TEMPLE, GRENADE LAUNCHERS, NO ODDJOB
August 22, 2018 1:36 PM Subscribe
A team of first-time game developers, working on a brand-new hardware platform, practically invented the modern 3D shooter. That's fucking amazing.
(Well, okay – Wolfenstein and Doom came first. But they were pseudo-3D.)
And the multiplayer mode – which was added by one developer as an afterthought – remains the most satisfying multiplayer experience I've ever had. So many evenings in my brother's living room with two N64 controllers and a bong on the coffee table between us, laughing hysterically as we shit-talked and perforated each other with KF7s...
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:46 PM on August 22, 2018 [11 favorites]
(Well, okay – Wolfenstein and Doom came first. But they were pseudo-3D.)
And the multiplayer mode – which was added by one developer as an afterthought – remains the most satisfying multiplayer experience I've ever had. So many evenings in my brother's living room with two N64 controllers and a bong on the coffee table between us, laughing hysterically as we shit-talked and perforated each other with KF7s...
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:46 PM on August 22, 2018 [11 favorites]
I had an N64. Goldeneye is one of the incredibly popular games I never played (I mostly got the system for Shadows of the Empire, if I'm honest).
This quote from TFA? This is every game developer everywhere.
This quote from TFA? This is every game developer everywhere.
Personally, I always loved Golden Gun in the Complex, partly because I liked the speed and accuracy required for Golden Gun, and partly because the Complex was one of my levels and I liked the layout a lot. Also, I added all those “cheaty” little invisible cubby holes in the Complex and didn’t tell the rest of the team for a few days. It was the only way to win, and I’m not even sorry.posted by hanov3r at 1:52 PM on August 22, 2018 [10 favorites]
Goldeneye is a year younger than Quake and came out in the midst of a whole pile of FPS games. What made it special wasn't that it was 3D or even particularly good (there's a lot of games from that era that hold up better), what made it special was that for the first time it took a genre that developers had been trying and failing to get right on consoles (mostly due to the horrible constraints imposed by console hardware) and did it right, making a game that was fun, ran (90+% of the time) as smoothly as anything on a good PC, and was responsible alongside Perfect Dark and Mario Kart for keeping millions of N64s in use long after the console died and was forgotten.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:53 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:53 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
Hilton: So the whole team just started making up names that sounded appropriate for the guns — except for the Klobb, which we named after Ken Lobb, who was one of the most senior guys at Nintendo at the time and was a big supporter of the game within Nintendo.Beautiful.
Doak: The Klobb, famously, doesn’t shoot straight. I remember Ken came in excited one day and said, “You guys! You named a gun after me!” We told him, “That’s the good news; the bad news is we named it after you because it’s loud and inaccurate.”
posted by rewil at 1:55 PM on August 22, 2018 [23 favorites]
Years go by and I don't remember most of the theorems and dates that I learned in school, but I could still tell you that if you set remote mines on every monitor in the main room of Control Center and detonate them, it turns your remaining mines into ones that can float in midair.
posted by mike_honcho at 2:04 PM on August 22, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by mike_honcho at 2:04 PM on August 22, 2018 [9 favorites]
To this day, Goldeneye 007 is the only FPS I've been able to enjoy on a console. The modern ones with the heavy aim-assist and everything just feel weird to me in a way that Goldeneye never did. (I kind of wonder if I'd maintain that opinion trying it again now.)
posted by tobascodagama at 2:17 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 2:17 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
Martin Hollis previously told The Guardian that an idea was floated to have Bond tour a hospital, shaking hands with all the people he shot.
Adorable!
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:19 PM on August 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
Adorable!
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:19 PM on August 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
My housemate and I use to play Goldeneye a lot. Once we had a party at our place and this guy was all "I'm so good at Goldeneye I'll crush anyone!" and my housemate told him he should play me. I had only played my housemate so I was a little concerned. We played facility because that is what we always played.
We spawned, I went around and shot him in the head. He came back, I shot him in the head. He came back and I shot him in the head. At which point I could feel my whole body un-tensing and thinking "okay, this isn't going to be a problem." I backed off to let the guy save face.
Also, Oddjob isn't a problem because auto-aim is worthless.
posted by bdc34 at 2:20 PM on August 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
We spawned, I went around and shot him in the head. He came back, I shot him in the head. He came back and I shot him in the head. At which point I could feel my whole body un-tensing and thinking "okay, this isn't going to be a problem." I backed off to let the guy save face.
Also, Oddjob isn't a problem because auto-aim is worthless.
posted by bdc34 at 2:20 PM on August 22, 2018 [1 favorite]
The modern ones with the heavy aim-assist and everything just feel weird to me in a way that Goldeneye never did.
