A Double No Never, or 007?

Well. This is a difficult subject to touch. Which is probably why I have had such a hard time writing about it. Who remembers the times when multiplayer meant that you and your friends would gather around a couch to play together, and not like it is today. If I’m at a friends’ place and he asks if I want to play multiplayer, I’d say: “Yeah, I’ll go home and log on, and it’s on!”

Well, now it’s coming back! With the Remake of the old Nintendo 64 classic Goldeneye, and it is coming to the Wii. Woops! I meant Re-Imagining.

Aah.. The good old Goldeneye to Nintendo 64 was a defining game for FPS’ on consoles, no one can get around that, and it provided many fun hours alone or with friends. A game that everyone holds with high regards, even me. But I think that it was surpassed by Perfect Dark when it came out. The multiplayer on Perfect Dark was bigger, better and funnier. But Goldeneye will always be the original, THE defining game.

And now that Activision will release the remake/reimagining on the Wii, everyone worries if it will hold true to THE original. Especially when they’re replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig, because for some Pierce is THE James Bond. Another thing that worries people is that the game isn’t built on THE original code that THE original game was built on, because Rare owns that one. And since there are changes, and there have been changes in the console FPS world, will it hold up to today’s standards? All we can do is wait and see, and hope. I hope, because the Wii deserves an entertaining FPS. A lot of reviewers that had a taste of it, say that they were left wanting a bit more. In other words, they’re probably going to review it, hate it and wonder why they loved it when they got to try it. I will keep my ears to the ground(or snow, for that’s sake. It IS winter, after all.). I’m going to keep a close eye to this one.

But there’s another story to this one. After Perfect Dark, plenty of people who worked on it, left Rare. They formed a studio called Free Radical Design, and created quite a few games which I loved. TimeSplitter, never played it. TimeSplitters 2, loved it to death. Second Sight, loved it as well. Haze, never played it. TimeSplitters Future Perfect, loved it to death, resurrected it and loved it again to death! Now Free Radical Design has been bought up by Crytek, and thus it has been renamed Crytek UK.

Crytek UK, formerly known as Free Radical Design made TimeSplitters 2, the game that I spent most of my time to when it comes to the GameCube and FPS’. I mean TimeSplitters 2 was basically the same formula as GoldenEye, and it is a damn good formula. When TimeSplitters Future Perfect came, the plot a lot of times felt like a bad ‘sploitation movie. The whole feel to it was a little cheesy, but it was okay because it seems like the creators knew that, and just added a little more to the fun. A game that didn’t take itself too seriously.. Like House of the Dead – Overkill, but that one’s a rail-shooter, and I loved it as well! I’m sidetracking. Anyways, the games were so good that I was a little disappointed at first, when I heard that Free Radical Design is going to make Haze to PS3 and not a TimeSplitters game, but it gave me hope.. Because to a lot of gamers, the Nintendo Wii is the silly console, and The TimeSplitters series have a silly quality to them, if you know what I mean. So I started to hope that maybe the fourth installment in the series will be coming to the Wii, but it has been five years now. And to wait five years for that one special game might be.. A little.. NO! Wait, how long did Blizzard wait before releasing StarCraft 2? Twelve years?! There’s still hope for TimeSplitters yet!

So, it all boils down to this: Do you think Activision will be able to make a game of such sweet caliber as the original crew did with THE original GoldenEye 007? Or do you believe it will be a big letdown like that other GoldenEye when it’s released November 5^th?

If you were wondering “What Other GoldenEye”, here it is:

Edit: November 1st.

Update on Crytek UK!


http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-11-01-timesplitters-crytek-uk-talking-to-pubs

It made me squee!!