The long-awaited reissue of Rare’s classic 1997 James Bond shooter, GoldenEye 007, is finally here and available on Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles. Carefully consider which version you play, as each offers its unique features. As announced earlier this week, only GoldenEye on Switch has online multiplayer. The Xbox version, however, has the exclusive advantage of modern first-person shooter controls.
The Switch version of GoldenEye is a purist approach, not supporting any inputs that didn’t exist on the original Nintendo 64 controller. As such, fire can only be assigned to the left trigger or the A button. The N64 controller also had only one analog stick, but the four yellow C buttons from the secondary D-pad are mapped to the Switch’s right stick. Unfortunately, no modern twin-stick first-person control setup is available, nor is there a custom control option.
The Xbox version, however, adds two new control options to the original game’s eight. ‘Diamond’ is a classic modern FPS setup, with the move and look operating as normal on the sticks and fire on the right trigger. The other is a fully customizable control map, which is great for accessibility.
The Switch version has the exclusive advantage of online multiplayer, which works via the Switch Online lobby interface. Create a room with some friends and jump in and play together as if playing locally. There’s no matchmaking with randoms available, but it’s still a huge bonus. Additionally, cheat codes can be unlocked in the Switch version, while they must be unlocked the hard way through gameplay on the Xbox version. The Xbox version also has 55 new achievements to go for.
GoldenEye is included in the Nintendo 64 collection that forms part of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription on Switch and in an Xbox Game Pass subscription or as a free update to the Rare Replay collection on Xbox.
So: modern controls and achievements, or online multiplayer and cheat codes? In an ideal world, we’d have them all in a single version, but we don’t. The choice is yours.
