MIDI Week Singles: "Disused Military Depot" - GoldenEye 007 (N64)

AAAAAAAHhhhhhhhhh!!

We're late today and it's all my fault, but moving on.

"Disused Military Depot" from Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64

No official soundtrack release that I am aware of.

Composers: Graeme Norgate & Grant Kirkhope

Game Developer: Rare.

Sure, sure.  There could have been any number of tracks from this N64 gem of 1997 you say.  "What about the 'Mission Briefing' theme or the hard hitting tunes from the 'Severnaya Installation?"  And you know what, you're right on both counts, those are both great tracks and I may just have to go and do a Game Scores article, now that you've talked me into it.

But we're here today to listen and hear me talk about "Disused Military Depot" which y'all may remember from the "Depot" level about 2/3rds of the way through the game.  Upon hearing this, I immediately become nervous about having to go through this damned level on 00 Agent difficulty.  Even during the song I can hear the rapid fire of the DK5 Deutsche (fictional version of the HK MP5K if you're at all interested) and the "click-chick" of reloading after every tenth shot fired throughout the majority of the level.  I know for certain that I will make a mistake as the warehouse doors are opening, misfire at the Russian soldiers and end up taking one more point of damage that I knew I could have avoided, which leads to the inevitable restart.

What I find great about this song is that it starts off with your typical "spy in a dangerous action situation," but by 0:48, some MIDI trumpets come in and semi-heroic motif and you start to think that things are swinging your way.  Then at 1:02, deeper resonating and more heroic MIDI horns come in to let you know that America (or in this case Britain and MI6) is here to save the day.  

Oddly enough, this is one of the few tracks from the game that doesn't contain that hollow pipe break-drum sound that was so prominent in both the game and the movie that spawned this glorious child.  It also doesn't contain any inkling of the traditional Monty Norman James Bond theme.  This tune is a lot more militaristic, possibly because of the setting and the prominent use of snare drums throughout most of the song.

So even if this isn't you're particular favorite track from Goldeneye 007, maybe it will be covered in the future or if Dr. Potts wants to compose his own MWS using a track from the same game.  Until next week then.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
How Did It Ever Begin?

Full Review: GoldenEye 007 (DS)

This review will refer to the 2010 remake by n-Space of the 1997 classic by Rare.  When the re-make of GoldenEye 007 was first released, I had a hard time, near impossible time actually, trying to locate a review for the DS game as everything I came across was for the Wii release, before the PS3 and 360 versions were released.  Everything I found was all about the Wii release, which made me sad because I wanted to know about how the translation to the DS was.  Even the Wikipedia article mainly covers the Wii version, only briefly mentioning the low GameRankings and Metacritic of 68.8% and 64/100 respectively for the DS version and the involvement of n-Space.

This post probably should have been one of my first reviews posted since, I feel like that I want to post things that I would want to read, and a review for a game that I was interested in, but couldn't find, that's something I'd like to read.

So on with the show.

If you don't think that is Pierce Brosnan's hairline, you'e right.  It's Daniel Craig's.  Maybe that'll sell more copies of the game?

The DS remake of the N64 Rare game GoldenEye 007 doesn't feel so much of a remake as it does as a re-imagining and sadly, not a very great one at that.  Believe it or not, the DS is a pretty good platform for FPS' regardless if you're right or left handed: you look around with the touch pad, move with the directional pad or ABXY buttons and shoot with either the L or R button.  I've played a number of FPS on the DS (Dementium: The Ward, Dementium II and Moon) so my general dislike for the game is not related, as one might think, to playing an FPS on the DS.

I'll be honest when I say that what I was hoping for from this game was a slightly revamped and beautified edition of Rare's amazing game.  Instead what n-Space delivered was a decent looking FPS with, among other things, horrible enemies.  I say "horrible" not because their AI was something ferocious, but because unless you killed them with a head shot, they did not go down very easily.  The enemies, whom all looked identical (just to note, but  not really a criticism) would take a handful of hits, stagger then keep on firing.  If you were lucky they would drop to one knee and then continue firing.  

Your life in the game was again represented by the red/yellow bars along with a set of blue bars when you had body armor equipped.  Now, apparently life regeneration is a current thing in FPS games and it is a thing in this edition of Goldeneye 007.  That's something I don't really like.  It almost makes the game too easy as all you have to do is come out from behind a corner take a couple of badly aimed shots, get shot yourself and move back behind the wall to regenerate while the enemy remains stagnant, patiently waiting for you to come out again.  So either the AI is very smart and holding their ground or really stupid and forgot that someone was shooting at them 3 1/2 seconds ago.  Oh yes, and your Walter PP7 has infinite ammunition.  I know that it's done in the Left 4 Dead series, but there you're fighting hordes of zombies and not stand-still Russian soldiers.  Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy.

