Agent 64: Spies Never Die

The impact of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 shouldn’t be understated. What DOOM did for the FPS genre and PC gaming is what GoldenEye did for console shooters at the time. By today’s standards, it is very simple, but feels timeless and approachable. Many other developers didn’t mimic the formula of GoldenEye, and even Rare themselves tried once with Perfect Dark and never again. But now we see an indie dev doing the unthinkable and making a clone of the classic shooter. Enter Agent 64, a straightforward run-and-gun shooter about a silver fox spy foiling plans for world domination, and doing so with the chance of unlocking a big head cheat for extra laughs.

Spies never really die, do they?

Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a brilliant homage to a long-gone era, which was short-lived compared to that of the golden age of survival horror, which has made a resurgence in the last decade. The Nintendo 64 was a crowning achievement for first-person shooters due to its 3D processor, and the likes of Turok, Perfect Dark, and GoldenEye thrived in the late ’90s. But by the 2000s, we had the likes of Unreal, Quake, and COD.

Still, this era of shooters is a beautiful thing, and Agent 64 is a perfect replication of that era.

We play as John Walter, the world’s hottest daddy spy, as he embarks on a globe-trotting adventure with his daughter to defeat a long-thought-dead enemy who is after world domination. We’ll be picking up a multitude of firearms, traversing skyscrapers, nightclubs, museums, and that FPS staple, “The Classic Snow Base”, while unlocking cheat codes by completing levels in an insanely silly amount of time. And those lovely low-resolution textures actually look pretty damn good.

This is all about shooting bad guys in what looks like a game ripped from another point in time, but there are plenty of neat inclusions and dynamics to make Agent 64 feel fresh and approachable in the modern landscape, while retaining that old-school charm.


The Golden(Eye) Formula

The core gameplay loop for Agent 64 is far from the complexities and depth of many modern shooters, such as the violently tactical DOOM reboot. Its mechanics are stripped back to something simpler yet wholesome, where you have guns, you shoot, and you avoid taking damage. Even compared to something like Mouse PI, Agent 64 takes the vibes and shooting a step further back.

But this is a blessing, as everything else can be enhanced with a healthy dose of creative freedom. Agent 64 takes the principles of GoldenEye to heart, with the straight-laced shooting, dynamic level design, objectives based on what difficulty you selected, and said difficulty being ball-busting due to a lack of health pickups and only one piece of armour lying around on a good day! It’s all here, feeling like something old Rare would be proud of making, something highly fun, but also capable of crushing your childhood innocence and mental well-being.

The developer has pretty much nailed the vibes and framework for that classic ’90s shooter, where the guns feel punchy, the punishment for mistakes feels impactful, and the range of level design, enemies, and dynamic elements based on difficulty all feel appropriate and masterfully created for a homage.

It was nice to just run and gun and have it be quite a lot of fun throughout all 14 levels. This is largely due to the variety of level design, objectives, and weapons at play. While there is a lack of tactical thinking when using weapons, since you just point, shoot, and avoid fire yourself, Agent 64 does push the idea of being cautious with how you navigate combat encounters and the levels overall.

Levels tend to open up with multiple paths you can take, some more noticeable than others, and they tend to grant interesting risk-and-reward choices. Do you enter a section and fight a bunch of guys for the chance at a lifesaving armoured vest? Or do you chance it and go about your day?

Environments usually provide plenty of cover, breakable items, and paths to flank and evade, bringing about a surprisingly intelligent sense of tactical advantage with quick-fire thinking. The game never fully embraces a lot of FPS norms, even for the time, but it does clever work with some interesting objectives and level locations.

Other times, though, it all feels a bit too familiar and stale. Those make-or-break “protect someone while they hack a terminal” objectives can be fine, but doing this multiple times throughout the campaign, and on harder difficulties, makes it easy to fail, resulting in a restart that is just painful.

Still, there are some neat set pieces and mission objectives, including a massive shootout in a restroom early in the game, which was hilarious and thrilling! Some great moments like this do change the pace a bit for the action, but the spy stuff never feels all that deep or varied.

