Lacking a good single player mode, it makes up the difference with a fun multiplayer mode that was great in its time.
Playing Goldeneye almost immediately turns you off from TWINE. A vast supply of weaponry, double-wielding guns (which seems to be so special that there was a huge deal over how next-generation title Halo 2 was going to include it - fancy that, huh?) huge, engaging levels and an interesting enough story to keep holding down on that trigger. It was unbeatable, unheard of. Goldeneye almost instantly became king. One, after playing, would generally expect a one-up in a pseudo-sequel such as TWINE, and you can’t really blame them. But if that’s what you come in expecting TWINE to deliver, you will be so sorely disappointed that you’d wish you never even picked up the game. And I really couldn’t blame you.
TWINE is a first person shooter where you get to control the legendary James Bond on one of his great assignments as portrayed on the big screen (though unfortunately the movie variant of TWINE isn’t much of a masterpiece all on it’s own). Moving about in environments that try to (and often successfully) match the size of those in Goldeneye’s delivering objects of sorts or picking up objects of sorts is not fun. Not only that, but sneaking around mansions trying to remain undetected in the first person view is horrific. Two fatal flaws in what Goldeneye nearly made a flawless genre. One thing TWINE shares in common with Goldeneye it’s the back and forth collecting of objects useless to you as the player but integral to the only-somewhat-interesting story that you forget about almost immediately after putting the game down. I do not doubt for a minute that the James Bond fans will be disappointed - unless, of course, there are plot holes in the game’s story that contradicts the movie it’s based off of or something similar. I myself wouldn’t notice, as the story isn’t anywhere near RPG quality. No, you don’t expect something like that when you play a first person shooter - in one of those, you expect a lot of shooting and minimal talking. TWINE doesn’t quite understand that concept fully, and as a result constantly interrupts the action with something new to help progress the story (i.e.: make your life miserable).
TWINE isn’t very many missions long - count about 15, give or take - and when have of that is picking up and delivering your bound to be turned off by the game. Goldeneye had the exact same problem. However, unlike in TWINE, Goldeneye managed to keep it far back enough for it to only mark about 25% of the over all game - a huge improvement over TWINE’s roughly 50%, which actually means what’s happening is the game has taken a step down. Goldeneye also made sure that the job of delivering and picking up was not an easy job - should such a need arise, you’d be sure to have at least a few enemies at your tail trying to blow your head off. In some instances, TWINE actually asks you to avoid contact with the enemy, which is basically asking you not to play the game as it was designed to be played. First person stealth is no fun at all and terribly confusing - however that I’ll get into later.
When the other 50% of TWINE kicks in, you’re shooting at many enemies on screen at a time (that would mean about a maximum of five at a time for the N64). The actual mechanics of shooting have changed drastically since Goldeneye, and that’s a given - this isn’t the same development team. If you’re so pumped up on Goldeneye that you can’t have it any other way unless it’s better, you will be immediately turned off by TWINE. TWINE offers stiffer shooting than Goldeneye - the analog aiming is not nearly as forgiving as it’s predecessor and the response time is longer. Not much longer at all, mind you, but long enough that you’d realize an obvious difference between the two games. Normal for N64, but with Goldeneye exceeding that and being released some odd years earlier, it’s natural to expect better.
The guns are another difference, and a definite step down from Goldeneye’s massive arsenal. You get a number of interesting guns, such as the PPK pistol and a sub-machine gun of sorts. However, among the various weapon variations (pistol, machine gun, sniper, etc) you only get a couple of guns per type. Also, as previously mentioned the game lacks what should’ve become a natural in first person shooters - dual wielding. The lack of the option to combine weapons with each other and with such a short list in comparison to Goldeneye, TWINE easily feels lacking in the weapons department. The gadgets are, thankfully, much better - Goldeneye had few to sport, if any should you not refer to the few oddball items in Goldeneye as gadgets (laser watch, for example). TWINE packs a fare bundle, with different ‘powers’ for your watch, including a neat and very handy grapple ability that targets pre-set points on a level and allows you to be pulled up to that area with the power of the grapple string which you yourself would eject. Yet, that’s another fault - you can only target pre-set points. No, it’s not the gadget’s fault, so you can’t hate on the handy gizmo - rather, it’s the level design’s.
The various levels in TWINE are rather different from each other. They are about the same size as Goldeneye’s, if in a few instances larger. They generally offer up the same deal, however - collect this, shoot some guys, deliver it there, shoot some more guys, end level. This is the structure that makes up the majority of the game, with a few oddball levels thrown in between that either contain all shooting or all delivering. I’m sure you can guess which of the two is a major burden.
The levels that require you to receive and deliver items are probably the very worst of the bunch, even if you include Goldeneye’s levels in this counting as well. One such level leaves you in the dark and asks you to move around a mansion without being detected, collecting important information to progress the increasingly stupid story. This is also an example of a terrible stealth level I touched upon before, saying I’d get back to. Because you can’t shoot, all action resides in moving to a hiding place, waiting damn near 2 minutes and simply stunning an enemy so you can move by him and progress to the next area where you do the exact same thing. Occasionally you’ll come across an area where you collect something - it’s still the same deal. Find a hiding place, wait a while, stun the enemy, collect that data. If this sounds like a good bit of Splinter Cell fun, then you are terribly mistaken, and there are a few faults very much worth noting. The first one is the easiest to point out - the game is in first person, entirely. Stealth play in first person is about as effective as a sports game in first person. It simply doesn’t work. You don’t have the advantage of being able to see your entire surrounding while waiting - instead, you’re stuck to James Bond’s view, and as such often have little idea of when it’s safe to pop out of your hiding place, which is what makes the wait so damn long in the first place. For second, the enemies vary from ridiculously dumb to ridiculously genius. You can just run by some of them if your feeling gutsy, and maybe pass if they’re off the dumb type. Or, pop out when hiding and the enemy will notice you immediately, and begin shooting, blowing your cover. They vary, depending on your position, the area of the level and how close you are to them. That still doesn’t explain why I can breeze past guys sometimes when I’m closer to them than I had been when getting detected by another earlier on.