Maybe I'm just being too harsh, considering that GoldenEye is one of my favorite James Bond movies and GoldenEye 007 sat unmoved in my N64 for almost nine months so I am kind of attached to what I know and love.  It's true that the 1997 GoldenEye 007 expanded on the story that was in the movie, filling in the nine year gap between the mission in Arkhangelsk and the stealing of the Tiger Helicopter in Monte Carlo.  The storyline too is something that bothered me as the DS re-make didn't do this, but simply took events that happened in the movie and reworked them to be plausible to have happened in a short-ish amount of time, like a Dan Brown novel.  I liked visiting Severnaya while it was still under construction and the missile silo  in Kirghistan before the Goldeneye satellites were launched.  Things that made the original game feel like it took information from a pre-existing book that the movie didn't have the time or money to fit in.  That feeling of an expanded universe/story just didn't exist in this re-make.

Another thing the game was lacking, and maybe I'm just nitpicking here, was the massive amount of playable cheats.  Yes, there were some but you had to purchase them after they became unlocked.  The other "special feature" for this game was collecting document files throughout each level.  With each file you were awarded a puzzle piece to put together an image from. . . something?  Concept art?  I'm not sure.  I only unlocked the tank busting through the wall in St. Petersburg.  I don't know who Activision and/or n-Space's target audience was for this, but it sure wasn't people who played the original GoldenEye 007 or anyone who would play this game.   

The re-make also didn't take the same approach that the original did when it came to stealth.  In the original, ducking behind boxes or walls and taking out security cameras was essential if you didn't want to get into a firefight, while in this game, I don't remember taking out too many, if any, cameras at all.  It felt more of a run-and-gun game.  Maybe that's what they were going for, but then why bother calling it GoldenEye 007?  Oh, probably to try and capitalize on how awesome the first game was.  It's not like it's been done before, right?

I should probably also mention that the game touts a six person local online multiplayer.  That's all I know.  I can't say how well it plays or how fun it is because I simply haven't met anyone else who owns the game to play it with them.

After all that, was there anything that I liked about the game?  Well, the game didn't look half bad and the spoken dialogue was a nice touch, although I couldn't tell you if Daniel Craig or Dame Judi Dench actually did the voice work, but whomever did it, didn't do too bad of a job with their lines.

Oh, and I didn't like that you couldn't duck if you were not behind a crate or box.  Just wanted to throw that in there.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Atrocious Humanity

P.S.  To note, I bought this game in the hopes that I would enjoy it as much as I did as the 1997 release AND because it came with a copy of the film GoldenEye on DVD, all totalling something like $24.99.  I decided that even if the game was bad, at least I would finally own a copy of one of my favorite James Bond films.  So I would still like to think that I have come out on top.

FPS: First Person Sickness

The content of the following post may change the way that some people see me.  Some people might feel that what I'm about to reveal/confess will not only make me less of a person, but less of a "gamer" as well.  To that, I rebuttal with: "Piss off."  Just do a Google search and you'll come back with over 100,000 results for motion sickness and video games.  It's not an isolated thing.  It's pretty common.  And that's what I'm here today to talk to y'all about.  Yes, I just typed "y'all."

But first off, I wanted to mention that I used to get car/motion sickness a bit growing up.  Up until sometime in Jr. high or late elementary I would have to either be sleeping or watching out one of the windows so as to not feel ill on car trips.  So, the happenings of motion sickness aren't entirely foreign to me.

So I just finished playing about an hour worth of Legendary (as of the writing of this, which I did a couple of days ago) and I had to stop as I started feeling the onset of motion sickness.  This is not the first time this has happened.  The very first time I felt motion sickness from playing a video game was back in 2006 when I was playing Time Splitters: Future Perfect.  When it happened, I recognized the feeling but at first couldn't figure out why it was happening.  I'd played other FPS' before (Goldeneye 007, Time Splitters 2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter) and had never felt sick before, so I just chalked it up to just feeling sick for no good reason.  After the second time it happened, probably the following day, I realized that it was due to motion sickness caused by the game.  Did that stop me?  Uh-hell no!  I played a bit until I felt the first tinges of sickness, then stopped for a while, eventually going back to the game sometime after I felt significantly better.  Eventually the feelings of being sick stopped entirely and I was able to play all night/day/night/sleep/day etc.

