Agent 64: Spies Never Die Review (PC): Nostalgic Inspiration That’s Shaken, Not Stirred

As someone who grew up with the Nintendo 64, I always feel a sense of pride when I see a game that so obviously is paying homage to the console. Sure, it definitely had its issues, but as my first video game console, I will always look back on it with fondness for its game library.

One of the most famous titles on the N64 was GoldenEye 007 for making it clear that a first-person shooter could be fun on a video game console, despite being a nightmare to play today on that controller. GoldenEye became one of Rare’s golden games, and there’s a very good re-release on Xbox these days. If that isn’t something you want to pursue, though, Agent 64: Spies Never Die wears its inspiration on its sleeve, trying all it can to emulate that experience by adding in a few new things here and there. None of that makes Agent 64 better than its grandfather, but if you are looking for a shot of nostalgia, it’s a good enough time to hold your interest for a bit.

Beautifully Ugly

As is the case with all Nintendo 64 games, the art style that Agent 64: Spies Never Die is emulating is very ugly, and I love it for that. Every character is perfectly blocky, their face looks printed on, and their hands make Steve from Minecraft feel good about his blocky stubs.

For a game that is paying homage to GoldenEye, solo developer Replicant D6 did a brilliant job of making this game look like it could be played on the Nintendo 64. The guns also have the polygonal 90s look to them that makes it all come together.

While the looks are exactly what I was hoping for, the music never really captured me like Rare’s classic. It’s not bad, but I found it just faded into the background instead of being something I actively went out of my way to listen to and enjoy.

Controls That Never Die Another Day

Agent 64 utilizes a very similar control scheme to those in GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. You don’t need to have amazing accuracy in this game to succeed. As long as an enemy is somewhere near the center of your screen, your gun will slightly tilt toward them. Because of this, just about anyone can shoot up a room of enemies here, but beyond that is where this game really applies to people who played those original games.

In each mission, you have a set of objectives you need to complete before you can finish the level. In some cases, this is hacking the right terminals or taking a picture of something. These items are usually given to you at mission start and are held in a separate inventory from your guns. Jumping between guns and these mission items can cause headaches for someone not used to it. Luckily, I recently played both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, so I’m used to it, but I could easily see a newcomer getting very frustrated trying to figure out how to complete objectives or getting frustrated looking for the right object in a blocky environment. 

Nostalgic Headaches

While the inspirations for Agent 64 are classics, they’re not perfect games, and sometimes this game makes itself a worse experience to feel as close as possible to them. For example, the story can be quite dialogue-heavy in cutscenes, and there is no voice acting. As the scene plays out, you just have to read the dialogue and hope you can keep up with who is saying what.

Even when it tries something new, Agent 64 doesn’t necessarily pay off in a great way. For example, on one mission, I needed to find a guard disguise in a changing room before entering a base. I picked up the outfit, figuring it would automatically put me in it, but nope. When I went to the base, guards got called on me before I realized the outfit was an inventory item I had to manually put on so the guards would stop coming. Something as small as that should just be handled automatically but is purposely made manual because the older games might do something similar.

Something as small as playing missions repeatedly to get enough cyphers to unlock the next act is another annoyance I had. You can’t just breeze through the game on easy. It will force you to go back and play missions on tougher difficulties or find hidden masks in the levels to unlock a challenge mode that can be frustrating to deal with. The cyphers requirement is a great deal of annoying padding that will artificially prolong your game time if you try playing on a softer difficulty.

Final Verdict

Agent 64: Spies Never Die likely won’t win you over unless you have played and enjoyed the games that inspired it. Unless you really like GoldenEye 007 or Perfect Dark, I wouldn’t recommend you try it because the art style and gameplay will feel foreign compared to any first-person shooter you’ve played since 2000. That said, if you do enjoy the outdated jank of those games, you’ll get a not-as-good experience, but something you can play with friends and have a good enough time in. This game is banking on you having the nostalgia to enjoy this, and if you do, you’ll likely be content with it, but maybe not fall in love.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Replicant D6.

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