Designed to be very much like a slightly more modern version of the Nintendo 64's classic GoldenEye - this is well and truly nostalgia bait, a game that younger me would have no doubt gone absolutely nuts for.
Fans of Golden Eye will feel exactly at home. It even has a manual gun aiming system. On a Steam Controller, this is holding the Left Trigger where your view zooms in and you can pinpoint your gun aim around the screen. This makes it really feel like the classics, and a fair bit like an arcade game. A feature that you don’t use too much, except for little bits like shooting out some locks.
I do have to say, they absolutely hit the nail on the head for the retro experience. Something I’ve no doubt those who absolutely adored Golden Eye will love. The overall game look and feel is close to perfection really. It’s fast, it’s silly and quite fun to just run and gun through all the enemies while windows and crates get smashed to pieces. And occasionally on some levels defend something, like a partner hacking in so you face a little wave of enemies.
If you’re pining for simpler times and want some Nintendo 64 styled action - this is it.
Agent 64 has an interestingly styled difficulty system. It doesn’t exactly make the game any more difficult, but it adds in more objectives to do - which makes things interesting to try completing all of them for each level. Each mode on a level also gives you a certain amount of Cyphers, which you use to unlock more of the campaign. So you do have to eventually do them all.
You also get added challenges to beat levels in a Par time, which can give you unlockable modifiers for more runs through each level. This is part of the problem though - the game just doesn’t explain enough, even though there’s quite a few layers of it to tweak your runs with all the modifiers in the special Paradox Mode for each level.
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Really, you can just run and gun your way through it with a cheeky smile. Short and sweet too, as each mission is relatively short so the whole game can be finished in a day.
Agent 64 has solo play, split-screen and online multiplayer deathmatches too. A little something for everyone. This is more where the game shines, just like the old days, where you can mess about with others and do some stupid rules to make things interesting.
I had some good fun but would have liked the AI not to be so basic. Just a little extra challenge would have made it better. The enemies all mostly just stand still and shoot, with an occasional random roll to one side. Good for far less seasoned gamers and a younger audience perhaps. But there’s just no challenge at all to the campaign.
Thinking on it, really, it’s not even so much about the shooting being the point but about finding the little secrets, doing the challenges, and definitely playing with friends to have a laugh and just have a good old time.
It did the job of reminding me of simpler times and younger days, back when I actually had hair and grabbing a new game in a box from the store was exciting while I read the manual on the way home. I miss those days.
Overall, the nostalgia pulls you in and it’s quite charming but the game as a whole just wasn’t enough for me. It’s not bad just not especially interesting when there’s so many more (and far better) retro shooters.
This is one you essentially need to bring friends along for the ride for the multiplayer customization, once you've unlocked some of it that is, for the silliness which is where it does really shine.
My play-through was on the Steam Machine (SteamOS Linux), where it really runs to perfection with Proton.
- Survive over-the-top shootouts, steal secret plans, and free hostages as a solo elite operative or with a co-op squad of up to 4 fearless agents.
- Play through an action-packed, 14-mission Story Mode where chaos and covert ops collide across Skyscrapers, Snow Bases, and more exotic locales like Catacombs and Temples.
- Duke it out with friends in adrenaline-pumping local splitscreen multiplayer, or take the action online in customizable 8-player lobbies with 8 additional bots across various game modes.
- Unlock 70+ gameplay-altering modifications, including big heads, slow bullets, randomized weapons, and more, in Paradox Mode.
From the press release sent to GamingOnLinux: "Calling a game a love letter to the ‘90s sounds a bit cliché, but I think there’s no better way to describe Agent 64," said solo developer Replicant D6. "It’s a brand new experience for gamers who never played Rare’s N64 masterpieces, and instantly familiar territory for anyone raised on the classics, while modernizing a beloved formula."
One odd choice for a small title like this is also the inclusion of Easy Anti-Cheat which is worth mentioning.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I had putted it on my wish list and will wait to see how it progress.
linuxjacques 21 Aug 2026
Quoting: Savor592Saw it and it never really catched me. Basically a fan remake of a shooter which even back then was critiziaed due to being a rather subpar experience which only got famous because it was kinda the best you were able to get on a console while PC players were already used to way better shooters.That is not how I remember it. At that time I was playing both N64 and PC games. Goldeneye was slow, but you only cared about that if zipping trough a stage to finish it was what you considered fun. Or if you were a PC snob.
Goldeneye was a breakthrough on the FPS genre. Before it what you did on FPS games was shooting monsters while collecting cards to open doors, while jumping all over the place. But a console game from a developer that had never created a FPS before, did things differently. Forget jumping. Now you had to do more than collecting cards to open doors: you actually had a variety of objectives to do during the stages. On top of that your enemies were humans, with actual AI and multiple hitpoints. Shooting them on the foot, legs, crotch, ass, hands, arms and torso had different reactions. Enemies actually bleed and limped. And Rare invented headshots too. You can even drive a vehicle in one stage, another first.