I guess I felt that I had since become immune to FPS induced motion sickness as I hadn't thought about it again until earlier this year when the feelings of being ill came back.  Later in 2006, I purchased Time Splitters for the PS2 and was perfectly fine with that game.  When I played Doom 3 in 2010 in a darkened room with headphones, I felt perfectly fine; although maybe that had something to do with some sensory deprivation, or I'm just making shit up.  Then late last year/early this year when I started playing a lot of PC FPS' (Portal, Portal 2, Bioshock, Doom, Dear Esther), I felt perfectly fine.  

Then, a month or two ago, I started feeling ill after maybe 30 minutes of game playing.  This wasn't from some current AAA title either.  This was from Doom II: Hell on Earth.  By the end of the first level, I was starting to feel like I was going to be ill.  I've played Doom II now for only 58 minutes because I was feel like crap every time I play it.  I felt a little bit ill after playing Team Fortress 2, so I don't know what that's about.  maybe it's my eyes being too used to moving around and I'm just sitting still.  I've also played Slender for about half-an-hour and felt fine afterwards.  A little jittery about what was in any shadows, but physically alright.  And now, motion sickness again from Legendary.

A lot of the posts I've read about how to curb/cure this is to play often to adjust your eyes/brain to what's going on and that it's normal.  Another one is to move farther back from the screen, which I don't think is my problem as I currently have my laptop connected to our TV, which is about seven feet away from me.  I personally think that I might be able to lessen the effects by just playing an FPS frequently enough, but if it doesn't seem to stop, then I may just have to stop playing that particular game.

My name is Jack, and I sometimes get motion sickness from first person shooters.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Now That That's Over, Time For French Fries!


Update: It is two hours after completing this post and I feel fine now, with no sign of nausea.  All I did was eat some baked french fries, drank a bottle of Ninkasi Total Domination IPA and finished watching Wrath of the Titans.  It wasn't a very good movie, although I liked Toby Kebbell (the guy who played Posiden's son).  I'd totally watch The Adventures of Agenor.  Let's get on that Warner Bros.

Controller Style Confusion

I was playing Super Meat Boy the other day, or more likely, I was trying to play Super Meat Boy and since I don't have a USB or an xBox 360 controller for computer games, I was forced to use my keyboard.  The keyboard controls for SMB (Not that SMB), uses the arrow keys to move and the space bar to jump and shift to sprint.  I didn't make it through the first level.  I didn't like using the arrow keys to move, although, more specifically, I didn't like using  my right had for directional controls.  That last thought is what got me thinking, because that's a contradictory statement based on my controller preferences for games on other systems.

I started my video gaming life playing the Intellivision and the Atari 2600 and for both of those systems, I played right hand directional control and left hand/fingers buttoning.  With the advent of the NES controller, that all flipped to left handed directional pad and right handed for buttons.  Despite the apparent flip in hand orientation, this layout seemed very intuitive and I never questioned it.  With Goldeneye 007 on the N64, you were allowed to customize the N64 controller so you could decide which buttons moved you, meaning either the directional C-pad or the joy stick.

So now we'll go through the differing control styles that I seem to favor and if there's a reason why.

Consoles Games

The majority of games on consoles and hand held consoles are played by moving around with the directional pad with the left hand or the analogue stick and button mashing with the right hand.  The exception for me though is with FPS'.

When Turok: Dinosaur Hunter came out on the N64, I was pretty new to FPS'.  I had played a bit of Doom and Castle Wolfenstein, but only very little, and only enough to know that I didn't like that you could only look left and right, but not up or down.  But with Turok, my world was opened, and I gladly entered.  The controls for Turok were that you moved with the C-pad and looked around with the joystick, which is what I used when I began playing Goldeneye, which had an even greater amount of semi-customizable (new word) control styles and I quickly fell in love with 1.2 Solitaire, the same controls as Turok.

What drew me to moving with the C-pad buttons, controlled with the left hand instead of the joystick which would be controlled with the right hand, was the fact that I felt that I had more control when looking with the joystick and the C-pad felt very stilted.  Granted, moving with the joystick, you could go between walking and running, but I felt that was a bit unnecessary.

Oh yes, and the y-axis controls (up/down) had to be inverted.  Why?  It just felt more natural for me.

