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I’ve never finished the single player part of GoldenEye, even though I’ve been playing it since 1999 – mainly because of how good the multiplayer side is. I’ve had to dig out a Nintendo 64 and four controllers for so long to play Rare’s 1997 game with friends to get my hands on the golden gun, but finally that’s not anymore.
On January 27, 2023, GoldenEye was made available for both the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Game Pass, and while the Switch has exclusive online multiplayer, the single-player campaign and local split-screen multiplayer are available for both platforms. While you’ll need a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership to play it on Nintendo Switch, it’s well worth the price of admission to play one of Rare’s best games.
However, since the game can be played on any device that can run Game Pass from the cloud, such as the Steam Deck and Android handhelds, I thought I’d try GoldenEye on an iPad Pro with my 8BitDo Pro 2 controller plugged in, and I was amazed at how far we’ve come in the 25 years since the game’s release.
Move over Tina Turner
Although my dog Jolly likes to wake me up early, I didn’t mind today as I was able to try out the game on both Switch and iPad. Oddly enough, the control scheme on the Switch is clunky, with the left trigger for fire and only one analog stick to control your movement.
But on iPad via Xbox Cloud it’s a treat, with dual-analog controls that reminded me of Halo, and the fire action correctly placed on the right trigger of my 8BitDo Pro 2. Connecting to 5G and Wi-Fi was no problem with GamePass – though the latency wasn’t as good as my experience with GeForce Now, I completed the first three levels with no issues.
Since Xbox Cloud also has touch controls, playing with these at the first level wasn’t as much of a problem as I expected either – everything worked as intended, and if some buttons were too far apart I could easily adjust them to fit them better. to bring closer.
But playing the game on my iPad reminded me how much of a challenge this must have been for Nintendo, the original publisher, the developer of Rare and MGM, the owner of the rights to James Bond.
A remaster was in development for the Xbox 360 in the late 1990s, but rights issues reportedly got in the way and it was scrapped. This one is another try, it seems – while there’s native widescreen here, none of the textures and graphics have been revamped to accommodate HD televisions.
But that doesn’t matter – I can now play the single player campaign on my iPad and play multiplayer both offline and online with my Switch wherever I am, which is great for me.
Now if Rare can look into bringing Perfect Dark and Blast Corps back to the same platforms that would be great and I wouldn’t ask for anything more apart from a remaster of 1997 Tomb Raider II maybe.