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When Goldeneye: Rogue Agent was first announced, I almost shuddered. I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting anything good to come of the announcement, and thankfully so, or I would have been in for a big disappointment.

For those of you that didn’t know already, Rogue Agent has absolutely nothing to do with the classic fps from the glory days of the N64 except its namesake. Why create a game with the Goldeneye name without any real resemblance to the original? To cash in on the license, of course, because you can sure tell it wasn’t to make a quality game.

Rogue Agent places you in the role of ‘Goldeneye’ (yes, that’s your name), an ex-MI6 agent expelled for use of excessive violence. With MI6 training, and an obvious mean-streak, you set off to work for Goldfinger, who happens to be in a war for control of the underground with Dr. No. Now, before I continue, be very well aware of the fact that Rogue Agents storyline includes a whole slew of classic Bond villains, such as Pussy Galore, Xena Onnatop, Oddjob, Scaramanga, and a couple more. It’s a rather interesting ‘who’s who’ of the 007 universe, though some purists may stick their noses up at the obvious discontent for continuity in the bond universe.

The games campaign takes place over 8 missions that are broken up into multiple parts. Each level lasts much longer than it should, long wearing out its welcome before you finally finish it. You’ll get to visit locations like Chinese Rooftops, The Octopus (an underwater facility) and many more generic, uninspired locations throughout Rogue Agents 10 hour campaign. All of the levels are completely linear, lending little to no thought in where to go next, or what to do. If, for some strange reason, you do find yourself wondering, there’s always an arrow showing you where to go.

The level design is not only linear, but very stale, part because these areas are so overdone and uninteresting, part because it doesn’t seem like there was much effort put into creating interesting locales for players to play in. Levels are never short on boxes to hide behind or canisters to blow up, but it still just feels thrown together with little thought into what the average gamer would consider fun.

Rogue Agent uses a set-up that clones that of Halo 2 almost to the dot, utilizing a dual-wielding/single weapon/grenade system, the game almost feels like the bastard step-child that no one talks about at family reunions. The game has numerous guns for you to grab and use, but none of them seem very original in concept. You have your standard assortment of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and sniper rifles, and then you have a gun that shoots poison darts, a gun that shoots remote controlled bombs that stick to enemies and walls (one of the more fun things to use in the game) and a mag rail, suspiciously exactly like the weapon of the same name from Rares Perfect Dark. None of the weapons seem overly inspired, though.

One of the biggest touted aspects of Rogue Agent has been its AI. Ever since EA announced Rogue Agent, it’s been going on about some kind of great AI system that they implemented into the game to make the enemies pretty smart cookies. After hearing said information numerous times right from EA, I have to wonder: where is it? The AI present in Rogue Agent can’t be the intelligent AI EA was talking about, because they’re not intelligent. Enemies have the same ‘it’s the player character, shoot at him until he’s dead’ mentality of so many other lackluster fps games of today. Sure, once in a while an enemy will throw a grenade, but I wouldn’t exactly call him Einstein for doing so. Once in a while, if you’re taking cover for, oh, 5 minutes, an enemy might finally decide to try to flush you out, but since it puts him in perfect position for a blast to the head, he’s usually quite unsuccessful.

You’ll find yourself taking cover quite often during Rogue Agent, since you’re constantly outnumbered and outgunned. Your life bar, if left idle for a few moments, will recharge to full health again, much like Halo 2s health system. This means anyone with enough patience to hide behind a rock or box every couple seconds to let their shield recharge should have no problems beating Rogue Agent.

Of course, I haven’t touched on one of the most ‘important’ parts of Rogue Agent, and that’s your Golden eye…. Yes, you have a synthetic eye made of gold. Stop laughing. Anyway, during the course of the game, you will receive upgrades to your eye, until you have 3 settings to choose from. The first allows you to see enemies through walls, though this piece of hardware is completely useless unless you have a mag rail in one of your hands to actually shoot them through the wall. The next is the ability to ‘hack’, or, in this case, stop enemy guns from shooting, or pressing buttons on machines. Third is a shield that stops you from taking any damage for the duration of time that it’s up. None of these settings are really very useful, which makes the actual eye itself more of a gimmick, and an excuse to slap the Goldeneye name on the product, than to actually serve a real purpose within the game.

Of course, if you like the game enough to bother with multiplayer, you can do just that. You can play up to 4 players on split screen, or up to 8 on Live. The game offers up your standard play modes (free-for-all, deathmatch, etc.) and little out of the ordinary. The gameplay itself is a bit on the boring side, which, coupled with the fact that you have to unlock most of the multiplayer maps by playing through the campaign, means that you’ll just about as likely to enjoy the multiplayer aspect as your are the single player.

Now, through the course of all this, I keep being told that I’m a bad guy, and I’m supposed to be evil, but right from the start, I don’t feel like a bad guy, and I don’t feel like I’m acting like a bad guy. The game offers up points for doing supposedly bad things, which include shooting people in the head, blowing people up with grenades, punching people to death, using human shields, etc. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t I done all this in completely different shooters where I’m a good guy? To make things worse, I’m fighting OTHER bad guys, which means, I’m doing everything I do as a good guy, but I’m suppose to feel bad for doing it this time. What? If MI6 canned be for being violent, I say let’s storm in on the good guys for once, let’s crash the MI6 party, raid their secret hideouts, charge into the front doors of the main headquarters, and let me take on 007 himself as the last boss. THAT, my friend, is something I would have been far more interested in playing. This whole bad guy vs bad guy crap is boring me out of my face.

Unfortunately, not even the games visuals can save it from my scorn today, as it doesn’t really look all that great. The areas you play through are decently detailed enough to get by, but you’ll never sit there going ‘hey, cool’. Character models seem almost recycled from a few of the last Bond games, I’m not sure if it’s because they look 2-3 years old, or if it’s just because every generic henchmen is starting to look the same, but they’re boring none the less. The FMV sequences in the game look fairly good, and offer up a couple nice scenes, but for the most part, just get in the way, especially since there’s no way to skip them.

The audio aspect of Rogue Agent is about as lackluster as the rest, offering little above the lowest common denominator. Sound effects are generic, and the music, while feeling very Bond-like in its execution, isn’t near as catchy or memorable as the soundtrack for the real Goldeneye game. Voice acting, on the other hand, is usually handled fairly well. Lines are delivered believably, and the dialogue feels like it’s part of the Bond universe.

I still can’t help but wish they had have used another name for Rogue Agent. Calling it Goldeneye seems like a disservice not only to the classic N64 title, but also to its fans, of which there are many. Underneath the charade of the classic title, Rogue Agent hides a boring been-there, done-that fps experience that offers little entertainment, and even less likeness to the N64 game.