Agent 64: Spies Never Die Review — The GoldenEye 007 Revival You've Been Waiting For?

ScrambledAshton
1 day ago
8 min read

https://youtu.be/Fqbd5PNfK68?si=TxXWOptJyX8DhViJ

Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a flashback to the good ol' days of the N64, taking heavy inspiration from the likes of Perfect Dark and GoldenEye, with much of its gameplay and style fueled by nostalgia. But does 1997 goodness still hold up in a modern world, or is this another dinosaur that should’ve stayed extinct?

Replicant D6 is set to launch Agent 64: Spies Never Die this week, promising action-packed shootouts and gun-blazing espionage that takes us straight back to the '90s. I was intrigued to see how much I would enjoy it, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t. I don’t have any nostalgia for the ‘good ol’ days’ of the N64, mostly because I was literally a baby, but I have to wonder if that will help me be objective when it comes to games that rely so much on our fondness for the games we played as children. Will the blocky charm of our low-poly adventure still land? Because after all, if all you have is nostalgia, then do you really have anything at all?

It’s your standard slightly corny, classic Bond affair (without the blatant alcoholism). John Walker, or as I call him John Bond, a former spy, is attacked by an enemy he thought was long dead and sent on a mission to take down a faceless entity known as ‘the corporation,’ who are up to some world-shifting mischief.

The story is told over a few acts, with each mission telling its story in short cutscenes that feature some lovely camp close-ups of the static faces of our characters. With no voice acting, all of the drama is conveyed in simple text bubbles, but it’s still dramatic enough that while it may not be the most engaging and detailed story, you at least know what’s going on… most of the time. But that is espionage for you.

If you’ve played Perfect Dark, GoldenEye, or Timesplitters, you’ll know what you’re getting here. Even the view models of the weapons, the reload ‘animations,’ and slightly awkward aiming reticle all feel like you’ve been transported back to 1997, N64 controller in hand.

The variety of low-poly tools in your arsenal feels good, weapons feel punchy, and the NPCs you shoot react and animate in satisfying ways. All of which make the core gameplay of the game fun to play and have you wanting to come back for more. Though I will say, aside from the obvious differences between a shotgun and a tommy gun, the few automatic rifles don’t feel particularly different from one another, so if you’re looking for lots of variety in your gunplay, you’ll not necessarily find it here.

Modern shooter fans may find a few issues with the game in other ways. There is no sprint or crouch mechanic, so if you’re wanting to take cover from the guards that are peppering you, you simply have to ram your full body around a corner or behind a pole. Though move speed is pretty fast, and with the auto-aim, once you get used to how it all works, I think you'll be able to bring some of your best FPS skills to the table.

There are several game modes for you to try. There’s the standard story mode, with different difficulty settings that offer additional objectives for you to complete the harder the difficulty. Playing it on easy keeps your goals relatively simple, tasking John Bond (sorry, Agent John Walker) to essentially reach the end of the level. Unlocking higher difficulty levels adds more challenge and more areas to explore, requiring you to disable alarms, shoot cameras, and hack terminals.

The whole story can be played alone or in 4-player co-op (both local and online), but there are a few differences here too. If playing alone, you’ll need to collect ‘cyphers’ to unlock more missions and later acts. These can be gained from completing missions on the Special Agent or Agent 64 difficulty modes and finding the magical masks in each level. If you just complete the levels on the easiest difficulty, you’ll not have enough ‘cyphers’ to continue forward, and with you not being able to complete them at a higher difficulty until you’ve completed the easier ones, you’ll find yourself replaying these missions a few times to be able to move on, which can slow the pacing down ever so slightly… even though these missions can apparently be completed in about 2 minutes if the par times are to be believed.

The co-op mode is, I believe, the better way to play. Not only do you get to hang out with your pals, but you also get to move onto the next mission as soon as you’ve finished one, so there’s no need to replay missions unless you fancy adding a bit of challenge in or beating the par times. I do, however, still have a couple of issues with this: your progress doesn’t carry over to your single-player game, so if you don’t want to have to play it all again, I am afraid that 100% completion rate may never happen.

Also, and this is perhaps a personal gripe, friendly fire is on and will kill you more than any of the enemies, especially as some areas are a real squeeze for any more than one player. And with the revive mechanic being ‘your friend died so we’re taking a big chunk of your health to give it to them whether you want to or not,’ it can feel particularly annoying when you shoot your bestie point-blank in the skull instead of the enemies… especially as they can choose which character model to don when going into a mission and walk around dressed as one of the enemy guards just to mess with you.

The levels are interesting enough set pieces; from escaping a large penthouse apartment, to breaking out of the evil villain's castle, to infiltrating a snowy military base and spy bunker. Visually, they keep things varied - holding that retro blocky aesthetic you remember, with some modern visual enhancements.

