Having engaged in a nostalgia session for Goldeneye 007 after it launched on Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch (playing it on PC through a Game Pass cloud gaming backdoor), much of the game is exactly what I remember: satisfying He told An unaware guard with a silencer, the overpowering but delightful auto-aim, those weird cube faces, and the eternally satisfying way enemies are dynamically stained with tiny splatters of crimson blood wherever you shoot them.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. It’s good to be back.
But the one I’ve managed to block from my memory for the better part of 25 years is the game’s sniper rifle—a cumbersome, bland-looking fire hydrant for a weapon that’s probably the worst sniper rifle I’ve ever used in a game. Jumping into the opening level of the story, Damm, for the first time in decades, I’m now reminded of just how badly armed this thing can be.
First, in case you haven’t caught up with my previous dig, it looks like a fire hydrant. I Think Its big old red barrel is actually supposed to look like polished wood, but someone clearly went too hard on the “cherry” part of the “cherry oak” and ends up with a “use only in emergencies” red. In fairness, this means that when you switch it into melee mode, you can pretend you’re whacking enemies with a large bionic metal arm – which is probably the only saving grace the weapon has to offer.
But I could have forgiven the sniper rifle’s appearance if it weren’t for such an abject failure in the handling of the weapon. For a start, it’s been silenced, and I think we can all agree that sniper rifles are at their best when they are Aloud; When I fire a sniper, I want the sound of the shot to reverberate in the surrounding hills, I want it to cause a flock of birds 300 feet away. City… The point is, sniper rifles are about that sense of individuality Effectwhile the Goldeneye sniper rifle is more like your silent pistol, which in turn looks like a hollow pen that shoots paper balls soaked in stains.
Then there is the gun effect. Now, this isn’t just an old weapon effect trying to mimic the fact that small things like breathing and hand tremors can cause a range to vibrate a bit. No, the impact weapon here acts as if Mr. Bond were having a stroke, likely hitting one of the big red alarm buttons so that someone would take him to the nearest Russian prison hospital. The seriously unpredictable fluctuation in effect of this jerky weapon makes you feel like your gun is not only sentient, but has a keen sense of morality, as it constantly pulls you away from your intended target. Thing is a dreaded pacifist.
Once you can beat that sniper rifle grapple so much to somehow land a shot on your target you’d think the game would be little bit Charitable and maybe make it Bobby’s job with a one-shot kill? At least when you shoot someone with a scope view? No, quite the opposite. In the default Secret Agent difficulty level, you need to drop Two head injuries on an enemy to kill them. I didn’t bother to count the number of body shots I took, but none felt more impactful than the muffler.
The funny thing is, the sniper rifle is much better to use on the Xbox than it was on the N64. First, modern analog sticks road Smoother and more accurate than the flagship N64 console’s flagship yet rugged counterpart. Secondly, the days of the N64 were the heyday of the “reverse y-axis” control method, which for some reason applied the logic of a helicopter’s joystick to aiming with a gun.
Also, as I recall, the original aiming method had this horrible auto-spring that kept pulling your reticle to the middle of the screen, so you weren’t just wrestling with ridiculous weapon effect but also with the strength of your reticle and the stiffness of the N64 analog stick. The mirrored look and the spring look are both gone now, however it’s not a weapon I’m willing to take on my worst enemy…or Will be I wish it on my worst enemies because they wouldn’t be able to kill me with it? Hmmm, food for thought.
Well, maybe I should cut a little slack, since the Goldeneye sniper rifle is among the first applications of a scope weapon in first-person shooter history, but I felt it had no place in a game that thrived on relatively quick close-quarters shootouts. Perhaps the achievement is in the case of people who somehow managed to get “x” number of headshots in an online multiplayer game with this thing. In this way, 25 years since its debut, the Goldeneye sniper rifle will more or less justify its strange and useless existence.
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