GoldenEye: Rogue Agent - DS Game Reviews


	Platform Nintendo DS Genre First-person shooter Publisher EA Games Developer EA Tiburon ESRB T (Teen) Released June 2005

- Graphics are pretty good - Single cart multiplayer

- Short game - Horrible controls - Abilities don’t really help much

Review: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (XB) Review: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (GC) Review: 007: Everything or Nothing (GC)
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GoldenEye: Rogue Agent

Score: 5.5 / 10

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (GRA) was a disappointing first-person shooter when it made its release on consoles in Q4 of last year. EA decided they wanted to be the first to release a first-person shooter on the DS. The port for GRA is here and it doesn’t improve over its console counterpart very well. You still play the role of an evil agent who lost his eye and has it replaced with a golden eye – hence the title – with some special abilities. The basics are the same, but this game really lacks in the fun department.

There are a few technical issues. I get shot a lot and at first I thought it was just because I lack skill, but then I started to realize that some walls don’t seem to do much and that bullets just go right through them. Later on you do get a gun that shoots through walls in the game, but this isn’t the case with the enemy AI.

The controls are where this game really hurts – you need three hands to play the game properly. The D pad is used to walk forward and back and strafe. The face buttons are used for the same thing and the two shoulder buttons are for using firearms. The L button is used for firing the weapon in the left hand and R is used to fire the weapon in the right hand. The stylus is used to aim your gun or to look around. So, if you have your right hand on the stylus to look around how can you tap the R button to shoot at the same time? There is a way to use both weapons using one button, but it ends up being an unnecessary waste of ammo.

Besides shooting, you can use melee attacks by pushing L or R when close to an opponent. You can also take people as hostages but that doesn’t help much since the AI does not seem to care much about their fellow comrades.

Once I was done the game (no joke, in a few hours) I didn’t see any reason to go back. There are four campaign modes but I doubt many people will play through them all. The game just gets really repetitive. In Halo, we get to ride the Covenant

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vehicles, etc. but there’s nothing special to change up the pace every now and then in GRA. There is a multiplayer mode and it is nice that you can use a single cartridge with up to four players; the problem is that like the single player, it just gets old really fast. (It was also hard to find a friend who could tolerate the controls and wanted to play.)

Graphically, the game looks sharp in some aspects and lacks in

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others. The character models aren’t bad and the frame rate is pretty smooth but the level designs lack in variety and just seem kind of bland.

This game hurts bad in the sound department. A bunch of MIDI clips were used for the music and it fails to create the mood and atmosphere of being a badass agent. The sound effects are not shabby, but overall I was really disappointed with the audio.

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent seems like it was rushed to be the first first-person shooter on the DS. If EA took a little more time to polish it up, I might have suggested a buy for fans of the genre. However, because of its many faults (especially controls) I would have to suggest waiting for Metroid Prime: Hunters.

- J’Tonello

(July 19, 2005)