Good FPS experiences on the Wii are so rare that you’d think no one who owns the system has any of the bloodlust we so necessarily associate with modern gaming. When the platform was set to launch with Red Steel as a launch title, I figured that it might become the console of choice for at least a segment of the gaming population due to the increased accuracy offered up by the Wiimote. Of course, things didn’t turn out that way and ultimately the decreased power of the Wii turned off a lot of the audience that might have wanted to play such games.

I mention this because it’s unfortunate for me that such a thing happened. I’m a hug fan of using the IR aiming for FPS control, and I’ve wanted a fully realized game to make use of this for some time now. Sure, there have been a few titles that have pulled off some of the promise that this input method offers, but they have been few and far between, and none have really been trying to match their next-gen counterparts in play-style or feature set.

It’s a good thing then that Activision’s attempt to relaunch GoldenEye 007 (as if it were a franchise in its own right) has turned out as good as it has. GoldenEye 007 for the Wii may never have the impact that its N64 predecessor did, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most enjoyable FPS experiences that the console has to offer.

GoldenEye 007 on the Wii follows the story of the James Bond movie of the same name, as well as that of the original game. In an interesting move, Activision and developer Eurocom decided that instead of the fairly awesome Pierce Brosnan Bond that we all loved so much from the original movie, they would insert Daniel Craig in his place. While it does help the game stay current with the Bond series, I’m not sure it was the best choice purely because of how much nostalgia people my age seem to have for this movie.

The strange issue of character likenesses, extends past James Bond himself to pretty much every other character. Gone are Sean Bean, Alan Cumming, and Famke Janssen. In their place are an assortment of bland (or in the case of Xenia, hideously ugly) looking homonculi, leaving most every character in the game feeling a little empty. It’s not really a big problem, as the story of the game is probably the part I care least about, but it still stands out pretty much immediately.

One thing that is mostly similar to the original GoldenEye game is the level progression, which follows that title pretty closely (minus some omissions, like the train level). While this might seem like it could work against the game by having too little new level design, pretty much everything about each level has been changed. Gone are the clever obectives that required critical thinking skills. Gone is the necessity to learn the layout of a whole level in order to progress effectively. Gone are the assortment of gadgets and iconic weapons. Now it may sound like taking all of these things out of the game must necessarily mean that the title is somewhat of a disaster, but that really isn’t the case.

Despite the fact that so little of the experience is based off of the original GoldenEye, the game still feels something like its predecessor, at least in spirit. The pacing of the single-player campaign, while slightly more hectic, is still fairly deliberate, and places a lot of emphasis on stealth, something that I loved about the N64 game. The stealth in the game is fairly well done, even if the guards are interminably stupid. It’s pretty satisfying to sneak your way through a terrorist installation, choking out guards and shooting cameras to hide your infiltration. It all feels very James Bondy, and is actually a lot of fun.

The shooting mechanics in place in the game are really tight as well, and are what elevate this experience up to the top tier of Wii FPS games. Each of the guns feels really great to shoot, and the IR aiming is nice and tight the whole way through. You can play with the Classic Controller Pro (don’t use the original one for the love of God), but I actually found that at least in the single-player portion, it was just faster and more responsive to use the IR aiming. You can tweak a bunch of the settings to your liking, though I found that I only needed to shrink the bounding box and up the turn speed a little bit to get things to where I wanted them to be.

The game feels a little overly scripted at times, although some of the the scripting allows for engaging and impressive action sequences. The main downside of this is that it translates into the level design, making them feel fairly linear and straightforward, which is not a way that I would ever have described the levels from the original GoldenEye.

From a visual perspective, I found the entire experience to be quite appealing. There are lots of neat graphical tricks in place (including some of the best reflections I’ve seen in a game), and most everything looks pretty sharp. It’s a shame that there are moments when the Wii’s lack of power are made apparent (such as anytime water appears in the game). It feels like Eurocom went to a fair amount of effort to get this game looking great and running smoothly, so it’s a shame to see sloppy water or the like. The animations for NPCs are also really impressive, and make the game feel more alive, even if the AI on those same characters is laughable at times.

