Agent 64: Spies Never Die

Very fun game. Highly recommended if you are tired of modern slop.

I played an early access beta of this game about a year or so ago and was concerned with it's state at that time. I took a chance on buying the game and found it to be vastly improved since that early demo. This game does a really good job at providing a Goldeneye/Perfect Dark experience. I definitely recommend this game.

TLDR: fun love letter to old school games, but has some frustrating gameplay choices (Cyphers) and lacks many quality of life features I was hoping for. Only get if its on sale. Agent 64: Spies Never Die is of course a love letter to games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the former of which I played much of growing up. When I came across this game some time ago, I was very excited to see this style of game making a return. Now I've played through the game; 100%'d all the challenges, par times, achievements, and tried some of the multiplayer. The graphical style makes it feel like this game was pulled straight from the 90s, especially with the optional CRT Visuals in the options menu (which was a neat touch!). The weapons are fun to use, though some very much stand out more than others (the SMG feels horrible, even worse than the starting pistol, while the AR is the best gun in the game) The story was serviceable, if not a bit predictable, but I don't think that's why anyone is going to play this game. I enjoyed the difficulty changing the routes in a mission (in some instances) and funneling you into new or less traveled spaces, not to mention the added objectives doing the same (like its predecessors). The difficulty felt a bit inconsistent. The hardest level for me to par time was the third mission, quite early into the game. That is, until you learn a trick with explosives that makes finishing the level within the time limit much more manageable. That said, that was the only level where I felt like I had to really think outside the box to find clever new solutions to finishing objectives. Otherwise, all the difficulties mostly felt the same, with harder difficulties only adding more checkboxes and enemies being more dangerous. Now, something most reviews have already mentioned: the Cypher system. I, like others, think it is a mistake to lock story progression behind needing to rerun missions on harder difficulties or doing additional challenges. The harder difficulties/challenges will reward you with cyphers, which you spend to unlock the next missions. Admittedly, I personally did not find this to be an issue, as I was 100%ing the game anyway, and was fully completing every level and its associated collectible/challenge before moving on to the next one. That said, it does mess with the flow of the already forgettable story. The Challenges against bots were, similar to the story missions, a bit inconsistent with their difficulty. One of the hardest challenges for me was a 1v6 or so deathmatch against bots on the castle map. It was only the second tier of difficulty, but having to get 50-60 kills in 2 and a half minutes or so, became VERY frustrating when the bots would run away or be on a different floor from you. That touches on another pain point i had with the challenges. Perhaps it is part of the intended "challenge", but the maps for these modes were FAR too large. On some maps, there were multiple floors and pathways that stretched on room after room, and you could go that whole time trying to chase down an enemy or even find an enemy to begin with. When Perfect Dark came out, it built on Goldeneye and added some notable new quality of life features. From my admittedly short time playing Perfect Dark, two things immediately stuck out to me: reload animations and enhanced blood effects. Not to mention a weapon wheel and voice acting. When I played this game, I was hoping for a further evolution from Perfect Dark - to keep the game in the same vein as those old classics, but add upon them. However, I was disappointed to learn that not only were these improvements not included, in some cases, other former features were removed entirely. For example: no blood whatsoever (which even Goldeneye had), no weapon wheel, no voice acting, no reload animations, and even no crouch function. I didn't need ALL of those things to be included, but for the game to have none of them made it feel like a step back from those nearly 30 year old games. It became infuriating to swap through your armory of weapons (especially in challenges) only to not find what you're looking for in time, or worse, accidently go past it. And yes, you could use your number keys to select specific weapons - but the weapons would change which number they are bound to as you picked up more of them, which made it hardly better than scrolling through. It's a decently fun game for exactly the audience who misses this type of FPS, but it's difficult to recommend at full price because nostalgia alone doesn't compensate for its missing QoL features and uneven design. With some more content added, and with some of these QoL features added/readded/expanded upon, I could see myself saying this game is worth the price. But as it stands now, I would say only get this game if it's on a decent sale.

Offsetting the review that Moist Ducks made

Really cool and fun retro indie project. Feels nice and has a lot of replayability. A mod tool to allow people to hand craft levels would be the cherry on top if ever added. looking forward to trying the multiplayer a little.

fun AF on steam deck

This game is amazing, but where is disarming?