
I had a Nintendo 64 and several games for it. But until today, I've never played GoldenEye 007. GoldenEye 007 and the many millions of people who have played it went on to become fans of other console first-person shooter (FPS) games—before GoldenEye 007 made the genre popular, first-person shooters were the domain of PC gamers. To this day, FPSs are among my least favourite game type. Maybe if I played GoldenEye 007 back then when I was much younger and more impressionable, my current life would be entirely different. Some call that the butterfly effect.
Anyway, the fact remains that I'm playing GoldenEye 007 for the first time not on the Nintendo 64, but on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack emulation that became available today. (It's also available on Xbox Series, though that version lacks online multiplayer for some reason.) I played exclusively on Agent difficulty, the lowest one. I mean, I hardly know what I'm doing. But I figured out the controls, which don't really feel good and I'm not sure what the right-stick (C buttons) really are used for. If I want to move, use the left stick. If I want to move my reticle, hold down the R button and move. Normal first-person shooters nowadays have dual-stick controls (which the right-stick doesn't provide), but on Agent difficulty, you don't need those. You can just use the automatic weapons the Soviets drop and pwn them.
My biggest issue was discovering that if I ever get stuck in a level, use the B button to interact with the environment. (This also reloads the gun you're holding.) This does things like open doors that seem sealed. Some doors are actually sealed but can be opened by doing other things, like interacting with computers or finding a key. ...Or shooting the padlock on a gate. That got me to the second level, Facility, which features this unexpectedly impressive song: