Though this next bit of darkly shaded humor may mean nothing to you at the moment, after reading this write-up about one of the final missions in GoldenEye, I urge you to go read The Myth of Sisyphus (or at least a tl;dr summary), to truly appreciate the idea behind the premise of this article, in my assertion that, in order to beat Control on 00 Agent, one must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Depending on one’s methodology in traversing the Jungle level in GoldenEye 64, you either arrive at the next level, “Control”, feeling either battered, bruised, and downright exhausted, or were patient and yielding enough, to have utilized the power of Natalya’s “ubermensching” like prowess I observed last time we were here together, to slip through the dangerous territory largely unscathed.

For your sake, I’m hoping you are the “ladies first type”.

I say this next bit for anyone new to the game, as anyone already in the know and familiar with “Control” would likely occur, we have arrived at is what I’m guessing is viewed by the general GoldenEye community at large to be the most frustrating level in the entire game. I’ve never looked at any officials polls or done surveyance online with sample groups before, but I refuse to believe my experience was some disruptive anomaly of unique dread in this regard. In totally dissimilar formats of structuralism, but in sharing a common metaphysicality to the pains endured, GoldnEye’s Control, and its toxically upsetting vibes, emanate in a resoundingly similar manner as Ocarina’s Water Temple; there is no greater wall with which to hit one’s head on repeatedly out of mad frustration, then this one right here.

This moment has me hearkening back to a comment I made during the Silo mission, I think, when I made an offhand aside about how, if I were to rank the levels within GoldenEye, in terms of qualitative standard ala a tier listing scenario, a variance would exist amongst the levels, based on the difficulty involved, as some levels have a great structure, and within sane parameters, are mostly enjoyable to play through. Crank up the difficulty, however, and a handful at least become nothing less than detestable slogs, and I’m certain Control on 00 Agent handily takes the crown.

Once again, developer Rare takes what is otherwise an exposition heavy scene in the movie, and rejiggers it to inject some “dreamy” gameplay into the mix, except this time, they didn’t follow the recipe book to the letter when cooking this one up, and added an extra serving of misery into their concoction, making Control more of a level filled with “nightmare fueled” gameplay, which we now have to woof down in very much the same way a tortured animal being force fed grotesque gruel has to, and all of the wretched horror that entails.

If one hadn’t lamented that resources don’t carry over from one level to another before, they certainly will decry the lack involved now, as at least if that were the case, being judicious within the Jungle level, and conserving ammo, weapons, body armor etc would lend itself to setup for a far better rate of success on Control. No such luck, however. What’s worse, is that the elevator we rode to get here is seemingly cursed with a “debuffing atmosphere” of some sort, as not only does Natalya lose the ability to use her magnum on the elevator ride between the Jungle and Control (you can clearly see she is still holding it, but will never fire it once this entire mission ), but she is “deubermensched” as well, no longer being near invisible and bullet resistant to the enemy, now resembling more of a wounded seal at peak feeding hours in Orca infested waters. The tragedy of it all is too much to bear.

Keeping in mind that this level poses little to no issues on Agent, at least comparatively speaking to its 00 Agent counterpart, this will be a rarity in my address of levels during this dictated GoldenEye playthrough that I’ve dubbed a “Bonding Experience”, which has been focused on default difficulty mode (Agent), where as I’ve played through 00 Agent so much on this level due to the number of times I’ve had to practice it in my day, the run is essentially burned into my memory, so I will largely be referencing the higher difficulty involved.

Obviously, one could ask themselves why I didn’t do this for the entire run, but there are a couple of easily rationalized reasons for having done it the way I did. The main reason was mainly consistency, as I wanted to make sure that I was able to get an article and video up everyday, and depending how tired I was, vs time available, vs difficulty involved with 00 Agent, there was a sense I will have doomed myself in choosing hard. Secondly, the improved controls in the remaster greatly help in modernizing the gameplay, thusly adding a quality of life to GoldenEye, and thirdly, I was nowhere near as rusty as I thought I was, so my fear of being unpracticed and out of my depth, turned out to be unfounded paranoia.

With that silliness out of the way, on with Control on 00 Agent.

With background muzak blasting on the elevator ride to the slaughter-fields that lie in wait, the elevator finally comes to a halt, with Natalya suddenly seized with amnesia, forgetting what an unstoppable killing machine she is from the Jungle, and opts to stay behind, letting Bond do all of the struggle bussing to clear out the area. On Agent, this area is a bit of a joke, with only a few easily dispatched men to speak of, largely running around like chickens with their heads cutoff. On 00 Agent, however, right from the jump, there is a drone gun affixed to the ceiling situated to your top left, able to fire on you as soon as the elevator doors open, meaning that during your very first step in attempting this mission first time, likely has you being shot directly back into the elevator by drone gun fire, now with a good chunk of your health gone.

Excellent start, I hear you thinking to yourself.

This will begin the moment of your training involving drone gun disablement via “the skooch out” tactic, where you will ever so slightly tap the control stick, as Bond hugs the safest wall corner to do so, ever so slowly peering out, so you can make out either just the tip of the gun portion of the drone, or the camera mounted side without being exposed to the bullet hose front and center. From here, it’s just a matter of landing some accurate burst fire to blow the damn thing up, before moving on. Obviously, you want yo make sure this is an uninterrupted process, so make sure there are no guys who can put a kibosh on this plan before hand, or there is a high probability your mission will be over.

