GoldenEye 007 Reloaded

It was a success thanks to unparalleled production values on Nintendo's console, a decent tie-in from the original movie and a great respect shown to Rare's classic N64 title. And even if Eurocom did a splendid job, it was always obvious there was some unfinished business. Activision heard the cries of the fans and tasked the same studio with porting the game to HD consoles.

The Gamescom demo was focused on the PlayStation Move gameplay. Ironic, given the fact that Activision stopped anyone from getting their hands on the Wiimote control at last year's Gamescom, although the pointer based control option proved to be excellent in the end.

Having enjoyed the Wii game for countless hours, we have a pretty clear idea of what GoldenEye 007 Reloaded needs to do. It has to correct every single issue found in the original game and make good use of the more powerful hardware. Even if the Wii title was good, it had some major issues, that Eurocom would be foolish not to correct.

The first and most obvious thing that strikes you is the graphical leap. On the Wii platform, it was one of the best looking first person shooters, with great environments, animations and visual effects, even if it had some serious issues with its darker sections. That problem has been sorted and the game makes use of the added hardware power to some extent.

You can tell by the added effects, more complex geometry, a new animation here and there, higher resolution textures, and perhaps most importantly the solid 60 frames per second every game in this genre needs. However, in its current state, it's easy to spot the origins of this project - no one would allow such ugly water in a game built from scratch for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 - nor would trembling textures or instantly disappearing corpses be found in other HD titles.

But we're nitpicking here, more important are the issues that affected the gameplay, and apparently there is no need to worry. The online component has been given a complete overhaul, as far as the levelling system goes and necessary features such as creating a match have been added. The glitches found in the original won't be there and the new multiplayer maps will support up to 16 players (compared to 8 on Wii). There will naturally be voice chat for those who wish it, and there will be enhanced leaderboards to climb.

Along with the other new features, already announced by Activision and also related to the local play, are new MP modes, more weapons and even more classic characters. And for the lone wolf, who will be able to re-enjoy that wonderful SP campaign (even in Classic Mode, with health meters), MI6 Ops is new. A collection of single player missions for each stage that ask for specific play styles on each one: tactical, stealth, assault...

We played with the PS3 controller but also got a hands-on with PS Move, the latter having little lag and good precision. However, the demo configuration wasn't the most comfortable and due to time constraints we couldn't check sensitivity and dead zone menus, so we couldn't decide whether we, pointer lovers, will get the same level of customisation this time.

Once again, Eurocom promises that we'll have "similar parameters" in that menu compared to what we had with the Wiimote. It'll be a crucial point, for it's the first FPS title in which we can compare both pointer systems' results.

GoldenEye 007 Reloaded looks to be a good pick for Bond fans, and for those who are looking from something other than modern war titles. We still need to see how, and if, they managed to solve every single issue, as well as how Move works versus the Wiimote and what the price will be.

If all boxes are ticked correctly though, we're be happy for GoldenEye 007 to Live Twice this generation.