Agent 64: Spies Never Die Review

A lovingly crafted retro shooter that captures the spirit of GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, even when its dated mechanics, basic AI, and repetitive missions hold it back.

Of all the Nintendo 64 shooters, Rare's GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark have been held in higher esteem than almost any other for decades. These titles helped define a generation of console multiplayer, with split-screen matches becoming legendary as you spend hours battling your pals on a single screen. Agent 64: Spies Never Die is an ambitious attempt to bring back that sort of shooter, and it is a remarkable achievement for a lone developer in France working under the name Replicant D6.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a love letter to iconic low-poly shooters of the late 1990s, made by Replicant D6 in over five years. The outcome is a game that wears its influences on its sleeve. Every element of the experience, from the menus and spy shooter-inspired soundtrack to the blocky character models, weapon animations, level layouts, and old-school aiming mechanisms, is designed to make players feel like they’ve unearthed some lost N64 shooter.

That devotion to authenticity is the game’s greatest strength and one of its greatest faults.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die isn’t going for a new remake. Instead, it copies many of the uncomfortable mechanics that made those earlier shooters feel special. There’s modern dual-stick control, but you can also opt for an old-school control option that mimics the movement of classic N64 shooters. You can also toggle lock-on targeting on or off, giving you two quite different ways to play.

Even without childhood love for the N64, Agent 64: Spies Never Die does a surprisingly good job of making its retro style engaging. It doesn't just rip off the look of GoldenEye; it tries to mimic the entire ideology behind those games. The narrative follows John Walter, a former secret agent whose quiet life is unexpectedly shattered when enemies he thought were long gone return to harm him.

Walter gets caught up in a bigger scheme involving a shadowy group called the Corporation, and eventually learns their objectives and stops their world-changing plans. It’s very much an old-fashioned spy thriller by design. In many ways, John Walter is a winking stand-in for the classic secret-agent protagonist, and the game revels in the campiness that older Bond-inspired shooters were known for, without trying to make the story anything particularly serious or emotionally profound.

The campaign consists of 14 tasks across various acts. The story segments use static character models, close-up shots, and text dialog rather than standard voice acting. This really plays into the old feel, but it also limits how much personality the characters can show. They give the characters hard, polygonal faces and skip voice acting, putting the burden of delivering most of the story's drama on the script and presentation.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die unfortunately writes one of its weaker areas. The characters are mostly standard espionage thriller types. The story isn't especially deep in character or unforgettable emotion. References and quips suggest the developers understand the material they’re paying tribute to, but the story largely serves as a device to move players from one objective to the next.

This doesn't have to be a big concern. GoldenEye wasn't remembered for its storyline. The scenarios, weaponry, objectives, and multiplayer were the true draw. Agent 64 recognizes this, and the game's story is simple enough that it rarely impinges on the gameplay.

Agent 64’s gameplay involves traversing quite big areas, shooting enemies, fulfilling tasks, gathering equipment, hacking terminals, using key cards, destroying targets, and reaching the extraction site. 

In theory, this is easy, but when you throw things like difficulty and replayability into the mix, the game gets a lot more intriguing. The three main difficulty settings are Agent, Special Agent, and Agent 64: Spies Never Die. Greater difficulties don’t merely make foes stronger. They also add other objectives and push players to explore areas they might otherwise neglect.

This can include disabling alarms, destroying surveillance cameras, hacking terminals, fetching specific items, and more. A mission that just has you reach the end on an easier setting might have you do all these things at greater difficulty. This is one of the smarter parts of the campaign, giving gamers a reason to replay missions rather than merely raising enemy health. You study the layout, find out where the enemies are, try out the guns and equipment, and then return on a greater difficulty to do a harder version of the same task.

There are no standard health pickups scattered everywhere and no generous checkpoint system to save you constantly. Instead, there is a single health bar and body armor that provides extra protection, if you can find it. On higher levels, gear is even harder to come by; therefore, mistakes will cost you more. This setup guides you to learn each level. 

You can spend one try to determine the location of enemies and the mechanics of the objectives. Subsequent efforts can be more calculated runs, aiming to do everything effectively. It's a bit old-school in its design approach and won't be for everyone, but it works surprisingly well within Agent 64's retro setting. The game also supports local and online co-op. The game supports co-op with up to four people, which is likely where it shines most.

There are a couple of slower or tedious parts in the campaign that turn into crazy multiplayer encounters when playing with friends. That said, the sad problem of progression remains. You need to gain ciphers in single-player to unlock further missions and acts. You earn them by finishing missions on higher difficulties and finding hidden masks across levels.

This means that if you merely want to blast through the story on the lowest difficulty setting, you may find yourself redoing missions before you are allowed to move on.

Co-op does it differently, letting players progress through the campaign with less repetition.

Unfortunately, co-op progression doesn’t entirely cross over into single-player, which means players who want to get full campaign progression can find themselves having to play through large chunks of the game again. Combat is deliberately old-fashioned. There’s no sprinting, no crouching, meaning players are forced to rely on mobility, location, corners, pillars, and other things in the area while taking shelter.

The pace of movement is brisk, though those used to modern shooters may find the system restrictive at first. Agent 64: Spies Never Die's aiming system might be its most polarizing feature. Lock-on targeting can make it much easier to deal with nearby adversaries, especially when you’re fighting multiple targets at once. But it gets a little awkward at longer distances.

