Got the game this morning.

ASK you do have to tweak the settings. It's not like Red Steel 2 or prime 3 where you can just select an advanced default and be good to go.

There are 3 advanced defaults, I picked the highest and then went to the (customize option) tweaked the options and got it feeling pretty great. You have to go into the options and fiddle with things like button presets, ADS options (make the ADS dead zone larger), increase cursor sensitivity to max, up your turn speed. Shrink the bounding box (not ADS).

And learn how to sit in your chair propery so your elbow rests on your knee or thigh, or even a cushion to support your wrist. It sounds complicated but it becomes second nature if you play Wii FPS a lot and gives you a great fluid play system.

So far, it's explosive fun at times and stealthy justice in other parts. And it's great

Quite suprised here, it's probably the game Red Steel 1 should have been.

Agnates said:

I thought it's not out in Europe yet? I read the iron sight controls are funked up, is that true and is it fixable?

I ordered it via post, they usually post 2 days before release to make sure it gets to you on time. Occasionally it comes a day early.

Iron sights are fine, if you tweak the options. First off get rid of snap to or any sort of auto aim, then tweak the ADS Aim down sights dead zone to make it as large as possible. There is also camera lock by using the Z button but that limits your gun movement into a smaller box.

Gamespy review said:

The game also offers classic and GameCube controller layouts, but they're far too sluggish by default. If you grab a Wii classic controller and take the time to tune the ridiculous amount of options, you'll probably save yourself a lot of headaches in multiplayer. On the other hand, the nunchuk control mode is better for single-player, given how often you need to headshot stationary targets. Either way, you need to fiddle with the controls to get full enjoyment out of any game mode. It's just disappointing that with so many control options, none of the presets are quite good enough without putting in some tuning.

I completely agree with that. The defaults aren't good enough, like in Red Steel 2 or Metroid Prime 3 where you can just select the best option and play, but there are the customization controls to get it just how you want it.

Gamespy review was 4 stars out of 5 BTW.

Removing vent covers as shown in some videos is like Batman: AA

Actually all the stealth mechanics seem to have that simple yet addictive fun element as in that game. Except you don't have the grapple hook but have all sorts of silenced guns and sniper rifles.

They should have left the game bake a little longer though, maybe release it a few months after COD instead of just days before, to add a few more multiplayer modes and improve stuff like the frame rate and some of the dodgier content. But it's reviewing well and seems to be talked about a lot unlike other good Wii games so hopefully it will sell (over a million like the COD games on Wii?) and we'll see more like it, even if no more Bond. Maybe they could take ideas for the Wii COD games, now that they're not ports but all new versions.

Hmmm, the nightclub level was pretty meh.

I now know what reviewers mean when they say the visuals are inconsistent. I'm not sure whether it's just the art of certain bland areas. Like a generic kitchen or a club corridor with purple carpeting. But in these sections it looks very PS2 like with bad texture work.

The level is saved by the intellignet agressive AI and the controls. The gun models though are awfully low res when you zoom into ADS mode. In fact the guns in COD REFLEX are better. There are also lots of machine guns here that all feel the same to use, there is almost no point in swapping out one for the other unless it has a better reflex sight.

The frigate levels starts off on this cruise ship in this boring showroom, I was concerned it would follow on from the nightclub in being another bland looking boring level but you eventually get off the cruise ship and dive into a frigate. The graphics are back to great and the gameplay settles back down to stealth and attack mechanics. Good stuff. I hope the next few levels are more like the Dam and Facility than the club.

One thing that annoys me is the smartphone. You are suppossed to locate specific spots to scan like in Metroid Prime. You get this smartphone indicator when you are near something, but you can't actually move the smartphone about as easily as you can scan in say Metroid Prime. So it feels like you are rooted to the spot when you pull out the device. You are suppossed to look for these tiny little blue lights but they are often hard to spot. Thankfully you can clear out a room of bad guys and then look for what you need but I haven't bothered, just kept on shooting

Mother of..... gah why are so many reviewers using the Classic controller to review Goldeneye?

Eurogamer:

"This is, without doubt, the most impressive Infinity Ward-style shooter on Nintendo's platform. Played with the Wii Classic Controller Pro, you are afforded tight, satisfying control and the huge range of weaponry"

Even the gamespot video review is filmed using it. It just makes my head hurt. These games reviewers haven't tried enough Wii shooters, they come to a review and instead of learning the controls or tweaking the options their first response is to plug in the Classic controller so it plays like 360.

Monkey! Please don't leave again!

I'm back having played Severn-how-do-u-spell-it snow level. Wow, best looking level on Wii? It's a very strong contender. And you then seamlesly go into the bunker which is a completely different design from the N64 game. It's damned cool. This game has gone from maybe it's good, to wow, it IS good. Great even sometimes.

I can probably say from what I have played so far that it is the best single player FPS I have played in a long time.

