John Walter is a classic secret agent. Armed with a pistol and a tuxedo, he infiltrates an evil villain’s castle, a snowy mountain base, he mows down cronies, hacks terminals, and wears disguises. He’s the platonic ideal of a ‘90s spy, before Tom Cruise and Daniel Craig decided that the future of the genre was gritty action rather than camp set pieces. The only difference between Walter and Pierce Brosnan, however, is that his face looks like it was designed on a computer that uses turnips instead of RAM.
This isn’t a cost-saving measure, although you’d forgive developer Replicant D6 if it was. Agent 64 is designed to emulate the spy thrillers we played in the 1990s: Nintendo 64 titles like Perfect Dark, Turok, and Goldeneye. Beautiful, beloved Goldeneye. Having wasted countless evenings playing the iconic James Bond first-person shooter in the basement living room of my shared university house, I was eager to jump back to a simpler time with a retro-styled FPS designed for modern players. Simple graphics, simple mechanics, simple life.
I was slightly worried that my Q-branch-issued rose-tinted x-ray glasses would be corrupted by a reminder of what those ‘90s shooters were really like, but I needn’t have worried. Agent64 brings the retro spy thriller into the modern era with just enough quality of life improvements to placate your modern sensibilities, while holding true to the friction of the original games of this era.
Agent 64 looks great. Not Black Ops 7 great, with hyperrealistic nasal hair and rifles based on actual military kit, but stylish like a classic Aston Martin as photographed by a flip phone. Protagonist John Walter is rendered in approximately three polygons, but somehow still oozes enough style to make Connery jealous. His nemesis, and the villain of this shlocky story, Dominic Pulp, dons a criminally gorgeous velvet jacket, somehow pristine despite the constant firefights and low-tech rendering. The environments hit me right in the nostalgia glands, but rough textures and sharp edges are worthless if the gameplay isn’t crafted to match.
There’s a fine balancing act in faithfully recreating shooters of yore while making things more palatable for a modern audience. While I cherish my memories of Goldeneye, there’s a reason I don’t pull out my Nintendo 64 to replay the campaign and instead jump into a fast-paced Apex Legends match. Sure, the setup is complex and I can’t play online, but the shooting can be bland and the controls are clunkier than a Roger Moore pun.
Agent 64 fixes one of these issues immediately: movement feels good. It’s no Titanfall, but it’s not trying to be; this is a subtle evolution of ‘90s FPS controls. There are no frills, no new mechanics, but it feels better while maintaining the limited movement options at your disposal. This is in no small part thanks to the range of sliders and settings you can tweak to your liking – I tuned my mouse sensitivity down and started blasting, only stopping when I realised I’d reached the early hours of the morning and needed to get some sleep.
It’s a little-known fact that spies in the ‘90s didn’t have knees – that’s the only reason I can think that Agent 64 didn’t add jump or crouch options. While evil guards can hide behind cover and roll out of the way of your shots, none of these options are available to the player. This is the trade-off that comes with complete faithfulness to the games of a bygone era: modern players feel constrained when other games let them move freely and realistically. I understand the commitment to replicating the ‘90s experience, but it would have been nice to see Agent 64 modernise a little more in this area – or at least add the option to enable some modern movement options.
Shooting, too, is practically identical to those games that came before. Aiming down the sights brings up that same targeting reticule I first encountered in Goldeneye, and the act of shooting feels just like 20th century interpretations. That is, to say, largely underwhelming. Whether you’re firing a pistol, a sniper rifle, or a Kalashnikov, every weapon in Agent 64 feels the same. The effects are distinct, but there’s no discernible recoil patterns, no weight or tactile feedback, they don’t perceptibly impact your movement. Again, this successfully apes ‘90s shooters, but some subtle adjustments would have made Agent 64 stand out as iterating on what has come before rather than simply copying Perfect Dark’s homework and coming up short.
The one exception here is the missile launcher used in a brilliant shootout with a helicopter; it’s a classic showdown that felt just like a ‘90s boss battle – except with more weight and power behind every blast.
One area I am glad has been kept identical, however, is the level design. In both the campaign and multiplayer maps, the levels are every bit as convoluted and abstruse as you remember. My particular favourite in this regard is Pulp’s castle home, which is an appropriate maze of stone corridors and steel barracks. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to the layout, certain paths are blocked off for no real reason, and you traipse through the entirety of the basement just to end up back where you started.
But then you play again. Maybe on a higher difficulty, maybe to beat your best time, maybe to unlock the collectables hidden within the villainous keep. Slowly, you come to remember the optimal routes through the courtyard or along the crenelated walls. You work out how to sneak up on a particularly annoying henchman and the best pieces of cover to stand awkwardly behind.
Whether you’re infiltrating a mountaintop base or performing reconnaissance in an art gallery, each map is tailored to the mission at hand and a joy to explore. There’s no minimap to hold your hand, these are buildings that require you to engage your brain and think.
When you move to online matches and multiplayer, maps feel balanced, distinct, and brutally ‘90s. Cover is sparse, weapons are overtuned, and deathmatches are bastions of nostalgic fun.
Replicant D6 has crammed this game full of, for want of a better word, content. The campaign can be played on three difficulty settings and then again in ‘Paradox Mode’ with all manner of old-school cheats enabled. There are also challenge missions and an arena mode, all of which are available solo or co-op. And that’s before you go online.
PvP matches feel just like the good old days. There are four different modes to choose from: classic Deathmatch; a reimagining of capture the flag called Briefcase; Zone, which involves conquering territory; and Challenges which tear up all the rules to create truly unique scenarios.
You’re able to tweak each of these to your tastes. 8 players armed only with missile launchers? Simple. Giant heads and pistols? No problem. Arguably the best QoL feature here is the ability to save ten presets so you can quickly jump back into a custom mode that proved especially fun, but the multiplayer offerings in Agent 64 are great.
Most of my gameplay qualms fade away online. You don’t care about crouching or running when nobody else can do it either. It doesn’t matter that the weapons feel too similar to each other when you’re respawning every 30 seconds after another frantic firefight.
However, those details remain overlooked. Why are your mission objectives hidden away in a menu rather than stated to you directly in the campaign? Why do you have to go into your bag to select gadgets despite your guns having numbered hotkeys? Enemy AI doesn’t seem to get any more advanced with higher difficulties, their bullets just do more damage and your aim assist is decreased. These are moments of friction that take you out of the game, rather than enhance it.
These details detract from the otherwise enjoyable experience of Agent 64. My main concern, however, is that while Agent 64 is a fun rerun of your favourite Pierce Brosnan movie, it offers little else. It’s a shotgun blast from the past, but it hasn’t reloaded since 1997. I can’t help but compare it to modern horror games that use PS2-era graphics and controls to spook their players. The likes of Mouthwashing, Crow Country, and Iron Lung tell modern stories, add new mechanics, and enhance the retro experience in interesting ways. Most importantly, they use those classic stylings to subvert expectations. Agent 64 neither adds to nor subverts to the classic formula.