The biggest issue I have with the campaign levels themselves is that many of them feel like they were designed as multiplayer maps ‘first,’ often leaving them to feel large, labyrinthine, and sometimes slightly empty and shallow. Which also poses a problem in the multiplayer modes, as often you can feel a little lost in the sauce with such winding maps.

There was also a smaller problem that was flagged by your pal and mine, Barely Magic Mike, in that the tutorial pop-ups disappear so quickly (and cannot be accessed again) that he didn’t realize that in order to access a picked-up keycard (or any of the non-violent tools), you needed to equip them with a separate button press, which led him to believe the game was bugged. It’s a small problem, but I do think the lack of communication in the game is a genuine issue that may make some gamers turn it off.

Additionally, there are Arena modes and Challenges against bots.

Arena allows you to set up a custom lobby (either on your own or with friends!), in classic Deathmatch, Capture the Briefcase, or Zone capture.

Unlocking everything will take time and effort

However, upon initially launching the game, you are limited to one game mode (Deathmatch) and only three maps, requiring you to complete Challenges (essentially pre-set arena battles) to unlock more options. You start with access to 3 ‘starter league’ challenges and unlock more as you play through the story. So if you’re thinking of getting the game and diving straight into some split-screen arena action with friends, I would bear that in mind!

Additionally, by beating certain challenges or story missions under a ‘par-time,’ you start to unlock Paradox Modes. According to the Steam page, the game contains 70+ modifiers and cheats that you can enable that can have various effects on gameplay. The par-time for these is strict, so unlocking these will add a bunch of replayability for folks looking for a bit of challenge. Having only unlocked a handful of these so far (big fan of the BIG head mode!), I can imagine a couch co-op party being a lot of fun experimenting with a bunch of these in co-op or arena matches.

Other than the fact you have to wait to unlock new areas or modes, the arena games are in general pretty fun, though the bots’ AI isn’t particularly advanced; to be honest, it’s pretty basic in both the arena missions and core story, so we’re not fighting highly skilled assassins during Agent 64, which is lucky as if they were too good, we’d not be able to beat them and they’d call us an ‘Octopussy.’

Though one thing I did think was funny is that during one of the challenges, Dana (our daughter)’s character model is used to create a ‘Slapper Bot,’ an enemy type that just punches the ever-loving shit out of you if you let them get too close, and as I am sure we are all aware, in the UK a ‘Slapper’ is a mean word about women that my mum calls me whenever my dress is a bit too short… but I have no idea if the Dev is English, so I am choosing to believe that is just a coincidence.

As I’ve already mentioned, the game's looks are really pulled right out of an N64 time machine, but luckily for those of us who like a little less crunch in our visuals, they’ve been souped up to a nice smooth set of edgy polygons. The areas, while winding, are all distinct from one another, and as you explore more and more of the story, you’ll really see how much the dev has poured in to make them all stand out from one another.

Every inch of this game feels carefully designed to within an inch of its life, and the details are impossible to ignore. The guns, the maps, even the enemies and character models, all of it clearly harks back to the banger FPS games of yesteryear, and the charm oozes out, even for a Gen Z gamer like me with all my modern gaming and high-definition privilege!

The sound design is nothing to write home about, but the music is at least a suitably spy-forward soundtrack that does complement John Bond’s story nicely. Though occasionally, specifically in boss fights or moments where the tension is high, I would’ve liked a bit more oomph from the music to really sell this ‘thrilling’ narrative…or at least give us a little inclination as to how our characters are feeling, especially with their static faces that make them all look like they’ve had too much Botox to convey any emotion.

On the Steam Deck, the game worked well in most indoor areas, keeping at 60FPS when running at the deck's native 800p resolution. Slight drops when outside in some of the bigger levels, with lots of enemies and effects on screen - this can easily cap to the 60FPS by dropping a setting or two. For a game going for a retro vibe, this is a little disappointing, but not something that’s a huge deal breaker for deck owners!

PC players will also have a pretty solid 60FPS depending on the specs of your PC, of course, but not many moments are so intensive that I think your average gaming PC would struggle, after all, it’s just a bunch of polygons!

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Agent 64: Spies Never Die, even without having nostalgia bleeding out of all the open bullet wounds (of which there were many, sometimes you could get shot a LOT). Sure, it has a few issues, namely how much you have to play in order to access more online content, which I worry isn’t clearly marked enough that some players will assume you’ve only got a very small selection of modes to choose from.

None of the issues I’ve flagged today are game-breaking or reasons not to pick this one up; they’re perhaps just a few teething issues that will be resolved shortly, which is great because I do think, N64 fans aside, there are plenty of gamers who would really enjoy their time with it. It’s charming, quirky, and suitably angular, which I think makes for a fantastic time alone or with friends, which is the reason I feel more than comfortable to award Agent 64: Spies Never Die with a covert Silver Genie Lamp of Approval.

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