Turning lock-on off gives a more old-school aiming style, but it demands a little more precision, since there's less assistance. And the game doesn't even show a regular crosshair all the time. It reinforces the idea that you're playing something from the N64 era. You can also hold down the right button to manually aim with increased precision, which makes it easier to hit headshots and some environmental objects.

Weapons feel good and punchy in general, and enemies react satisfyingly. Obviously, shotguns and machine guns are different, but sniper weapons can be very powerful when used by players who learn the targeting method. However, several of the automatic guns don’t feel different enough from each other, so anyone expecting modern shooter-level weapon variety may be disappointed.

Another weak point is the enemy AI. On lower difficulties, enemies might be comically inaccurate, occasionally missing a player standing right next to them. They get more accurate and dangerous on greater difficulties, but that underlying intelligence isn't consistent. Enemies can swarm the player fast, making for stressful battles where the best tactic is to back up behind a doorway and pick them off.

Sometimes it seems like enemies aren't aware of what is going on, even though it should be obvious to them. 

Sometimes you have bodies fall right in front of other guards, and they won’t react in any meaningful way; other times, it seems like every enemy in the region gets warned. The mission design is varied enough to keep the game from getting utterly repetitive. Players can break out from a big apartment, sneak into a wintry military compound, enter an enemy castle, explore an art gallery, take out a helicopter with a rocket launcher, and infiltrate sites to eavesdrop on meetings.

Unfortunately, several of the levels are also fairly big and convoluted and feel more like multiplayer maps than properly targeted single-player missions. There are the occasional escort parts, too, which may be infuriating when AI buddies walk into enemy fire and die, forcing the player to restart. Some missions are equally under-explained, especially when players need to manually equip key cards or non-lethal gadgets.

Tutorial messages evaporate fast and can’t always be retrieved, which adds to the confusion. Agent 64: Spies Never Die doesn't have a classic RPG-style XP system, but its cipher advancement serves its goal quite well. Players gain the resources to unlock further campaign acts by replaying missions, increasing the difficulty, achieving extra objectives, and locating secret masks.

It’s both one of the game’s best replayability elements and one of its biggest pacing difficulties. In contrast, it helps players learn levels properly instead of rushing through them. But for those who just want to experience the story, the progression requirements could feel a little restrictive.

Contracts, Challenge Mode, Arena battles, and Paradox Modes push replayability past the story. Some contracts have the player searching for hidden faces or strange variants of past tasks. Some turn familiar stages into a competition of survival, where killing foes adds a timer, while others limit players to melee weapons or impose other odd rules.

These systems include more than 70 mods and cheats, plus amusing choices such as Big Head Mode and No Reload.

Players can unlock them by completing challenges or at certain times, giving veteran gamers more incentive to keep coming back. Arena mode will especially appeal to fans of classic multiplayer. Players can create custom matches with weapons, maps, match kinds, bot difficulty, and other rules. There are a few ways to play, like Deathmatch, Control, and Capture the Briefcase, though many are locked behind early challenges.

With that progression structure in place, gamers aren't going to be able to jump into the game and get access to every multiplayer feature right away. Potential gamers should know this before expecting a fully unlocked split-screen experience. Visually, Agent 64: Spies Never Die delivers practically everything it promises. The game seems like a lost N64 shooter that got a modern remaster for some reason. The character models are purposely blocky, the surroundings use minimal geometry, and the weaponry is low-poly.

At the same time, the presentation doesn’t really feel like a 1997 game. Textures are higher resolution, with modern lighting, fog effects, smoother frame rates, and cleaner image quality. All of these make the game substantially more comfortable to play on modern hardware.

The developers have made a great effort to ensure visual uniformity. Offices, castles, military bases, museums, penthouses, nightclubs, and other sites offer plenty of variety while still fitting the same retro aesthetic. The negative is that some locations are too big and vacant. Their twisting patterns can sometimes be tricky to navigate, especially in multiplayer battles when players can have a hard time finding each other.

The game's performance is generally good, running at about 60 FPS at the system's native 800p resolution. Bigger outdoor locations with more enemies and visual effects can cause occasional drops, but turning down a setting or two will help keep things running more smoothly. Considering the game's modest visuals, this isn't ideal, but it doesn’t substantially detract from the experience.

The auditory presentation follows the same principle as the visuals.

The soundtrack features iconic spy music and immediately establishes the game's Bond theme. The music suits the action; however, at several points of dramatic interest, more focus on the music would have been welcome. The sound effects are suitably antiquated, with weapons and movement, melee assaults, and environmental interactions all helping give the sensation you’re playing a lost N64 shooter.

The lack of vocal acting is more evident. It preserves the retro presentation but also makes the already plain plot feel even more distant. The characters don’t have much to work with in terms of expression, since faces are static and conversation is presented only in text.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die will not take the place of GoldenEye 007 or Perfect Dark in the memory of those who grew up playing those games and shouldn’t be judged primarily on how well it recreates them. Its biggest success is figuring out why previous games were so fun, then applying that idea to a modern indie production.

Gunplay is clunky by today's standards, artificial intelligence can be inconsistent, some missions feel too big, progression can compel unneeded repeating, and the story isn't that memorable. Still, none of these flaws entirely spoil the experience.

Agent 64: Spies Never Die works because of his personality. The low-poly visuals, traditional weapon handling, split-screen multiplayer, retro control options, lock-on aiming, varied objectives, challenge modes, and a massive collection of modifiers all combine to create something that feels passionate rather than cynical.