Worst Shooter Ever?

I am sure that everyone out there has played some bad games in their lives - I have too - but I think this one took the cake.

It was an FPS, Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. For those who don’t know the premise of the game, it is supposed to be a sequel/remake of sorts of Goldeneye (the old N64 favorite) except this time the player plays through the game as a bad guy. I haven’t played the missions, but the multi-player matches were enough to tell me that I never want to play this game again (unless I am delirious or drinking, in which case it might be funny). Where do I start…

The graphics on the game were so shoddy that I often couldn’t tell if I was shooting at a column or at an opponent. The level designs and lighting effects did not help. The first level we played was so dark that I often couldn’t see where I was going, what I was doing or who was shooting at me. The levels were often designed symmetrically, like one level we played in a basement with steam pipes. This meant that you could never tell which part of the level you were in, because they all looked the same. I was playing a team match, but I couldn’t even find my teammate, much less my enemies, in the confusing similar rooms.

With skilled use of radar, we could have still managed to find each other and fight, even though the levels, lighting and graphics were horrible. But to my utter dismay, the game didn’t have radar at all! I can’t think of ever playing a multi-player shooter that didn’t have radar. Even the original Goldeneye probably had radar, to navigate larger levels like the Bunker. I would often run right by enemies and not even know it, or mistake the enemy for my teammate, since the character models all looked so similar.

Again, this problem could have been negated somewhat with a decent targeting and crosshairs system. If my crosshairs had turned red when I aimed at my enemy, I wouldn’t have thought he was my teammate. But did it turn red? No, of course not. The crosshairs didn’t change at all between looking at different people and objects. The player’s name did show up, but I usually couldn’t remember which players were on my team at the time, what game names my cousins had used, or even read the small, cramped letters with the (again) bad lighting and graphics.

The crosshairs were also way too big and inaccurate (with a shotgun, they was as big as a person). While I understand that a gun might not be very accurate, and would thus have a large range of where it might hit, I should at least have the OPTION to have good aim. The crosshairs were so big that my entire enemy was within it, so I would try and guess whether or not the middle of the crosshairs was near his head or chest. It usually wasn’t. I had a lower hit percentage in this game than in any other game I have played in the last few years. Many of the the levels we played were small and had many cramped corridors and corners, meaning that our gunfights were usually at point-blank range. Point-blank gunfights where I still couldn’t hit the enemy, even with shotguns and machine guns.

The few times I DID manage to hit my enemy, I noticed that the damage/hit sensors were awful. I would shoot my enemy repeatedly in the face or back of the head, and the hits would do almost nothing. He would turn around and shoot me once or twice in the body, with the same exact gun, and I would die. The game seemed to have a reverse hit sensor; the better our aim, the more shots it took to kill the enemy.

When I was getting shot at, I often did not even realize it. It took me until the third match to realize that the strange dots I was seeing flashing on my screen were supposed to signify blood or sweat because I was under attack.

Then there were the guns themselves. The game tried to copy Halo’s formula, by only allowing 2 guns at a time, and allowing players to dual wield. The result is that when you run over a gun, two buttons show up, one to switch weapons, one to dual wield. But you wouldn’t know that was what they did unless someone told you. Dual wielding was possibly worse though, as the targeting system got even more difficult to hit with. The guns themselves were awful, simple designs and were nowhere near as effective as they should have been. I usually lost when I shot my enemies with shotguns at close range while they used pistols. The game also had 2 grenades for each player when they spawned, used similarly to in Halo. But the grenades bounced madly away in most cases, unless you managed to throw one directly at an opponent, in which case they exploded on impact. But it was almost impossible to get a direct hit, as the crappy crosshairs abandons you completely when trying to aim your grenades.

Then finally, there were the flukes. Those times when I would be running down an empty corridor and randomly explode. I would ask my cousins who had killed me, only to find out that none of them had even been shooting. Or the times that I shot someone with a pistol, and the first hit to their arm made THEM explode, causing them to fly across the level as if they’d been hit with a bazooka. There were the times where my character would randomly start crouching and un-crouching without my hitting any buttons. There were the times when I suddenly could shoot my teammate and kill him, but a minute later, in the same match, team attack would be off again.

I was hopelessly lost and frustrated throughout this entire game; I don’t even know if I won the matches or not. I recommend this game to absolutely no one. If you already purchased the game, try and get your money back, and may God have mercy on your souls.

- Scott