Every time some crazed bastard says that Halo is the best first person shooter of all time, the collective soul of the nation is corrupted a little bit more. Let us state this clearly: Halo is no match for Goldeneye, which is the best shoot-em-up game of all time, and has never been bettered. Reports suggest that even before Goldeneye was created, it was in fact already the best FPS around, as the doddery Quake was the only thing which could come close to rivalling it. And as we all know, Quake has only one good thing, and that’s the railgun. Goldeneye doesn’t have said weapon, but it makes up for that with bucketloads of awesome. Here are five of the most obvious reasons why Halo doesn’t even come close to beating Goldeneye.
1: No aliens.
In Halo you have to shoot at aliens and stuff with big tentacles with stupid names, meaning that in any conversation about Halo, you have to make some mention to “killing the Flood aliens”. It’s just not as cool as saying “yeah, so I snuck round the back of the building and shot the guy in the back of his freakin’ head with a silencer.” The main thrill of FPS games is that you get to shoot people, because this is somewhat frowned upon in the real world. The chance to get rid of stress by shooting a whole bunch of evil guards in stupid green hats? Who could resist such fun. Goldeneye has no aliens in it at all, which is also what distinguishes it from the otherwise slightly superior Perfect Dark. You can shoot someone in the leg and they start limping! Shoot an alien in the tentacle, and… who cares?
2: Exploding tables
In tribute to the Bond series, just about everything explodes in Goldeneye. Take your rifle into a room of crates and start shooting, you’ll create an explosive chain reaction that blows up the whole room. Likewise filing cabinets explode, for whatever reason, when you shoot them. Don’t get that in Halo, do you? Best of all were the exploding tables and chairs – boy, them Russians really do live a different life to us, don’t they? In what context would inventing a table that explodes when you shoot it seem like a good idea, Russia? Those guys be crazy.
3: Knee sliding
Ducking to avoid gunfire is a standard convention in shooting games, but Goldeneye went around things differently. Instead of having the characters bend over and crouch, they would instead get onto their knees and start sliding around magically, unencumbered by friction or gravity. This was video game gold, right here, a glitch that became a legend. I still don’t know why other games don’t have knee sliding, or why it has yet to be recognised as an official sport, because it looks brilliant. The best thing is to get down on your knees and start spinning round, shooting wildly in all directions. This manoeuvre is called “The Jerd”. But, uh, only by me.
4: The RC-P90.
The greatest gun in the history of video games, ever. And nobody can quite say what it is that makes the thing so god-damn-awesome-awesome. Perhaps it’s the way it can shoot 90 bullets in each magazine without reloading, or perhaps the zipping noise it makes as it unloads said bullets, or the way it tears through each guard you hit. Then, it could be the way that when you describe the RC-P90, you sound like a total badass. There are very few guns you can drop into a conversation and not be ridiculed as the uber-nerd to end all uber-nerds (and there’s strong competition for such a title), but the RC-P90 is one of them. It doesn’t even shoot explosives, but it’s still way better than anything that Halo could offer. So good in fact, that it returned in Perfect Dark under a different name – and it was STILL the best gun there (and that game had a rocket launcher where you could control the missile after you fired it!)
5: James Bond
How can we put this lightly? …. YOU ARE JAMES BOND IN GOLDENEYE. More specifically, you are Pierce Brosnan, in a game based on one of the very best Bond films ever made. You get to jump off the dam in Russia, drop down into the toilets and shoot guards on the crapper, and meet Robbie Coltrane and Sean Bean! In a manner of speaking. Bond travels the world, from jungles to underground caverns in Cuba, the streets of Russia… Siberia (not the best thing, admittedly), gets with girls, and cracks off witty one-liners at random. And during this whole thing, you control him! And then let’s compare this to Halo. In Halo, you play… wait, I forgot who you play. Nobody cares anyway, it’s a random guy in a suit of armour. Compared to Bond – doesn’t stand up. Bond is Boss.
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