Goldeneye had huge aim-assist. Your gun would basically track a target if it was pointing within 20 degrees of it. I thought that was one of the main reasons it was the first successful console shooter.
posted by Bodechack at 2:28 PM on August 22, 2018 [9 favorites]
Goldeneye had huge aim-assist. Your gun would basically track a target if it was pointing within 20 degrees of it. I thought that was one of the main reasons it was the first successful console shooter.
posted by Bodechack at 2:28 PM on August 22, 2018 [9 favorites]
Watching some gameplay videos, I can see that Goldeneye's aim assist involved moving the gun on the screen to aim at a target that isn't centered. Modern aim assist instead takes control of your view to ensure that a target remains centered under the crosshair.
I think that explains why GoldenEye feels better to me. I don't get motion sick per se, but I hate when a game applies that kind of filtering over my view inputs.
posted by tobascodagama at 3:03 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
I think that explains why GoldenEye feels better to me. I don't get motion sick per se, but I hate when a game applies that kind of filtering over my view inputs.
posted by tobascodagama at 3:03 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm enough of a contrarian to argue that Perfect Dark was a better game, but I'm not sure I've done much that was more stupid and more fun than Proximity Mines in the Archives with 3 friends after a couple hours of taking the game seriously.
posted by Copronymus at 3:27 PM on August 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Copronymus at 3:27 PM on August 22, 2018 [4 favorites]
You can also turn the aim-assist off in Goldeneye, which ended badly for a boastful cousin of mine who didn't realize my brother and I turned it off when we played.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:29 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:29 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
You can play Perfect Dark now on the XBOX One, as it’s part of the Rare Replay compilation.
It’s a shame that GoldenEye isn’t included (presumably for legal reasons). I found it boring compared to GoldenEye though. That Bond magic makes everything exciting.
posted by w0mbat at 5:01 PM on August 22, 2018
It’s a shame that GoldenEye isn’t included (presumably for legal reasons). I found it boring compared to GoldenEye though. That Bond magic makes everything exciting.
posted by w0mbat at 5:01 PM on August 22, 2018
Perfect Dark was a better game. I played both a lot because I graduated high school and had a steady weed supply. I had a saved mode in Perfect Dark that included 12 "Meat" level sims with 1 hit kills and would dual wield PP7's for 10 minute rounds and would rack up like 160 kills. It was called Kill Pigs because, again, steady weed supply. I miss that game very much.
posted by Uncle at 5:04 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Uncle at 5:04 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
What GoldenEye multiplayer mastered that I've never really experienced in any other game since is a frenetic pace that never felt unfair or random. I'm thinking particularly of modes like License to Kill with Pistols Only, where everything hinged on one good shot, but you never felt like it was an accident that you got picked off. I think that was because the game was so well-balanced between mobility, and aim, and level design, all of those interacting really well with the control scheme.
It's a perfect party game because it encourages giddy shit-talking without making you mad at the other people you're playing with. I may only feel that way because it was the last, and maybe only, game that I was ever superlatively good at, but I think my friends wouldn't have wanted to always play it if that were really the case. It really makes me miss that era of multiplayer, since the last thing I ever wanted from a multiplayer experience was having to listen to randos say horrible racist shit into my headphones, not to mention how much the parsimony of GoldenEye's multiplayer dynamics contributed to how much fun it was to play. Nidhogg is the closest I've come to that experience since, but like the article mentions, the non-linearity that a 3D environment offers really makes for a different type of play.
posted by invitapriore at 5:58 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
It's a perfect party game because it encourages giddy shit-talking without making you mad at the other people you're playing with. I may only feel that way because it was the last, and maybe only, game that I was ever superlatively good at, but I think my friends wouldn't have wanted to always play it if that were really the case. It really makes me miss that era of multiplayer, since the last thing I ever wanted from a multiplayer experience was having to listen to randos say horrible racist shit into my headphones, not to mention how much the parsimony of GoldenEye's multiplayer dynamics contributed to how much fun it was to play. Nidhogg is the closest I've come to that experience since, but like the article mentions, the non-linearity that a 3D environment offers really makes for a different type of play.
posted by invitapriore at 5:58 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]
In Austin, in the early 00s, there was a local tv show where they would play Goldeneye and ramble on endlessly. It was surprisingly watchable.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:12 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:12 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
The debate over whether looking at the other players' views was cheating or not.
Grenade launcher kills where you never saw your target, just radar contact and the grenade bounced around a corner.
Shooting out the lights in the Water Caverns.
posted by glonous keming at 6:43 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
Grenade launcher kills where you never saw your target, just radar contact and the grenade bounced around a corner.
Shooting out the lights in the Water Caverns.
posted by glonous keming at 6:43 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
When the 98 Ice Storm hit Montreal my apartment was next to McGill Hospital and never really lost power. We had a dozen people living in my tiny apartment playing Golden Eye 24/7 when I got called up by the army. I came home 12 days later for a shower and everyone was still playing.
posted by furtive at 6:50 PM on August 22, 2018 [17 favorites]
posted by furtive at 6:50 PM on August 22, 2018 [17 favorites]
Perfect Dark was indeed a better game--gameplay and tech-wise. There was jsut something viscerally good about Goldeneye, though--maybe the sound design of the guns, maybe the slightly darker atmosphere, maybe the incredibly good music.