The game was a smashing success with gamers and actually changed the FPS landscape forever. While Valve don't admit it, Goldeneye was the reason they postponed Half Life's launch, so it didn't looked so mediocre after what Rare had accomplished. They adopted a lot of the innovations (but not all) Rare had pioneered on their game.
Quoting: Savor592Saw it and it never really catched me. Basically a fan remake of a shooter which even back then was critiziaed due to being a rather subpar experience which only got famous because it was kinda the best you were able to get on a console while PC players were already used to way better shooters.What? Hell no. No, Goldeneye did not age as well as other FPS games of the era, but at the time Goldeneye was definitely not a "subpar experience" - it was exceptional. More than that, it was cool that it was relatively faithful to the movie, which is something you didn't see often in movie-to-game franchises at the time. The music was fantastic, the plethora of guns in the game were awesome, and anybody who's played 4-player split-screen deathmatch will probably tell you it was one of the peak moments of gaming in the 90s. If nobody's ever told you that, then I will - it was peak 90s gaming.
Quoting: M@GOidAnd Rare invented headshots too.Rare did an amazing job on Goldeneye, but I dunno about that. Surely someone else came up with that first? I can't name another example of it pre-Goldeneye, but there's no way... lol. Right?
Quoting: M@GOidThe game was a smashing success with gamers and actually changed the FPS landscape forever. While Valve don't admit it, Goldeneye was the reason they postponed Half Life's launch, so it didn't looked so mediocre after what Rare had accomplished. They adopted a lot of the innovations (but not all) Rare had pioneered on their game.Is that a fact? I've never heard that before. Half Life is pretty different, it had WASD and mouse-look controls by default, and it didn't have levels in the traditional sense like FPS games before it. Nothing about it makes me feel like they were at all inspired by Goldeneye, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
Quoting: M@GOidIt was praised in console magazines. Multiplatform or PC ones critizised it due to controls, auto-aim, graphicsand framerate.Quoting: Savor592Saw it and it never really catched me. Basically a fan remake of a shooter which even back then was critiziaed due to being a rather subpar experience which only got famous because it was kinda the best you were able to get on a console while PC players were already used to way better shooters.That is not how I remember it. At that time I was playing both N64 and PC games. Goldeneye was slow, but you only cared about that if zipping trough a stage to finish it was what you considered fun. Or if you were a PC snob.
Goldeneye was a breakthrough on the FPS genre. Before it what you did on FPS games was shooting monsters while collecting cards to open doors, while jumping all over the place. But a console game from a developer that had never created a FPS before, did things differently. Forget jumping. Now you had to do more than collecting cards to open doors: you actually had a variety of objectives to do during the stages. On top of that your enemies were humans, with actual AI and multiple hitpoints. Shooting them on the foot, legs, crotch, ass, hands, arms and torso had different reactions. Enemies actually bleed and limped. And Rare invented headshots too. You can even drive a vehicle in one stage, another first.
The game was a smashing success with gamers and actually changed the FPS landscape forever. While Valve don't admit it, Goldeneye was the reason they postponed Half Life's launch, so it didn't looked so mediocre after what Rare had accomplished. They adopted a lot of the innovations (but not all) Rare had pioneered on their game.
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Quoting: Slaxer- About headshots, as far as I'm aware, Goldeneye is the first FPS game with separated hitboxes on the enemies. In other games, didn't matter where you hit the enemy, on the foot, on the head, all did the same damage. I also think it created leaning left and right to peek around corners (but I can be mistaken about that).Quoting: Savor592Saw it and it never really catched me. Basically a fan remake of a shooter which even back then was critiziaed due to being a rather subpar experience which only got famous because it was kinda the best you were able to get on a console while PC players were already used to way better shooters.What? Hell no. No, Goldeneye did not age as well as other FPS games of the era, but at the time Goldeneye was definitely not a "subpar experience" - it was exceptional. More than that, it was cool that it was relatively faithful to the movie, which is something you didn't see often in movie-to-game franchises at the time. The music was fantastic, the plethora of guns in the game were awesome, and anybody who's played 4-player split-screen deathmatch will probably tell you it was one of the peak moments of gaming in the 90s. If nobody's ever told you that, then I will - it was peak 90s gaming.
Quoting: M@GOidAnd Rare invented headshots too.Rare did an amazing job on Goldeneye, but I dunno about that. Surely someone else came up with that first? I can't name another example of it pre-Goldeneye, but there's no way... lol. Right?
