came away feeling thoroughly nostalgic and extremely impressed. 

Aside from the bump up in graphics, many changes and additions have been made, all seemingly for the better. Before we started our match, game altering modifiers were set. In this case we got to play with Paintball mode, a GameStop preorder exclusive that replaces blood stains with multicolored paint. Shoot the rainbow! Once the game got underway, it was all good. Off the bat I noticed how good the control scheme felt in my hands. While many shooters these days take liberties at whipping up their own new control schemes, GoldenEye Reloaded feels along the lines of a Halo or Modern Warfare. As soon as I sat down, I felt right at home. 

It was very fitting that I was handed a controller which was attached to Odd Job, my favorite twerp from the N64 days. A chat with one of the developers revealed that Odd Job would no longer have his 'unfair' height advantage, where players would say he's too short to be hit. That's right around when I would say "you just suck, step yo' game up!" But alas, this is a moot point now. Aside from having a primary and secondary weapon, Odd Job came equipped with two flash grenades and 3 hats - yup, 3 blade-brimmed domes of spinning death - awesome. My one complaint would be the grenade and hat attack, activated by pressing LB and RB respectively on the 360 control, were a little too slow to leave the hand after pressing the button. The game as a whole is pretty fast paced, so having to wait for your secondary attacks to launch is a bit of a pain.

I played a Golden Gun match, where the object is to get the Golden Gun! There is only one on the map - clearly marked in your minimap - which you must track down and get kills with. The good thing about the Golden Gun, one shot kills. Conversely the clip can only hold one bullet, so that's a lot of reloading. Unfortunately I didn't get into any slap fights, or give the killer RCP90 a spin, or burn watch lasers, or frustrate dummies with proximity mines. I guess that stuff will have to wait for release.

GoldenEye Reloaded is due out on November 1. As a retail title, I'm not sure if the game will command $60, as all I had a chance to try was the multiplayer. But rest assured it was a blast, and might be worth the investment a couple weeks after release if you can find it at $45 or so.