I was not all that hyped up for GoldenEye Wii, but in spite of that, retained hopes that the game would at least hearken back to its N64 inspiration. It’s odd then that the game turned out as good as it did, while retaining so little of what I liked about GoldenEye. I’ve heard people disparage the game for being a cheap cash in on the GoldenEye name, but after playing through it, I don’t really find this to be the case. Instead, I find a product that was inspired by the quality and incredible fan following of the first title. Eurocom put its all into this game, and while it ends up having little in common with the GoldenEye of old, it still feels like the goal of creating an action packed shooter with a distinct James Bond feel was delivered on. I remain impressed by Eurocom’s efforts, and am happy to have another great shooter to add to my Wii collection.

While the single-player portion of GoldenEye on the N64 was a high point on the system for myself and a whole lot of FPS-starved console gamers, it was really the multiplayer elements of the game that made it such a cherished title to so many people. With that in mind, I actually had some high hopes for the multiplayer portion of the game. While it is inherently fun, it just can’t hold a candle to the near endless amount of fun I (and most other gamers my age) had with the original game.

There aren’t currently a wide variety of FPSs with four-player split screen on the Wii, so the mere fact that GoldenEye 007 supports this wins it some huge points in my book. I always prefer to play a game in the same room as my friends if I can pull it off, and 4-player gaming like this is something that I very much miss in this age of online gaming. GoldenEye 007 keeps the tradition alive, by offering a fully-fleshed out split-screen multiplayer mode that exists alongside the online offerings.

While I definitely appreciate the ability to blast away at my friends using the Wiimote, it’s a little disappointing that there are actually fewer options for offline multiplayer than in the original game. Gone are objective modes like The Living Daylights. Gone are the awesome options like Licensed to Kill. Perhaps most egregiously of all, gone are the different weapon sets for players to choose from. Instead Eurocom opted to follow in the footsteps of pretty much every modern shooter and opted to include loadouts instead of actual weapon sets. This ends up hurting the versatility of the game a good amount because you can’t custom tune each match to suite your particular preference at that given moment. Instead, each match ends up feeling pretty much the same as every other one.

Still, it’s not like the game isn’t fun for four players. In fact, I’ve had a pretty great time with it so far. The level design, while not even close to what Rare achieved so long ago, definitely works for the game, and offers up some fun experiences. The core shooting mechanics are nice and tight, so it definitely feels good to blast away at your friends for hours on end.

Once you take the game online, things get somewhat more involved. There are several more modes available when playing online, and the increased number of players make some of the maps a lot more interesting. Unfortunately, you still can’t choose weapon sets for everyone, and this shortcoming becomes more pronounced when you’re playing against opponents who are several levels higher than you.

That’s right, Eurocom lifted the leveling up idea straight from Call of Duty and never looked back. I’m not a huge fan of this mechanic, as I feel like it just serves to imbalance the game and increases the barrier to entry for less experienced players. What’s more, there are several modes available for the online game online that are locked until players attain the requisite level. Modes like Invisibility and Classic Conflict can be unlocked via a preorder code, but I’ve never really understood the idea behind locking away functionality until gamers play the game to death. License to Kill is also finally available when playing online at least, but again, that is locked from the outset.

I booted up the original GoldenEye after a few lengthy online sessions in the new game and started playing with some of the GameXplain crew. Immediately, I recognized the fact that this remake could never attain the lofty heights of the original. There were just so many permutations of fun in that game, and the lack of distinctive options for offline really keeps GoldenEye 007 on the Wii from being all that it should be. When no game since GoldenEye has been able to make a mode using proximity mines that is any fun at all, I would have assumed that the team at Eurocom would have jumped on the chance to hearken back to the fun we had all those years ago. Instead, we got a game that attempts too hard to ape what is being done with other multiplayer shooters of the present, and doesn’t pay enough attention to what made GoldenEye so good in the past.