For England, James.
Goldeneye: 007 for the Nintendo 64 is a classic. Goldeneye: 007 for the Wii may not be a game-changer, but it is anything but a lazy cash in remake of a popular title - this game stands high on it's own. In a Wii market where first person shooters barely exist at all, Goldeneye takes everything that you love from other modern FPSs, and combines it with the strengths of the Wii remote to create a very satisfying experience, despite a few hiccups. Some of what you probably remember from Goldeneye still applies here - many of the levels are the same (at least thematically) but are structurally redone. Also, most of the staple guns are available, and of course the basic plot is unchanged. That being said, they took all of those aspects and brought them up to speed with modern games. The levels are redesigned to allow large firefights in areas with lots of cover, as well as multiple paths to move around the environments to get the jump on enemies. The guns have a very modern/near future feel to them, and the dialogue that moves the story forward is more in line with the current style of Bond movies.
Visually, this game generally looks pretty good, and runs quite well despite the sometimes ridiculous amounts of enemies, projectiles, and explosions present. There are some spots where the textures or colors are not especially pleasing, like the Nightclub level (actually a new level that was not present in the original) which looks like the walls were painted with some really nasty purple/blue alien blood or something. I guess it is okay to say that this game looks pretty good overall "for a Wii game", even with the occasional misstep.
Of course, what matters most is how this game plays, and on that end I couldn't have been more surprised. Within 10 or 15 minutes I was shooting up nameless soldiers with precision and fluidity that I was not expecting to find in this game. The controls work really well, and all the features you would expect from an FPS are ready to use, including aiming down the sight of your gun, throwing grenades and melee attacking without having to switch weapons, and taking cover. One feature that I found neat was that if you ducked behind an object and tried to aim down your sights, Mr. Bond would automatically pop up so that you could see over that object, which really made utilizing any cover simple and intuitive. Really, the only complaints I have about the control set up is that it takes too long to turn around 180 degrees, and because of the Wii remote you can't look up or down very much at all. These issues don't really come into play when playing the single player portion of the game, but in multiplayer, where people sneak up behind you or on maps with many levels of height, they can become a problem.
Another point worth noting is the level design employed in the campaign. Like the original Goldeneye, this reboot includes multiple difficulties for each level, and going up in difficulty not only increases the effectiveness of enemies, but also adds objectives to be completed in order to finish the level. This system still works wonderfully, and the large, slightly open levels allow for those added objectives to really give more meat to the entire campaign. The multiplayer maps were generally pretty interesting as well, with many being complex areas full of cover and vantage points to take advantage of. While I didn't play any online multiplayer (which I believe has many more options of game modes and such) the local multiplayer was still enjoyable, although not something even close to the level of many other multiplayer shooters today.
This reboot of one of my favorite games ever really surprised me with the way it held to many of the values of the original while still modernizing everything enough to be a new game. My gut reaction that this was a lazy cash in or shameless fan service was definitely proven wrong, and while there are some issues throughout, this is still a very solid shooter. The successes of this game are made even more impressive by the fact that it is one of the few shooters available on the Wii.