There’s also a mechanic where, when completing a mission, you will obtain Nodes, and these will be used to unlock the next tier of missions. It’s a neat idea, and it does push you to venture into greater difficulties since these give you more Nodes. But it doesn’t feel entirely needed, and more like it was forced in for the appearance of complexity.


Some of the old ways aren't the best ways

I feel this is my biggest gripe: the difficulty, or at least the BS level of difficulty, which should be a thing of the past. I was a kid when GoldenEye came out back in ’97, and I can recall the higher difficulties just being unfair at the best of times. Agent 64, for all the beauty it replicates, also replicates that BS difficulty ladder. Not all the time, but enough that it became a pain in some key moments, especially towards the end.

I can see people rolling their eyes and telling me to get on with it, but there is a clear difference between a healthy and fair challenge and one that relies on auto-scanning enemies that can hit you with a shotgun from across the room, never finding any resemblance of armour for a long, long mission, or some dreaded timed sections which, again, on the highest difficulties, are a painful event to deal with.

And it’s not like there are a whole heap of gadgets to go along and help you out, with many of the most useful being limited to certain levels and tied to certain objectives. I do wish there was a bit more investment in the gadgets for spy games, as very few manage to pull them off well. I would’ve loved a watch that spewed smoke, allowing me to make a quick getaway, or even something that could help me pick up ammo for my weapon when it has run dry.

That said, if you were looking for the perfect reincarnation of that ’90s console shooter, where straightforward shooting and difficulty were your thing, then Agent 64 has you sorted.


Spies that spy together, die together!

The upside to Agent 64 is the multiplayer and the tons of extras, such as the cheats you can unlock. What really stood out was the co-op campaign, which does help with a few of the difficulty issues, and the multiplayer modes. Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Capture the Zone are classic, fun modes which can never get old, to be honest.

While there isn’t a brand-new, fresh mode that comes with Agent 64’s multiplayer, there is a hearty and healthy amount of content that will certainly be long-lasting for those who just want an experience without XP ladders, badges, Prestige rankings, and annoying 12-year-olds telling me to f*** off.

There are challenges and plenty of reasons to replay levels for extra goodies, with the cheat codes being the main highlight. While I do feel some of their requirements are just plain rubbish, there is a surprisingly deep selection of modifiers to unlock, ranging from silly visual changes to things that genuinely alter how you approach a level.

It’s a great reminder of what games used to do for players who had finished the main campaign, played it again, and simply wanted to mess around. Rather than just being a collection of pointless cheats, there are enough modifiers here to give you reasons to replay missions and experiment with them, especially when combined with the different difficulty levels and challenges.

It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to replay a level just to see how ridiculous you can make it, which is exactly what I want from a good old-school cheat system.


Overall?

Agent 64: Spies Never Die is something I would love to have in cartridge form and play on my Analogue 3D, since it nails everything from that bygone era of gaming, which I do miss quite a bit, and some things I really don’t.

What Agent 64 excels at is not just the notion that it is able to beautifully and accurately replicate media from 30 years ago, like a great old-school-inspired survival horror game. It also manages to make something old and fun feel modern, new, and highly approachable.

Its simplicity should not deter people from picking it up, as there is so much here to enjoy, replay, master, and enjoy with friends online. While the bouts of BS difficulty spikes and lack of inventiveness with gadgets and expanding gunplay are somewhat of a drawback, the solid gameplay loop, ease of jumping into the action, variety in level design, interesting decision-making in combat, and the amount of love and craft that went into making a beautiful-looking and sounding game with the most immense vibes are just stellar in my books.

Agent 64 is an excellent recreation of GoldenEye, but sometimes it recreates the bad bits a little too faithfully. And honestly, that might be the biggest compliment and criticism I can give it.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die launches for PC on August 11, and I highly recommend you pick it up.

++ Perfect homage, with great simplicity and engaging gameplay
++ Fun shooting, and action with meaningful decision making
++ Great amount of modifiers and unlockable content
+ Looks and sounds excellent

-- A bit too faithful, and lacks any interesting dynamics or mechanics
-- The difficulty spikes like old school GoldenEye can be pure BS
- Some requirements for unlockable content is a bit much

Review keys for Agent 64: Spies Never Die was kindly provided by the publisher