The snow level has an awesome scope but also lets you stealth about picking people off, very cool. Then inside the bunker there are some snipers with laser sights like in Halo 3. As I lined up a shot on one he turned his sights towards me and the laser caused lens flare just at  the moment I shot him. Wow moment right there. And then there is a night vision part like COD4 which is cool, reminded me more of splinter cell because of the way you can sneak about.

Oh and the melee move with the nunchuk is the best melee move since Halo, it feels completely natural and works brilliantly. If there is some fool in your face a quick chop will butt the gun in his face, but that's only half the story. Because it's been performance captured it has a weight and motion to it that physically connects with you.

Then as the opening camera pan of the archives started my jaw hit the floor. As a Goldeneye fan just seeing the familiar tiling and wall paint sent a giddy shiver up my spine. The actual level wasn't as good as the facility, dam, snow level or bunker but it was great fun, showing that a game doesn't have to have open battlefields and huge scope to be a hugely enjoyable FPS.

Anyhow in the archives as you duck behind bookcases and they (and you) can shoot the books out of the cabinets

And just randomly I saw this statue and I wondered, hey I wonder if I melee that will it.... and yeah, it split into 4 under my fist and crumbled to the floor. It just goes to show the little things, the attention to detail Eurocom have put in here.

Also the AI is pretty darn smart, as I advanced forward the guy in front of me did a little backwards hop, over the cover point and took up a new position.

This is not just a great Wii FPS. This is a great FPS, full stop. Loving it so far, apart from the club level. It has exceeded my expectations. Oh and headshots work perfectly and so do the controls once you've tweaked them. Ignore any grumbling you see in reviews, that's just the reviewer's folly.

The actual gameplay, if you ignore the level design and visuals, the actual gameplay outdoes COD, the balance between AI and health and weapons and stealth, it all just works and feels satisfying.

Ravenprose said:

gamingeek said:

Mother of..... gah why are so many reviewers using the Classic controller to review Goldeneye?

Because it's the best control method for that game.

No you!

I got the game and can't get the controls to feel right, help me gg? My main issue is the difference in the camera speed between the deadzone area and when you actually start turning. If I set camera speed too low then turning is too slow, but set too high it messes up my aiming-during-turning. In other games I can more smoothly both turn and aim where I want at the same time, and the more to the side I look the faster I turn so I can do quick turns. Basically, it goes smoothly from no turning in the center, to fast turning all the way to the edges of the screen (or outside them) while this game seems to have a set turning speed that mostly kicks in outside the dead zone and remains at that set speed no matter how much more you turn the remote, as if you've just tilted the analog stick to the max and keep it there, pushing the screen instead of looking around yourself...

I also don't like the difference in turning/aiming speed between normal and iron sight mode. It makes sense to have sniper rifles slower and it feels good and intense, but with other weapons even if I set the same speed and deadzone for both cursor and ADS mode, there's still a big difference they shouldn't have. I end up only using iron sights for certain stealth kills and otherwise just shoot from the hip in gunfights with much higher success rate. Then I only use iron sights again when there are just a couple enemies left and they're behind cover, or if I want to shoot a specific object. I suppose this could be the intention, it makes some sense.

The options I changed are the dead zone to make it smaller, the turning horizontal and vertical speeds to be higher, the cursor speed to be higher, I turned off the ADS snap on enemies and auto aim, I turned off auto recenter, and there's another option which seems to have a big effect in how turning feels, it says it twists the view to where your crosshair is, I've experimented with it on and off and can't get it right regardless though. Also, the cursor movement isn't as smooth and effortless as it is in Prime 3/Red Steel 2 regardless of the sensitivity setting. It's a shame that FPS-wise, only Retro Studios seem to handle the cursor perfectly (RS2 probably has it because Nintendo sent Retro Studios people to help Ubisoft out with the controls if I remember this right).

Basically it feels like they made the controls to feel weighty and realistic with the classic controller and then didn't tweak them to match the pointing controls... If I'm pointing I want to point as fast as I can, not have some weight factor coded in, that feels like lag. It's similar for sniping, it doesn't need to sway up and down, if I'm doing the pointing myself it should only sway if I do, although that's a smaller issue. I like the analog leaning though, I never leaned when I played through Reflex cos it just felt wrong, but here it feels right. I'd use it much more if I could get the controls to feel better for me, since you can only lean with the iron sights up...

But everything else you've said I agree with so far (except the club, I'm not there yet) the stealth and action feels sweet and brings me memories of playing Raven Shield's lone wolf mode and equipping myself with just a sniper rifle and silenced pistol and setting up missions where I need to clear areas from like 30 terrorists. Although this game doesn't go for realism, obviously. I hope that after you finish the game you can play any mission with any weapons you want. The sniper rifle was great but had limited use, having very little ammo and just there for a specific section. I guess otherwise stealth would be too easy and that's why they will only have it for certain areas. And the enemy AI is fun to fight,  the way levels are set up with points of cover that both you and they use as they see fit and how they try to flank you it makes everything more dynamic than the average FPS, not the same every time, it reminds me of F.E.A.R. in that aspect. Games like HL2 don't have that so are boring to replay.