We all end up “oofing” every now and then, even the best of us…


…it’s only when the oofing continues to persist does it end up turning into a big ole pile of yikes

LAST TIME, ON GOLDENEYE Z! 64!, after super sonic racing right through the Archives level, in a fine testament to speedrunning, we found ourselves barreling through the streets of downtown St.Peterburg, as we redefined the definitional standard of the term road rage, and broke every traffic law imaginable, as we hurtled towards the train depot in 50 terrifying tons of metal in the form of a Russian tank! Now, hot on the heels of General Ourumov, who has taken Natalya hostage…AGAIN!, with the two about to board an armored train to escape with Janus!
Will Bond be able to stop them in time? Find out today! ON GOLDENEYE Z! 64!

For anyone just joining us, we are knee deep in a replay of GoldenEye 64, and per my historical standard, I will often times pick a game to do an extensive decontructionism on, which means over a series of weeks, I will generally break each section of the game down, day by day, so as to really dig into the nitty-gritty of the title. This helps not only frame the pacing of my playthrough alongside my writing schedule, but allows me to fully embrace the game itself, while also not overexerting myself, in attempting to blast through an experience as fast as possible, giving me time to ruminate on all of its dimensionality. I think this is a great approach if one wants to have a long, in-depth discussion about any one game, though I still put the effort in so that each article can be read as a one shot, so there remains value in the individual posts.

I think today represents an excellent reminder that sometimes…you don’t got much to work with, but time waits for no one. (EDIT: Future me speaking): I thought by articles end, something of note would come up about GoldenEye, that would lead to a much bigger conversation, about gameplay and design methodology in general, but alas, we remain in the land of contemptuous blight and tedium through and through. (End of EDIT) You see, we’ve run into a bit of a snafu, in terms of the amount of content I am confronted with…or more accurately speaking, the lack there of, which will become abundantly clear as to why in just a moment.

Keeping in mind, I have been concurrently rewatching GoldenEye the film while I play through the game adaptation, just for some added entertainment, in comparing both it and the title in certain respects, mostly for shits and giggles, though the framing of what Rare uses to build upon in the game fascinates me (usually).

Immediately following the chase scene in the movie, and the level “Streets” in-game, Ourumov does arrive at the train depot with Natalya, and boards the train, and by the time you’re done reading this next sentence I am about to write, represents about 50 seconds of screen time. Similarly, the level this is based on in game, called “Depot”, on Agent difficulty, which is what we’ve been playing through, if one knows where the exit is, takes about the same amount to time to beat, with not even a bullet fired, mind you, in order to finish the whole level, which is a stunningly accurate recreation of the events in the movie, not just because of the similarly shortrun time, but also due to the lack of bullets, zero lines of dialogue, and the complete and overwhelmingly lack of absolutely nothing going on in either piece of media.

I’m sure you can see the paradoxical issue in breaking this part of the movie and game down, as there is essentially nothing to break down. Both the scene and the level are suppose to act as a moment of catching one’s breath, as the chase scene in the film and Streets in the game, are suppose to be blistering affairs of intense magnitude, so the common wisdom is to give the audience a chance to catch their breath. The irony of this sentiment is of course, lost in translation, as if one were truly out of breath and totally winded, I still think it would take more than 50 seconds to catch your breath and stabilize ones breathing.

So, where does that really leave us? In terms of the film, absolutely fucking nowhere, as there isn’t even a line of dialogue that occurs in this short period of time, so we move swiftly on to the Train. For GoldenEye 64, however, I think that the laughably idiotic nature of the difficulty level of Depot on Agent triggered something deeply primal with in me, as I had had the sneaking suspicion for awhile now, that perhaps I aimed a bit too low with playing through the game on Agent, with most of my runs through levels being totally trivial affairs, and this was the final straw, as immediately following me beating depot last night, I went back to the first level, the Dam, and then in a single sit down, beat the entire game on 00 Agent, as I felt I had too much restrained potential I truly needed to purge my system of. I was going to do this at some point anyways for completionist sake, and combined with being a bit of a night owl, the time felt right, so it made for an entertaining all-nighter.

To this point, thankfully, Depot is a far more involved affair on 00 Agent, so we at least have something to discuss this day, thanks to my nocturnal mania and nourishing machinations that have bore cognitive fruit this day, so let us feast our famished selves back to a rejuvenated state…though I warn you, even feasts can still feel like famine.

