Seeing as how playing the goodie two shoes secret service agent 007, James Bond, can get a little stale after a while, EA decided to change things up a little and give you the opportunity to play through the 007 universe as an agent of evil. Golden Eye returns and is the main focus of this romp of villainy along with other cohorts and known nemesis to James Bond. As the game starts you are disavowed from MI6 for “reckless brutality”, which also features a cameo of agent 007, and are then hired by Auric Goldfinger to help him with his adversary, Dr. No. As you carry out missions for Auric Enterprises, you get along the storyline and find that all is not what it seems. Along with the gold loving Goldfinger and his henchman Oddjob, you find yourself teamed up with the likes of Francisco Scaramanga and the deliciously delectable, Pussy Galore.

The game play of Rogue Agent is pretty much your average first person shooter mixed in with some elements from Halo 2. You have the ability to carry dual weapons and your health will regenerate after a brief moment or two. A beeping signal will alert you to the low health and remind you to take cover so you can rejuvenate your life back. Knowing that you can just sit behind cover and fully recharge your health does take some of the tension out of the game since worrying about dying is pretty much a non-issue for the first three quarters of the game. There are times though that you will be running around like a chicken with its head cut off to find cover so that you don’t side and have to restart the mission 15 minutes back where you started. The save points are far a few between in the missions and when you do happen to die, you aren’t a happy camper about it. The missions themselves are very straight forward. There are certain objectives that you must complete to continue but they require nothing more than killing a swarm of enemies or shooting an object to destroy it.

The repetitiveness of the missions is very taxing since you face enemy after enemy and they just run back and forth waiting to be killed. They really don’t put up much of a fight until the later levels where the weapons used there can kill you in one shot which makes the game suddenly turn from boring to annoying. After each of the earlier missions, Scaramanga will fit you with a new enhancement to your golden eye. These powers include an EMP that you can use to hack control panels and enemy weapons, an MRI so you can see enemies through doors and barricades, a shield and device that allows you to pick up and grab enemies and weapons from a distance. Being that all these features do come from your eyeball, it just seems odd that you can activate a shield around you, but not be able to have something to do with sight, such as say a zoom or night vision. Other weapons you come across as you play through the missions such as machine guns, grenades and the regular run of the mill weaponry along with the more sophisticated Magrails that can shoot through objects and detonator mines that can be attached to enemies.

There are tricks and traps spread out through each mission as well. These can be set off by you or even by the enemies to catch you in them. These traps range from electrified floors to catwalks that drop out from beneath you. They were implemented well in theory but since you can play the game just as well without ever having to trigger one off, they don’t seem a necessity to the game and pretty much pointless other then having a giggle as you watch 6 enemies shudder and twitch from getting a hot foot as they cross an electrified platform.

The voice acting and model animations of the recognized allies and villains are done quite well and do the real life counter parts justice, however during the game play itself, facing off against swarm after swarm of the same generic enemies on every mission just gets too tiresome after a while. There are bosses thrown in, or leaders, that have names and are much tougher then regular soldiers but even they start to get repetitive after awhile and the lack of a health bar on the screen when fighting the mission end bosses is another annoyance.



Golden Eye: Rogue Agent is a short and simple minded FPS shooter that will fill the void if you need some mindless run and gun action, but if you are looking for game play that is a little more mentally challenging and in depth, or even fun, than you will need to keep on looking.