A Tale of Two GoldenEyes

Last night, GoldenEye 007 launched early for the Nintendo Switch and Game Pass. I checked out both versions and have thoughts on them below.

Full disclosure: I never had an Nintendo 64. I played some 64 games back in the day in stores and the rest of the N64 games I’ve played have been on the Wii, Wii U, and Switch. And so…

I had never played GoldenEye 007 before. I’d seen the movie. I’d seen footage of the game. I knew how popular it was. However, I didn’t play the game on the Nintendo 64. So yes, I was excited when it was announced that the game was coming to the Nintendo Switch and Game Pass.

Last night, GoldenEye 007 launched early for the Switch and Game Pass. I checked it out on both platforms a bit. Let’s dig into it. GoldenEye is a bit different on the two platforms…

Nintendo Switch: On the Switch, GoldenEye has online multiplayer and the single player too. The game is included with the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack service. I have that service and so had access to the game when it was added last night.

I didn’t try out the online multiplayer though because…

GoldenEye 007 is very difficult to play on the Switch. The controls are similar to what they were on the N64 and so that means no duel analog support. I hear there is some complicated way to get that support. Haven’t checked that out yet. What I have checked though was almost unplayable. I certainly would not want to play this game online because I would die right away. Looking around was alright with one of the analog sticks but walking around was complicated. This was not an enjoyable experience.

Also I saw this glitch while playing too:

So playing GoldenEye on the Switch was a disappointing experience. At least so far. I’ll have to check out that complicated way of getting duel analog support.

Game Pass: GoldenEye on Game Pass does not have the online experience. That means no sense to me at all especially since Xbox has voice chat and multiplayer would be even more fun on the Xbox. My only guess is that somehow Nintendo got exclusivity on the online multiplayer. sigh. Its too bad because, guess what, GoldenEye plays much better on the Xbox Series S.

On Xbox, GoldenEye has duel analog support. It plays almost like a modern day shooter. The controls still feel a little clunky, especially character movement. Bond moves around slowly and turns slowly. Thank goodness the bad guys have worst reflexes than Bond! Still, the game is so much more fun on Game Pass. I didn’t even see any glitches on the Xbox version compared to the Switch version.

I’m glad I have Game Pass too. It was nice to be able to play the game and see past that first section. I haven’t gotten too far into the game yet but I had fun with it on Xbox. If it had the online multiplayer too, it would be perfect! It has local multiplayer of course but I have no one to play it with. So I’m out of luck.

Its so strange that the Switch version has online multiplayer, but bad controls and the Xbox version has no online but good controls. Hopefully a future update will make the control scheme better on Switch. I will definitely try out the alternate control scheme thats been suggested and may write about the game again on Switch.

As it stands now, I would highly recommend playing GoldenEye 007 on Game Pass if you can. If you can’t, well, you should look up online the way to fix the control scheme and hope that works.

I have no idea why Nintendo wouldn’t make sure there was an updated control scheme for this game. Widescreen was added in! Online multiplayer! The graphics were even enhanced some I heard. The control scheme issue is a mess.

I’d love to play more of GoldenEye on the Switch. Hopefully I’ll figure out this other control scheme and it’ll work well. sigh. I don’t get why you have to jump through hoops though.

What do you think of GoldenEye on the Switch? What do you think about it on Game Pass? Do you have nostalgia for GoldenEye 007?