Gaming's Best Levels #9: Facility - GoldenEye 007

A journey through some of video gaming's greatest levels. Or, the ones we like at least.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a successful movie in possession of good box office records, must be in want of a cheap video game tie-in. And, as it's also commonly known, these tie-ins are almost always, to a man, dog shit. I'm looking at you E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

GoldenEye 007, however, may be the sole exception to this rule. Though I'm sure you'll disagree if you've just been done over in multiplayer (yet again), by your mate who is using Oddjob (yet again). Though it was released in 1997, it's the tie-in to a James Bond movie which came out in 1995 -GoldenEye. It was Pierce Brosnan's first outing in the role of the iconic spy, engaging in international espionage and top-shagging.

The release of the GoldenEye 007 was fairly unusual. Unusual primarily because, as mentioned above, it came out two whole years after the movie upon which it was based. Image if that happened now: the film would be considered 'ancient history' by our attention-span deprived youths. It was also developed by Rare who, at the time, were best known for ball-bustingly hard platformers like Battletoads and Donkey Kong, fighting games such as Killer Instinct, and a whole slew of movie tie-ins and sports games no one really remembers. But weirdest of all, GoldenEye was a first person shooter exclusive to the Nintendo 64, of all things.

From the perspective of 2018, we now know that GoldenEye 007 is one of the most legendary video games of all time. It signalled the transition from Doom's cartoony graphics and simple, hands-off story, to a more realistic art style and a single player campaign with multiple objectives, cut-scenes, and NPCs. GoldenEye also heralded in the use of stealth elements, sniper rifles, contextual damage to enemies, and (of course) the console deathmatch. I do wonder if Rare get themselves off thinking about how many friendships they ruined.

As a tie-in, GoldenEye 007 does a respectable job. The locations, characters, weapons, and set pieces are well represented here, and the game is good at making you feel like Bond. All that's missing is a level in which you shag a Russian spy called Svetlana Creampie, or something.

The level I feel best represents the Bond vibe is the 2nd level, Facility. I'm mostly here to talk about its solo player merits, though we all know it's the iconic deathmatch map.

Facility is set in a chemical weapons facility in the Soviet Union which James and his fellow agent, Alec Trevelyan (or Sean Bean to you and me), are tasked with infiltrating and destroying. If you remember the film, Trevelyan gets captured by Russians and Bond escapes - setting his mines as he does so and giving Trevelyan only moments for himself to escape. He doesn't take it well. But you can sort of screw the pooch on this by trying to save Trevelyan by getting into a massive fire fight and forcing the villain to shoot the poor bastard in the head.

Suddenly, Trevelyan's petty motivations for betraying Bond (who did what most secret agents would) look even pettier.

I picked Facility over the 1st level (Dam) because that level is rapid mad dash to the finish, designed to teach the gameplay, whilst Facility feels like pure Bond. The soundtrack for one thing makes you feel like a right cool bastard. It's got the rhyme of music that plays in the toilets of bars, with tones evoking the classic main Bond theme and Russian militarism.

Gameplay wise, you can be sort of stealthy and gun down people from behind and round a corner, or when they're taking a piss; or you can shoot a bloke in the head, whilst he's on the khazi, from the air vent above. My preferred method is to drop down and pretend you're delivering a witty one-liner - like "Time to punish the porcelain" - leaving the guy with no time to pull his kecks up before I slap him to death.

The level gives you a Silenced PP7 off the bat, and you can pick up another DD44 handgun and the Soviet rifle. But you also get grenades and plenty of mines to play with. And let me tell you, in a narrow compartmentalised level with large groups of enemies you'll be happier than the IRA.

Facility is designed in such a way, that you're often forced into choke points against several enemies. The game pulls the old slow opening doors trick so that all the regularly spawning reinforcements can catch up to you. In multiplayer these slow opening doors can make or break your game. Simply running through the level on solo is also not recommended for this reason. Do that, and you'll soon have a conga line of highly eager men chasing after you - as though you've just announced that you've split up with your long term boyfriend on Facebook.

On the lower difficulties, though, the level shouldn't be too taxing. Your objective remains the same across all the difficulties: find the double agent scientist and meet up with Sean Bean to destroy the chemical weapons tanks. Complicating matters is that you fail the mission if you kill too many scientists. Not a problem usually, but this is GoldenEye and EVERYTHING explodes. It's like that Pierce Brosnan film with the exploding water.

But the real test of man is unlocking the 'Invincibility' cheat. To do so, you've got to complete the level on 00 Agent (Hard) in under 2:05 minutes. Now, Facility is not exactly a massive level but it's long enough when you consider the slow opening doors dotted throughout. But you've also got to locate the scientist, whose location changes each time. It requires you to know the level inside and out; you need to pick your battles, and you need precision.

In short: you'll be so shit-hot at GoldenEye by the time you get this cheat, you'll feel like James Bond. Just make sure to get checked for knob rot.

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