While Depot is technically in the film…for you know, the fifty fucking seconds it’s onscreen, this was obviously another moment developer Rare extrapolated a great deal using minimal detail, in order to pad the game out a bit. Where as I see the gamplay value in the repeated use of Surface/Bunker, and end up greatly enjoying the concept behind Silo, and am quite taken by Frigate overall, I think it’s safe to say Depot may be a step too far for me, in terms of padding, as I do consider it “filler”, due to the realities of its existence involved, and don’t have much in the way of positivity in referencing or describing it at any length. Looking at the level select screen, I want to venture a guess and say it is probably my least replayed level in the entire game, likely due to the fact Agent is essentially a non-level, and 00 Agent is such a sticky trudge through what feels like a waist deep vat of molasses, I end up not wanting anything to do with the mess, fullstop.

Top to bottom, this just feels so low effort for the caliber of game GoldenEye is, as outside of the music, which helps in doing a lot of heavy lifting for setting the mood in this game overall, there is just nothing to hang onto that this level can provide. While there is a lot of industrial environments in GoldenEye, there is also usually a lot of detail involved with the levels to differentiate the aesthetic. For example, even though Silo has a repetitive design to the overall structure of the level, there is enough remixing in each area, so it never feels derivative. I can’t say the same for Depot, in that since the level in question is set in a warehouse district, you just get this big, samey, muddy blend of grayscale aesthetic that a lot of the more pedestrian shooters of the 90’s stuck with. For as awesome as Quake was, it was extremely guilty of making this kind of totally bland, dirtied spectrum of filthy monotony kind of the go to appeal as an industry wide standard, and boy howdy, did people follow suit. Don’t get me wrong; overall, GoldenEye does an excellent job the grand majority of the time with its level design, Depot is a black spot on an other wise impressive track record.

In keeping with the repetitive nature that the warehouse setting brings with it, one goes in and out of largely non-descript building, with the lion’s share of them having absolutely nothing in them but large stacks of grey boxes. Seeing an unfortunate trend here? Part of the logic ingame that is suppose to save face with this, is that Janus is suppose to be operating non-discreetly out of this Train yard, so the whole point is it is suppose to look lowkey and unimpressive. Just because a game has a self-awareness of pointing out why something is low quality about it does not give it a pass for being meta; boring is boring, and unless the context of the story gives an overwhelmingly ironic or fascinating contextual reason for this, best not to put effort into making any part of your game uninspired or drab.

As mentioned, on Agent, there is nothing to do but get to the end; it’s not even fun to speedrun, and as I discussed a couple of articles ago, with my replay of Archives on Agent, you can very much make easier hurdles fun to surmount, as Archives is a blast to speedrun on Agent…no such luck with Depot.

On higher difficulties, there is a weapons cache you have to destroy, which is…whatever, and then destroying their makeshift command station, a warehouse with a bunch of tech in it. This part on 00 Agent is sadly infuriating, if one is unprepared to deal with the drone gun, as not only does it feel like this thing is some ‘roided out version of a drone gun, and tracks you to a ridiculous degree, it takes only about four direct hits to kill you, and considering this thing sounds like it has a firing rate of 40 bullets a second, you really can’t afford to get hit by it. Combine this with the fact is can shoot through geometry, as the hit detection on in-game surfaces don’t extend as far as their graphics do, which means bots can pinpoint accurately shoot you in seemingly impossible ways, and you end up having one big headache of a room in a mission that has already bored you to tears, thusly making you drop your guard, which will likely have you repeating this room several times, making the whole affair even worse than it was before. Obviously, the smartest way to deal with it is to grab the rocket launcher from the weapons cache to deal with it but…that only reminds you of how shitty the rocket launcher is in this game.

Le sigh.

Eventually, you unlock a safe and the mission is over. Needless to say, a definite weak spot in what is overall a stellar game. I was kind of hoping that in the course of this write up, something was going to pop into my mind; kaiju Stay Puft Marshmallow Man ala Ghostbusters style, but I’m drawing a blank. Describing the Depot level from GoldenEye makes me feel like Hayden Christensen talking about sand in Attack of the Clones; I have nothing to work with here, George, how am I suppose to make this sound in anyway interesting? This is very much not poetry, and it certainly doesn’t fucking rhyme.

I’m guessing it was used in the game because well…it is a level, so might as well use it, though I’m of the mindset sometimes, less is more, and bloating a runtime of a video game is almost never worth it for anyone involved, so the Depot’s inclusion just represents a net negative, and contributes simply nothing of value to the game overall. I’m wondering if this was one of the first levels they worked on, and that’s why it feels so undercooked, as they were still getting a feel for how to do this thing right, if not, it is beyond me entirely they saw fit to include this.

…moving on.
~Pashford