Hello, everyone! My name is FitterSpace, and this is my tool-assisted speedrun for Goldeneye: 007 for the Nintendo Wii. This game is a full-scale re-imagining of the N64 game, and includes no assets from the original game. It takes the classic Goldeneye story and updates it to the standards of a modern first-person shooter. It also features Daniel Craig rather than Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond in the film and the Nintendo 64 game. It also has many modern features such as the ability to sprint and aim down sights. The missions in this game are based on the ones from the classic Nintendo 64 version instead of the film. Some of the stages from the original game have been combined in this game (for example, Bunker on Wii is like Bunker+Silo on N64 and Cradle is like Control+Cradle on N64). But there are also some brand-new missions like Nightclub and Solar. Overall, this is a fantastic game and it also happens to be an awesome speedrun.
Mission Times
| Mission | In-game time |
|---|---|
| Dam | 8:54 |
| Facility | 8:23 |
| Airfield | 3:34 |
| Nightclub | 7:23 |
| Carrier | 6:02 |
| Outpost | 4:39 |
| Bunker | 9:03 |
| Archives | 8:45 |
| Tank | 4:03 |
| Station | 4:36 |
| Memorial | 6:54 |
| Jungle | 6:36 |
| Solar | 4:53 |
| Cradle | 10:41 |
| Total | 1:34:27 |
Note: This TAS aims for real time instead of in-game time. There are some spots in some levels where restarting from the previous checkpoint puts you further ahead, saving in-game time, but that loses real time.
Difficulty
This TAS plays on the hardest difficulty, 007 Classic. I chose this because I think it makes the TAS more entertaining. Like the original N64 game, the harder difficulties have more objectives than the easier difficulties. This makes the route much more interesting because the goal isn’t simply to sprint to the end of the mission. 007 Classic also removes regenerating health, so there is much more health management on this difficulty (except Tank, which is the only 007 classic level with regenerating health). Because a modern Call-of-Duty style FPS game with no health regeneration would be unfair, the developers added body armor that is only available on 007 classic, which the TAS makes great use of.
Control Scheme
You can play this game with 3 different controllers: The GameCube controller, Wii Classic Controller, and Wii Remote+Nunchuck. This TAS uses the GameCube controller. Nobody knows the exact time difference between the GameCube controller and the Wii Remote, but I believe the motion controls are slower because your turning speed is much slower. You would probably save a few frames here and there from not having to turn to shoot enemies, but the slower turning speed makes the Wii motion controls slower in most situations, as far as I can tell. The GameCube controller is also my personal preference in real-time speedruns, so that’s what I used here. Aim Sensitivity is also important. I take a few moments at the beginning of the TAS to turn the aim sensitivity all the way to the highest setting. This helps me aim and kill enemies much faster than you could with the default settings.
Glitches
Hovering
Hovering was a glitch that I found while working on the Facility level in this TAS. For some reason, if you sprint while you are in the air, Bond stops falling for a very short time. If you interrupt the sprint with a reload, you can sprint again and stop falling again. Keep doing this and you will fall noticeably slower than you would normally. If you can mash the sprint and reload buttons quickly, you will stay in the air for a few seconds. Keep in mind that this glitch does not work everywhere. It seems to only work when you’re going up or down slopes. You can also use hovering to climb up certain slopes, props, and even walls. The most common use for this glitch is to climb over certain walls to save time from movement, or getting out of bounds to skip certain areas. Unfortunately, this game’s engine prevents us from skipping large areas of the map, so there aren’t any major game-breaking glitches in this TAS. The largest single time save from hovering is in the Carrier mission and it saves about 15 seconds there.
Sprint Cancelling
Sprint Cancelling is a glitch discovered by JamesBong3333 that basically allows you to have infinite sprint. Unfortunately, this glitch wasn’t known about until I was nearly finished with this TAS, so most of the levels don’t take advantage of it. To do this, simply start reloading about half a second before your sprint would normally end, and you’ll be able to start another sprint almost immediately. The optimal way to sprint cancel is to interrupt a sprint 15 frames before it ends. Then you will be able to start another sprint only 3 frames later. You can interrupt a sprint in the following ways: reloading, shooting, switching weapons, falling, aiming down sights, and slowing down for 1 frame. The most convenient way for the TAS to sprint cancel is by reloading. So in the levels that take advantage of sprint cancelling, you’ll notice that sometimes I will intentionally shoot one bullet so I’m able to reload at any time. Without sprint cancelling, the optimal way to move is to sprint forward as soon as you can since you will spend more time sprinting and less time waiting between sprints.
Animation Skips
Although this isn’t technically a glitch, I thought I may as well mention it here. After you shoot, whatever gun you’re using has an animation where it kicks back. Depending on the type of weapon, this animation can be as short as two frames for the SMG’s and Assault Rifles, or it can be as much as one second for the Sniper Rifles and Shotguns. During these animations, you cannot sprint or use the phone. But it is possible to cancel these animations by reloading or aiming down sights. This is used several times throughout this TAS to save frames before using the phone to complete certain objectives.
Crosshair Placement
Crosshair placement probably doesn’t need its own section, but I’ll give it one anyway. I spent so much time throughout the making of this TAS making sure my crosshair placement was as good as possible. There are a lot of little things I do here and there to make the camera movement less crazy. I am always looking where I’m going or where the action is happening. I also move the camera up or down while I’m going up or down stairs to make the movement feel as smooth as possible. A good example of this is in the Memorial level. At this part of the TAS, I look down the stairs as I’m going down them. Then about halfway down the stairs, I slowly start moving my crosshair back up to eye level. The result makes the movement look smooth and clean. It doesn’t save any time but it makes the video much more pleasant to watch. Here is an earlier part of the TAS where I didn’t do this all the time. The vent movement is good, but I could have made it look better by looking where I was going. I also do a lot of smooth left/right turns throughout the TAS if it doesn’t lose time.
