Trigger Happy

a satellite; rescue Natalya from a speeding train; and so on. Such sections of the plot generally happen at the end of a mission, and they happen to the player. The game does not let the player change the plot: for instance, to the dismay and fury of many addicts, you cannot decide that vulnerable, annoying Natalya has outlived her usefulness and shoot her in order to make a quick getaway. The game signals failure and forces you to play the mission again. Such plot nuggets, therefore, mean little more in the videogame context than excuses for the action of the next mission to move elsewhere.

But Goldeneye’s strength is that it manages to cut and paste all its filmic influences—the faces of actors Sean Bean, Robbie Coltrane and so on are digitized and mapped onto the in-game characters—onto a mode of action that is pure videogame, with the accent heavily on stealthy shooting, and nothing in the way of sipping Martinis or seducing Russian women. Particularly successful is the way in which locations from the film, such as the main satellite control room, have been not just represented but fully recreated in three dimensions in the game. This fully investigable architecture is what the videogame can uniquely offer. When watching a movie, you cannot go and look

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Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual