Product Description

In GoldenEye 2, players will explore the dark side of the Bond underworld, playing an agent who was a candidate for 00 status before being dismissed from MI6 for reckless brutality. Players will join ranks with the legendary super-villain Auric Goldfinger, fighting for control of the world's greatest criminal organisation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8345 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2004-11-26
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Platform: Xbox

Amazon.co.uk Review
Using the name GoldenEye for this latest 007 game could be one of the most ill-advised choices in marketing history, since it beggars all sorts of unkind comparisons to Rare's seminal N64 title, which to this day remains one of the best games ever made.

The choice of name is all the more puzzling because the game has nothing to do with the film or, save the first person perspective, Rare's magnum opus. In fact the rather unlikely reasoning behind everything is that you are an evil ex-MI6 agent who after a fight with Dr No is given an, err… golden eye by Auric Goldfinger.

The game's premise is such that all of Bond's greatest bad guys are still alive and caught up in a sort of underworld civil war, in which your character seeks to be the real beneficiary. Ignoring such nonsense though, and looking purely at the game, the AI seems quite good and the replacement of Everything or Nothing's "Bond Moments" with scripted "Death Trap" sequences is fairly amusing. Unfortunately though the developers seem to have forgotten that the original game was as much lauded (at least a year before Thief or Metal Gear Solid) for its stealth gameplay as much for its shooting and this element seems total absent from Rogue Agent.

The multiplayer is also unconvincing with no radar and rather sprawling level design. It might turn out all right when it's finished but at the end of the day this is no GoldenEye. -- David Jenkins

Customer Reviews

Terrible Game
I had been keenly awaiting this game's release after enjoying EA's previous venture into the world of Bond: Everything or Nothing.

As you will probably know in this game you play the Rogue Agent Goldeneye, working for Auric Goldfinger's organisation against Dr No in an battle for the underworld. The story element of the game is OK, in the first mission you completely fail an MI6 training exercise for being too slow and too violent and get expelled from the secret service. This is quite a clever idea as your character fights alongside Bond (at least briefly)whilst using the virtual simulation device seen at the end of the film "Die another Day".

The sound in the game is quite good, with repetitive music but good sound effects. The enemies also have many different shouts to each other relating to your activities, such as "he's behind the bar" etc. The voices of Bond characters are good; Judi Dench as M and Xenia, Goldfinger and Dr No sound much like they do in the films.

The controls however are very clunky and awkward, the default controls are similar to Halo, but less easy to use, these can be changed but the other variations are equally bad, not as fluent as in Halo 2 or Everything or Nothing. This is very frustrating at first due to the difficulty in targeting enemies (even with auto-aim on, tilting up and down to scan for enemies above and below is not easy).

A big disappointment is the absence of any driving missions, these in my opinion were the best part of previous Bond games and made the game more varied. The objective in all the missions here is to run from point A to point B, shooting everything in your path. This worked well in the N64 classic of Goldeneye, but this game lacks the charm and fun of the classic which shares the same name.

The multi-player levels are too large + sprawling and there is no option to add bots to the split screen action, limiting the fun (and the option of bragging to friends "even with the computer helping you, you can't beat me").

Overall this game is very disappointing;
·if you want a shooter- buy Halo,
·if you want a good Bond game- buy Everything or Nothing,
·if you wish to waste your money- buy this.

Pony and trap
I was excited when i heard that this game would be true in spirit to GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 - which was, at one point in time, the most fun that four people could have together with their clothes on. I was massively disappointed on this count. So, forgetting any link to the N64 GoldenEye, implied or otherwise, how does this game stack up when evaluated on it's own? Pretty poorly. The story, such as it is, is unengaging and hard to swallow - all the Bond villians together getting stuck in at a 'who's the evilest' competition - and doesn't pull you through the game like a story should. The graphics are quite good in places, particularly the character models. The sound is also pretty good, with good music and sound effects - enemy speech is a nice touch, they call out warnings to each other depending on where you're hiding or what weapons you're attempting to waste them with. The enemy AI as a whole isn't bad, they do take cover a lot and gang up on you when appropriate. But the gameplay... oh the gameplay. You move around like you are stuck in quicksand, feet rooted to the floor (you can't even jump!) and even with the control sensitivity cranked up to the max it takes forever to swing round to target your foes. The weapons are alright, with a few interesting ones thrown in, but for the most part i found them unrewarding to use - zoom in for a perfect head-shot and you'll likely empty half a clip before they even think about going down, but run around shooting like you just dropped an iron on your foot and you'll see the occasional enemy drop in one hit due to your uncanny marksmanship. In short i don't think the game rewards any skill you may bother to apply while playing it. The levels can get dull and some of them go on forever. You are given special abilities that your 'golden eye' can use but 3 out of 4 are useless in most situations and i often found myself scrabbling to deploy them in a hurry and generally getting shot up real nice Although maybe i should have given them more practice, the point is i never felt like i wanted to - summing up this game as a whole. If you can get into this game then you can spend a few hours playing it but you certainly won't go back to it once you've finished. My vote is to avoid it.

Not bad in short bursts but....
This game is quite good fun in short bursts but I feel like I should be holding a light gun in my hand when playing it instead of a controller. The enemies are numerous and mostly all look the same. It's just a case of blasting away at anything that moves with little or no thought. There is no room for stealth or strategy in this game! The game does handle well and has a nice variety of weapons which you can dual wield.
Graphically the xbox version looks and sounds OK. The multi player levels are big, too big in some cases and this can be frustrating as you seem to spend most of your time running around looking for each other.
If you can only buy one fps on xbox this christmas I would go for Halo2 which also has it's flaws but is far superior to this offering.