Quoting: M@GOidThe game was a smashing success with gamers and actually changed the FPS landscape forever. While Valve don't admit it, Goldeneye was the reason they postponed Half Life's launch, so it didn't looked so mediocre after what Rare had accomplished. They adopted a lot of the innovations (but not all) Rare had pioneered on their game.Is that a fact? I've never heard that before. Half Life is pretty different, it had WASD and mouse-look controls by default, and it didn't have levels in the traditional sense like FPS games before it. Nothing about it makes me feel like they were at all inspired by Goldeneye, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
- About Valve postponing HL launch because of Goldeneye, Valve never said it was (of course). But if you look at the dates, it is pretty clear to me they saw that Rare had raised the bar, and if Valve had launched HL as they originally intended, it would not have anything to distinguish among other PC games. 3 Things that come to my head were destructible hardware, enemy AI and had some objectives to do, instead of getting a card to open a door that was the norm on id games.
If you play Goldeneye and then play other games around the time it launched, it is pretty clear it was ahead of its time, especially against id games, which made technically advanced games (John Carmack got his reputation that way), but with very basic gameplay. To me 3D Realms were the ones trying to innovate a bit.
Last edited by M@GOid on 28 Aug 2026 at 2:56 pm UTC
Quoting: Savor592And I agree with all of that. It certainly wasn't a perfect game.Quoting: M@GOidIt was praised in console magazines. Multiplatform or PC ones critizised it due to controls, auto-aim, graphicsand framerate.Quoting: Savor592Saw it and it never really catched me. Basically a fan remake of a shooter which even back then was critiziaed due to being a rather subpar experience which only got famous because it was kinda the best you were able to get on a console while PC players were already used to way better shooters.That is not how I remember it. At that time I was playing both N64 and PC games. Goldeneye was slow, but you only cared about that if zipping trough a stage to finish it was what you considered fun. Or if you were a PC snob.
Goldeneye was a breakthrough on the FPS genre. Before it what you did on FPS games was shooting monsters while collecting cards to open doors, while jumping all over the place. But a console game from a developer that had never created a FPS before, did things differently. Forget jumping. Now you had to do more than collecting cards to open doors: you actually had a variety of objectives to do during the stages. On top of that your enemies were humans, with actual AI and multiple hitpoints. Shooting them on the foot, legs, crotch, ass, hands, arms and torso had different reactions. Enemies actually bleed and limped. And Rare invented headshots too. You can even drive a vehicle in one stage, another first.
The game was a smashing success with gamers and actually changed the FPS landscape forever. While Valve don't admit it, Goldeneye was the reason they postponed Half Life's launch, so it didn't looked so mediocre after what Rare had accomplished. They adopted a lot of the innovations (but not all) Rare had pioneered on their game.
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- The default controls were clunky, I preferred a scheme (1.2?) were the analog was aiming and the C buttons walk. Auto-aim was optional. It was a slow paced game, so you didn't get your ass kicked because of the controls. Someone who came from the PC had all the right to think the controls were inferior to a PC game. Still true to this day, isn't it?
- The graphics were good for a console game of the era. It is the blocky characters that negatively stand out. Today is the charm of the game. The frame rate was indeed bad, but again common for a console game of the era. Some of the stages, specially the first one, were bigger than anything on PC at that time. Another thing advanced was destructible scenery and objects, like windows, lights, CCTV cameras, vehicles, hardware in general, not common on PC games at the time.
Quoting: M@GOid- The graphics were good for a console game of the era. It is the blocky characters that negatively stand out. Today is the charm of the game. The frame rate was indeed bad, but again common for a console game of the era. Some of the stages, specially the first one, were bigger than anything on PC at that time. Another thing advanced was destructible scenery and objects, like windows, lights, CCTV cameras, vehicles, hardware in general, not common on PC games at the time.Goldeneye came out in 1997, while Duke Nukem and Quake both came out in 1996. Half-Life came out in 1998. Just to give frame of reference...
Caldathras 29 Aug 2026
I was aware of Goldeneye but I didn't much care for consoles (still don't, really). Half-Life wasn't even on my radar. I don't know why. I remember playing a little Unreal Tournament (1999) but I don't remember HL. Maybe it was because of Diablo...
Last edited by Caldathras on 29 Aug 2026 at 6:03 pm UTC
Quoting: CaldathrasIt seemed to be focused on multiplayer at the expense of the single player experience. I felt that id Software had dropped the ballThey certainly did. Fun fact, Quake 3 was supposed to have a single player campaign, but because the id Software guys were not getting along with each other by this time, they only got the multiplayer game made. Apparently making the single player campaign required more collaboration between all of them, so they opted to aim low and finish the part of the game that they could all work on without seeing each other in the office. Pretty sad really.
Quoting: CaldathrasAnybody remember Redneck Rampage and the original Shadow Warrior? They came out in 1997. Loads of fun.Yep, I remember Redneck Rampage and Shadow Warrior. I played played Redneck Rampage briefly, but never got into it. I did enjoy Shadow Warrior and Duke 3D though.
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