What a truly fun game. I've never played Rare's OG masterpiece Golden Eye from N64, never even been a fan of the 007 film series and I'm sure I haven't seen Golden Eye since the 90s, but this game really brought back memories of the hype that surrounded this movie.

The story seems very familiar, so I guess it mostly stays true to the film. The game's pretty short - about 4 hours on normal, which seems just right for a blockbuster of video game. GoldenEye Reloaded can be played as a straight up shooter, but there's also space for stealthy approach, which must be helpful if you're playing on the hardest difficulty. Difficulty is deceivingly lower in the early sections, but the game gets really tough in the end. To be honest, I have no idea how you're supposed to finish the last few sections in the last chapter on '007 classic' difficulty with health regen disabled.

There are also arcade-style score attack challenges with the campaign missions involved (whatever) and some kind of a multiplayer (dead). However, unless you're going to replay GoldenEye Reloaded on the hardest difficulty, 4 hours of fun and engaging campaign is what this game is. Actually, before I reached the last chapter I had been so excited, I had been planning on replaying this game on '007 classic', but not anymore as I expect it to be unpleasantly hard closer to the end.

P.S. A bit of a fun fact. Only with the opening credits I have realized that the famous Golden Eye title song sung by Tina Turner is written by Bono and Edge from U2. Btw, this game uses a cover version with someone else's vocals.

P.P.S. And one more thing. A few of the game's chapters take place in my home city of Saint-Petersburg, which, to my knowledge, has not been used all that much as a setting in video games (Project Gotham Racing 3 is the only other one I can think of, but I haven't played it). I was a bit disappointed to see that the in-game outdoor locations have nothing in common with the real-life city as they're all fictional. Oh well.