But there's a bit of nostalgia built in to how well the game was designed. All of these norms we have around how to play--no extended camping, limited to no screen peeking, etc.--are all developed from otherwise game-breaking flaws in the design. Luckily, they can be enforced because you're all in the room together--if someone doesn't abide by them, people won't play against them, or will cut them off from the beer and snacks. On an online platform without gameplay alterations, this game would be a griefing nightmare.
My favorite settings: everyone at -10 health, autos, auto-aim off. It's not one-shot kill, so armor actually matters, but it's close enough that the klobb is actually a useful weapon.
posted by pykrete jungle at 8:33 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
But there's a bit of nostalgia built in to how well the game was designed. All of these norms we have around how to play--no extended camping, limited to no screen peeking, etc.--are all developed from otherwise game-breaking flaws in the design. Luckily, they can be enforced because you're all in the room together--if someone doesn't abide by them, people won't play against them, or will cut them off from the beer and snacks. On an online platform without gameplay alterations, this game would be a griefing nightmare.
My favorite settings: everyone at -10 health, autos, auto-aim off. It's not one-shot kill, so armor actually matters, but it's close enough that the klobb is actually a useful weapon.
posted by pykrete jungle at 8:33 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
it encourages giddy shit-talking
I can still hear it as plain as day from a co-ed all-nighter from high school. One of our friends wasn't great at Goldeneye, and she'd get ganged up on. Until the moment. That one moment when she shrieked...
"WHO'S GOT THE GOLDEN GUN NOW, BITCHES!"
posted by hwyengr at 8:40 PM on August 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
I can still hear it as plain as day from a co-ed all-nighter from high school. One of our friends wasn't great at Goldeneye, and she'd get ganged up on. Until the moment. That one moment when she shrieked...
"WHO'S GOT THE GOLDEN GUN NOW, BITCHES!"
posted by hwyengr at 8:40 PM on August 22, 2018 [3 favorites]
Proximity mines, Complex, Paintball Mode On, no Oddjob.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:41 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by sara is disenchanted at 8:41 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
License To Kill.
Rockets in the stacks.
Grenade launchers in the basement.
Mines in the complex.
posted by migurski at 8:54 PM on August 22, 2018
Rockets in the stacks.
Grenade launchers in the basement.
Mines in the complex.
posted by migurski at 8:54 PM on August 22, 2018
Proximity mines for sure. Oh, the joy of laying down a mine really quickly and casually so the other players don't notice you doing it...
posted by equalpants at 9:18 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by equalpants at 9:18 PM on August 22, 2018 [2 favorites]
> Copronymus:
"I'm enough of a contrarian to argue that Perfect Dark was a better game, but I'm not sure I've done much that was more stupid and more fun than Proximity Mines in the Archives with 3 friends after a couple hours of taking the game seriously."
Perfect Dark, the briefcase gun in mine mode, and a long dark corridor. YOUR SOULS ARE MINE!
posted by Samizdata at 1:24 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
"I'm enough of a contrarian to argue that Perfect Dark was a better game, but I'm not sure I've done much that was more stupid and more fun than Proximity Mines in the Archives with 3 friends after a couple hours of taking the game seriously."
Perfect Dark, the briefcase gun in mine mode, and a long dark corridor. YOUR SOULS ARE MINE!
posted by Samizdata at 1:24 AM on August 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
The debate over whether looking at the other players' views was cheating or not.
The debate of our times.
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:30 AM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
The debate of our times.
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:30 AM on August 23, 2018 [2 favorites]
Martin Hollis previously told The Guardian that an idea was floated to have Bond tour a hospital, shaking hands with all the people he shot.Adorable!
I remember when this anecdote came to light several years ago a lot of gamers held it up as a totally ridiculous example of how out of touch Nintendo was with "mature" "gamers".
But now, looking back, I wish they had gone through with it. It would have been hilarious but poignant and a perfect example of what makes Nintendo a uniquely creative organization. That's the essential difference between Nintendo and other developers: while Nintendo has no qualms about making violent games, they value the art of what they're doing enough to contextualize it and make sure that the underlying message is uplifting and not nihilistic.
Sure, you're shooting people in this game, but it's just for fun. Those guys are just actors pretending to be bad guys. I'd much rather play this game than a gritty, visceral war simulator.
posted by zixyer at 10:01 AM on August 23, 2018 [6 favorites]
Goldeneye was the background of my first college summer group house. I'm not even much of a FPS person, but managed to hold my own when I played. It's such a marker of time and space in the early 00s.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 1:03 PM on August 23, 2018
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 1:03 PM on August 23, 2018
I also remember being in college and dorm room after dorm room of guys endlessly playing Goldeneye. I was *done* with video games after Super Nintendo so I missed this period, and I have very little experience actually playing, but I've seen screenshots in 20 foot increments.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:57 PM on August 23, 2018
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:57 PM on August 23, 2018
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posted by Artw at 1:40 PM on August 22, 2018 [5 favorites]