Thankfully few missions require that type of gameplay 100% of the way through, with the majority narrowing it down to 50. The other fault of the levels is the very design of them. While the levels may remain fairly faithful to the counterpart areas in the movie, it unfortunately doesn’t always make for fun gameplay. Some environments can easily confuse you, and not with their size, but rather with house much crap the areas are filled with. The environments are also rather dull, though that’s more of a graphics issue that a level design one. Another major fault is that the levels have been designed to help baby you through the game at key points - for example, the areas that are able to be grappled by your grapple watch gizmo are narrowed down to the exact areas where you need to use the tool to progress in the level. Extremely unrealistic and just plain stupid - if they frequented such a handy thing and scattered it much more freely among a level, they could easily provide multiple paths for completing a level and offer alternatives to the player to make the game feel much more open-ended. This is a lost thought, though, which is terribly unfortunate.
Difficulty is another issue which varies wildly among the levels. One level will be so easy you’d wonder what the developers were thinking when they made it. The very next could be so hard that’d you’d be unprepared for it entirely and would want to turn the game off right then and possibly even find a guide. Of course, none of the levels actually require guides, but you’ll certainly think so as the difficulty bounces from easy to hard frequently like a caged monkey desperate to get out. There is also the killer final level, which will feel impossible until you memorize the area you’re navigating. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will tell it gives you much different gameplay than what you’d seen before and takes things a step way too far by making every room look exactly the same, making it so hard to navigate that you may chuck your controller to the ground on multiple occasions. When you memorize the area and actually figure it out, it becomes a breeze, but also boring. The same applies to a number of other levels, though not nearly to this extreme.
The single player, clearly, is not TWINE’s area of interest. It doesn’t stack up to Goldeneye’s standards and can be very annoying in many places. Which is why if you’ve played Goldeneye before, you will definitely be turned off by this game. Granted, the game’s single player mode is passable - the shooting, while not perfect, is done well enough to at least make it somewhat fun, though still not comparable to Goldeneye. Precisely why if you want to enjoy the game you absolutely must not compare it to Goldeneye. Now, multiplayer for this game - another story entirely.
Entering the multiplayer mode, know that you can play it solo - there are AI bots that range from pathetic to godly much like in the single player game, though this time you have more control over their intelligence. Also know that multiplayer gets rather dull when playing solo, and quickly. It’s like playing a much, much slower version of Quake 3: Revolution or Unreal Tournament (both on PS2, Unreal also on PC with a possibility of Quake 3: Revolution). You’re just running and gunning trying to kill the other enemy, capture their flag, etc. Over and over, to artificial intelligence. Not much fun after a while, and if you’re solo while playing through this game, I can’t advise you to even try this game. However, if you have friends, that’s thankfully another story entirely.
Multiplayer with other human beings is fun in any passable game - often it’s the game’s saving grace. Such is the case with TWINE - shooting your friends is easily a very fun activity in the virtual world. While TWINE may not have the sharpest shooting mechanics of the bunch, it still delivers enough to be playable and enjoyable. Plus, you won’t really notice the mechanics anyway in a heated Deathmatch.
There are many different mode of play in multiplayer, starting with the standard Deathmatch mode. Deathmatch simply pits you and your friends against each other in one of the levels and asks you to try and get the most kills (which you can set). A simply, easy, fun mode for a casual moment where you just want to have a bit of fun while waiting for something, for example. Team Deathmatch is Deathmatch with set teams, which is more complicated than Deathmatch and quite a bit funner. You can actually use strategy in Team Deathmatch, picking out places to set your partner as sniper and you gunning it on foot while he watches your back and picks of guys not close to you. You can move about side-by-side like a two man gang covering each other’s backs and shooting the enemy together to drain the health twice as quickly. Team Deathmatch opens up the side of TWINE that is impossible to see in it’s single player mode.
Other modes offer just as much, if not more ways to use strategy as your friend. Capture the Flag can offer up the same ideas as Team Deathmatch, and then some (like setting one guy to protect your flag while the other goes to try and capture the enemy’s). Different customization options offer a good amount of settings to adjust to make your multiplayer match that much better. Carpet for the game room of choice ensures that the controller won’t break as you friend slams it to the ground after you pick him off for the fifth time.
To pick TWINE over most any modern shooter would be just plain stupid, as shooters have grown as the years have passed and have gotten better. To pick TWINE up on the cheap for some great multiplayer fun without expecting Goldeneye and without expecting Halo (though I’d like to think that last one’s a given), and it’s easy to tell you to get it. TWINE is solid multiplayer fun that has been done better on the current generation of consoles, and even with an older game (I’m sure by now you can guess specifically which one I’m talking about). The single player game isn’t particularly thrilling, but the multiplayer is solid enough to be worth that change in your pocket. If you come across this on the cheap next time you’re at your local EB, think about picking it up with whatever else you’re there for.