This control style held true for the other FPS' that I've played on consoles, which coincidentally were also made either by Rare or those who split off from Rare to create Free Radical: Perfect Dark, TimeSplitters, TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect.  Additionally, any time that I play any FPS' on a console, I always have to go to the controller customization and tinker around until I can move with the left joystick and look with the right and making sure that the controls are inverted.

The only problem I've run into with the above mentioned control scheme was with Halo and Left 4 Dead II, both games had the ability to jump which took my right thumb off the movement controls to be able to jump. I don't recall if there was complete button customization or presets to choose from, but I remember that I wasn't happy with the control set up.  Oh, and with Perfect Dark: Zero, which only had one control scheme and it was something that I didn't like and couldn't get used to.  I think I fired a single shot, opened one door and turned the game off.

PC Gaming

Control styles in PC games can be a bit more varied, but my preference for "moving" is with the WASD keys.  Going back to SMB, I can't stand moving by using the arrow keys with my right hand.  I feel very uncoordinated and clumsy.  However, with platformer PC games, I still feel very clumsy using WASD with my fingers instead of using a directional pad with my thumb.  I mean I could probably fumble my way through SMB with either the arrow or WASD controls, but it would take a lot of frustrating time.  Think going through Super Metroid with only WASD for movement.  However, with VVVVVV,  despite the fact that I haven't beaten the game yet, I find using the arrow keys to move around very easy to get used to.

As for FPS' on the PC, it's all about WASD for moving and the mouse for looking.  With the mouse y-axis being inverted.

Huh.  I guess it's slightly simpler than I had previously thought.  But when playing any game, on any system, I know that I might have to tinker around with the controls to suit my personal taste.  And when transitioning between say, Doom III and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Which I like a lot more than Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and I'll cover at a later date), I know that my brain won't have any troubles moving from one control style to the next.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

up-up-down-down-left trigger-right trigger-left trigger- right trigger-b-a-select-start

And now I present to you the ultimate in controller design:

It can only be called "Awesome."

Bleep Bloop - Achievements Unlocked

Achievements, as they are currently known, began three years before I became aware of their existence with the already established terminology.  The fact that I've never been a big fan of "achievements" could in part be from the fact that I've never owned an Xbox or PS3.  I understand the concept of achievements just as well, but again, they're not really my thing.  My prepared rebuttal to the almost inevitable discussion that not liking achievements must mean that I suck at video games and that I should get back to sucking dick goes something like this, "Whatever."

When I first watched the Red vs Blue PSA "Small Rewards" back in 2008, I was introduced to the concept of Achievements in their present form.  I had mentioned in a previous post that I consider the cheats in Goldeneye 007 to be "functional achievements," but calling them as such is only as recent as the writing of that article.

With the acquisition of games via Steam, being my main source for PC gaming, I now have an avenue to acquire achievements.  What I sort of like about the achievements via Steam is that what you have earned is not posted on the front page of your profile.  Maybe they can be with a bit of tinkering in the profile settings, which is fine I guess, but it's not something that I'm going to actively look for.  Yes I can go and find out which achievements Dr. Potts has obtained/acquired/unlocked in LIMBO, but I've got to make at least 3 mouse clicks in order to find out.  To me, this says that the achievements on Steam are not as important to other people as they are on Xbox Live or the Playstation Network.  That you have to actively go looking for someone else's achievements says something about that system.  And whatever it's trying to say, I like it.

One other thing that somewhat disappointed me about the concept of earning achievements is the fact that you know about them before you even play the game.  In Portal 2, one of the achievements is titled "You Made Your Point" with the subtext "Refuse to solve the first test in Chapter 8."  It tells you how to earn the achievement.  Granted some other achievements aren't so easily accomplished or even tell you how to accomplish them as in the "Transmission Received" in the first Portal which lists the subtext as "..?".  I like the idea of achievements being totally ambiguous or just having no description at all.  I'd personally felt a sense of  pride when I figured out what that achievement entailed.  Do I have that particular achievement?  Nope, I've got 7 of 26, which is just fine with me as I know what to do to acquire the achievement, I just haven't done them all yet.

I like the idea that you would be playing a game and all of a sudden the game lets you know that you achieved something that you didn't know was there, that you did something cool that the programmers also had thought of, but again, that just might be me.  Or maybe in the case of multiple part achievements, trying to figure out what it was that you just did and have the game say that you need to do the same thing nine more times at other parts in the game.

The last thing, and I know a lot of games do this, is offering achievements for either passing a level or reaching a checkpoint in a level.  If it's something you're supposed to do like collecting fully powered portal gun, I don't see a reason for there to be an achievement for it.  I can almost imagine what achievements would have looked like in early NES games.  Get an achievement for beating the game on any difficulty level (if the game has difficulty levels)?  Sure, give out an achievement for Easy, Medium and Jedi level difficulties or for just beating the game in general.  Maybe they're around to show other players your progress through the game.

Someone who has a larger degree than I do might say that achievements are the product of a society that has become one based on instant gratification, that if there weren't achievements in games (except that most/all of Nintendo games don't have an achievement-type system) that people would feel that their progression in the game isn't worth anything.  But, I'm not that someone, so I won't say that.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
My Gamerscore is 0, If Anyone Wants To Know.



P.S.  I couldn't figure out where to put this in the main body of the article, so a post script will do just fine.  I get that some achievements are challenging to unlock, but some are just plain bitch-cake crazy (I'm looking at you True Form).  I have yet to come across a game on Steam that I feel compelled to unlock all of the achievements in order for me to feel like I played a game to its fullest.

But Is It Really Cheating?

Dr. Potts brought up a nice point, his first in fact, about LIMBO in his post on Tuesday.  His first sentence was, "I cheated twice."

In our current world of near internet connectivity through laptops, netbooks, game consoles, e-readers, smartphones and desktops, the way that we seek and take in information has changed dramatically, especially since I started playing video games in the mid 1980s.  The way this affects gaming and how we game is what I wanted to talk about.

I can remember,  not the exact year, sitting outside on a set of bleachers waiting for my swimming lesson to start (so let's say somewhere around 1988-89) talking with one of my friends about how to beat The Legend of Zelda.  I was at the battle with Ganon and didn't have an idea as to how to slay the Prince of Darkness.  I obviously knew enough about the game's mechanics to know how the game worked to know what I was doing for the most part.  This friend told me that he had heard and possibly implemented as well, the tactic of using the meat/bait that worked for lesser enemies and that it would draw Ganon out and then you could kill him with the Silver Arrow.  My tactic of firing frantically with the Silver Arrow wasn't working too well and Nintendo Power only gave so much information, but not how to defeat the final boss.  Talking with friends about being stuck in areas in video games was the earliest form of Gamefaqs.  I do not consider this cheating.

Enter Game Genie.  Yes, the desire to cheat in games was very great, especially with a device whose sole purpose was to subvert the pre-existing game program to allow special allowances such as allowing Mario to perform multiple jumps in mid air, make Mega Man's special weapon meter never go down or even giving General Leo's "Shock" attack to Terra in Final Fantasy III/VI.  For me, I would never (okay, maybe not "never" but very rarely) use Game Genie on a game that I hadn't beaten...... Okay, with the exception of Mega Man II, although that was to see what bosses and weapons were like and I never beat a game with Game Genie.  Either way, I've never been a fan of cheating.

If I remember correctly, in Goldeneye 007, whenever you enabled a "Cheat," it would not progress the game beyond the level you were currently playing.  Even if was something inane as "Paintball Mode" you could not progress the story line.  I thought this was a brilliant idea in a few ways.  First, you had to "earn" the cheat and not just punch in a certain code or button combination.  You could almost say that this was a form of functional achievements as I know Dr. Potts and I would frequently ask if we'd gotten a specific cheat yet.  (Dr. Potts is also the only person I've known who was able to earn the Invincibility cheat by beating "Facility" in 2:05 on 00 Agent).  Speaking of which, I watched a similar video that Nintendo put out  way back when, showing how to go through the level to get the cheat.  To this day, it's still the only cheat I don't have in that game.

So with that, what do I consider "cheating?"

1.  Looking up or seeking information about how to beat/pass a particular area/puzzle/boss/enemy in a game without having tried it before.

2.  Using codes, exploiting bugs/glitches or otherwise manipulating the game that was not intended during regular gameplay.

     -Examples: 150 item cheat in Pokemon Red/Blue; The Konami Code; Typing "Red Alert" or "On Screen" (among others) in Warcraft II.

3.  Completing a level for someone.

     -While I won't beat a level for someone if they ask me to, I do have a "policy" of sorts that I will show them how to beat a level, but then make them do it themselves.  I don't see this being any different than someone looking up a video on youtube.
4.  Using maps for areas or dungeons that you have not previously tried to explore on your own.

With that, I do not consider Dr. Potts to have cheated on LIMBO.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Little Gage Says "No Fair!"