Just for the sake of posterity, I will say it quite resolutely: you can not “out maneuver” the drone guns; attempting to run past any of them will promptly result in a timely game over. They track you far too accurately, and do way too much damage to simply blast past them; they must be destroyed before moving on. I think I recall seven total drone guns you need to worry about through the entire level: 3 in the first room, four in the shootoff hallway next to the main control room that houses one if the armored mainframes. All of the drone guns must be disabled (unofficially) to complete the mission, so keep it in mind.

Almost immediately after taking out the first drone gun, you will have to dispatch a couple of ground enemies, depending on the RNG for their attack animation, they may catch you off guard, doing a decent enough amount of damage to you, I’d suggest just starting over (this will be a running theme throughout this run), as you want to have the first room down so methodically, you will essentially be moving through the first blast door Natalya opens for you with 100% health intact, as we reasonably want to conserve the absolute most of our precious HP that we can for the “hold out” hacking moment that frames the mission.

There will be a second drone gun, once again, high above your head, when you take a right around the first corner you just killed those guys at, at the far side of the room You will have to repeat the “skooch strat” once more, as there is little else in the way of effectiveness in taking these drones out. Once the second drone is out, you will have to be careful (but most likely find out the hard way if you are going in blind and just restarting the mission again), as the game surprises you with a third drone, directly above you and to your right, once you move into position where the ground enemies were, after destroyed the second drone. Rinse and repeate with the skooch out tactic.

The third is the last drone in this room and for awhile, leaving two guys at the far side of the room sort of diagonally to your left in front of you, with a final guy now (likely behind you) to your left. Obviously, kill them with mindfulness, or you will lose health, enough of which you will have to restart the level. After all of this. The “debuffed unubermensched” Natalya will come out of the elevator, to hack the currently closed blast door open for you…

Congratulations! After all of that work, you just finished what represents only the first sixty seconds of the entire mission.

After more than 1400 words used (so far) in this article, with me excessively underscoring the point of just how long in written format all of this takes, with a mere 60 seconds covered thus far, is apart of an attempt to show you just how tedious this mission is, with only a sample of the easiest fractional portion of its entire length; the entire mission being completed (first time through) being well over ten minutes…and that’s only counting your finishing time on on your first ever successful run. This does not include what I’m guessing is the at least dozen attempts it will take for you to get to that final run, though for the sake of transparency, I’m fairly certain I went through several dozen attempts over a period of weeks when I was a kid to practice this enough to finally complete it on 00 Agent, so I truly hope you are the patient type, as this sucker won’t go down without a fight.

I obviously don’t plan on detailing the entire mission this same way, as I’m not sure anyone is up for reading a fourteen thousand word strategy guide version of a review of the entire level, but let it be known, I definitely could. From the first room onward, you have “grenade hall”, to “double hall treachery”, to “drone corridor”, followed by the infamous “hold out” section, the longest portion of Control. Though any single one of these rooms can absolutely spell gloom and doom, the “hold out” is the big make or break, and may end up being the biggest roadblock in your run, as the RNG involved is a Judaa Iscariot of GoldenEye, and rest assured, it will not rest until it gets its 30 pieces of silver before days end.

“The Holdout” portion is you defending Natalya as she tries to shutdown the GoldenEye satellite, while countless waves of enemies come to try and shoot her. Both you and her are sitting ducks in this scenario, though she is more of a “nailed to the ground” type of duck, as she cannot move, and as stated earlier, though wielding the equivalent of a nuclear powered doomsday magnum that devastates the hearts of armies with a single pull of its trigger, she will not defend herself either. Most times it seems she cannot take even one second of sustained fire, so if someone gets a shot off on her, the mission is likely finitioed.

“The Holdout” lasts for what seems like a lifetime, and as mentioned, would take me far too long to detail effective strategies for, with respects to brevity and where mindful editorial is concerned , but let it be known, this is basically the hardest section in the entire game (when playing on 00 Agent) , so buckle up: as attempting this and completing is successfully will take awhile. If you still enjoy the game after this section, you are proven thusly as either an overflowing wellspring of tolerance and forgiveness, or a self-loathing and delusionally motivated psychotic masochist who has truly lost their place in the world of joy, in order to have made it to this point in your life with even an iota of your psyche even partially intact.

There’s a couple other points of interest I could detail, but even writing about this gives me a fucking headache, so we’ll just assume after your fiftieth try, you finally best the mission and then go to the bathroom to stress vomit your abject hatred out directly into the toilet. Well done.

And that about sums it up for Control; developer Rare at their most masochistic, and definitely faint echoes of the Battletoads TurboTunnel kind of energy, and a red flag of future insidiousness lying in wait in the form of Mary Canary races in Banjo-Tooie still yet to endure. I think by virtue of no game ever being perfect, every experience will inevitably have a “worst part,” to it, by the sheer reality that nothing in known mortal existence is withour flaw, so you will eventually encounter the sour spot in any one game, at some point through any given playthrough…

…always cross your fingers it doesn’t get anywhere close to how bad Control is.

~Pashford