PS2 Review: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (2004)

Chicken Man once said, in his preview of GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (dated June 6, 2004), that "I also like the idea of the game itself. Even though, I must mention, that if you've read the novel, Goldfinger, you'll know that Goldfinger only hires Koreans for henchmen because of their loyalty. But no one cares." Too true, my friend. Evidently we didn't care enough for this game to follow up our preview with a proper review, even though we beat the game soon after it was released. And why not? Because Rogue Agent was one of the biggest disappointments in the somewhat checkered history of Code Redd Net. From jump this was a flawed concept, one that tried to associate the storied N64 classic of the same name with another sub par semi-Bond shooter. You can just sense the exploitation and manipulation at work in the game's conceit, practically see the accountants and designers grasping at straws to find any narrative reason to affix the magic words GoldenEye to this product. Like children, they go literal. Hence why our protagonist, a disgruntled MI6 employee who fails to protect 007 in a training exercise, has a prosthetic "golden" eye that gifts him with all kinds of powers. You subsequently join up with Auric Goldfinger to duke it out with his rival, apparently, Dr. No. Kudos to the people who pitched this one for coming up with such a far-fetched idea and really making a go at it (no weirder than the plots for most Bond films, anyway), but they forgot one vitally important thing: we want to play as Bond. That's what we're doing here, that's why we play Bond games. Instead, Rogue Agent forces us to step into the shoes of a flat, uninteresting and forcefully presented "evil" character, one who has no predisposition for stealth or vehicular combat. While this might sound appealing to some players, and indeed the whole game is tailored for maximum shooting and minimum thinking, what this does is rob players of variety, whereas games like Nightfire and the excellent Everything or Nothing break up the firefights and keep you from getting bored. Rogue Agent gets old fairly quickly and only gets worse, especially once that mounting tedium mixes with some frustrating and unevenly paced missions later on. Bond fans might have some fun in visiting or revisiting classic movie locales, especially some of the multiplayer maps, but the lack of CPU bots puts a serious damper on things. Stay away from this one.