Stealth
Stealth in this game works how you would expect it to. When an enemy sees you, they start shooting you a few seconds later and set off the alarm, alerting any nearby enemies and spawning more guards. Stealth plays a huge role in this TAS. The main reason to keep stealth is to prevent more guards from spawning and taking away my health and armor, which I may need later (depending on the level). Sometimes I take time early in a level to remain undetected to save more time later. Killing enemies that are above, below, or directly in front of me don’t take any extra time to kill because I don’t have to change my angle at all. So sometimes I kill enemies and maintain stealth if it doesn’t lose time to do so. Keep in mind that not all levels can be completed with stealth, so there are some levels like Airfield or Station that are pure action all the way through.
The gun I’m using can also impact stealth. Silenced weapons are the best ones to use because guards cannot hear the gun itself (although they can hear bullet impacts and sometimes other guards getting shot if they are close enough). The only problem with silenced weapons is that they deal less damage, so it’s hard to kill far-away enemies with one headshot because of damage drop-off.
Cutscenes
Unfortunately, this game has roughly 35 minutes of unskippable cutscenes. But through the power of editing, I can fix that. I have made two encodes for you. The first one is the full TAS with no edits. The second encode is a condensed video with all the cutscenes and loading screens removed for your viewing pleasure.
Syncing the movie
- Emulator used: Dolphin 5.0
- Dual Core and Idle Skipping Off
- CPU Emulator Engine: JIT Recompiler
- Audio: DSP LLE Recompiler
- Gamecube Controller Port 1: Standard Controller
- Wiimotes: None
- MD5 Checksum: 1d5a20d3d988c967df847048bbb70775
Mission Comments
Dam
Objectives:
- Infiltrate the Dam
- Erase security footage
- Gather intel on the EMP-hardened chopper
- Download the flight plan
In the first part of Dam, there are 5 guards that I need to kill for the level to progress. When I gain control, I sprint toward the first guard tower and shoot the two enemies up there as soon as I can kill them with one headshot. It’s faster to run toward them on 007 Classic instead of shooting them from far away because of the damage drop-off. After killing them, I shoot at another group of 3 enemies. Trevelyan is supposed to kill them but I can save time by killing them before he does. I can also kill these enemies with one headshot each because I ran toward them earlier. Another group of enemies spawn at the back of the map, so I run back there and kill them with perfect headshots. Now Trevelyan and I get in the truck and start the autoscroller section of Dam. Thankfully, this is the only autoscroller in the entire game. There are two trucks I can shoot to speed up this part of the level a little bit. But other than that, I just spend some time killing bad guys and shooting Trevelyan in the face a few times. He can’t die, by the way.
After I get out of the truck and watch a cutscene, I breach a room full of enemies. There are two different types of breaches in this game. The first type is based on a timer and the other is based on when you kill the enemies. For this breach, it doesn’t matter how quickly I kill the enemies. All that matter is that they die before the gameplay goes back to normal speed. In some breaches, I need to kill the enemies as fast as possible to save time, but this isn’t the case here. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s faster to use a pistol for breaches because the animation where you get out your gun is faster for pistols. For some reason, the P99 shoots at normal speed even when the game is slowed down during the breaches. No other weapon behaves this way.
After the breach, I sprint forward toward the first objective. The door is locked, so I shot it as soon as I gained control. The objectives in this game are pretty simple. Most of them require using the smartphone to hack something, take a picture, or record audio/video. I use the smartphone to hack a computer from as far away as possible, turn around, and sprint to the next area.
Stealth plays a huge role in this TAS. The less enemies see me, the less time I have to waste killing them. However, sometimes losing stealth can be faster. After completing the first objective, I run past an enemy and he sees me. Some other enemies spawn and shoot at me, but it’s not a big deal. I killed two of the enemies while opening the blast door for entertainment, since I had to wait there anyway. Whenever I have to wait for something to happen, I try to make that waiting time as entertaining as possible. This will be very important in some of the later levels.
One thing I do pretty often in this TAS is getting enemies to try to punch me and miss. This means they will spend less time shooting at me and I won’t lose time from killing them. To get someone to melee you, simply run in front of or beside them. You’ll be so close to the enemy that they will try to punch you and miss because you’re sprinting past them. My next objective is to take some pictures of the EMP-hardened chopper later in the level. I took first picture as soon possible and the last picture from as far away as possible to save time from movement. Next, I run across the dam to get to the next objective. There are quite a few guards with AK-47’s, but health was not much of a concern at this point. I killed one guard because he was going to be in my way. It might be possible to manipulate where guards move to, but I couldn’t find a way to do that at the time.
I run past most of the enemies on top of the dam, including the sniper.
After going up the guard tower to complete another objective, I go down the elevator and shoot a lock to open a certain door. This is necessary to complete the final objective later in the level. Then I run past a guy and fall down the ladder. You’re supposed to climb down the ladder normally, but if you run into a certain spot on the side of the ladder, you’ll fall. This skips the ladder climbing animation and saves several seconds. Then I go to that locked door I shot earlier, complete the final objective, and sprint to the end of the level.
Facility
Objectives:
- Infiltrate the weapons facility
- Gather intel for MI6 analysis
- Download the trade manifests
At the start of the level, there is a vent on the other side of the room. To open it, you can either press A, melee, or shoot it open. Pressing A will result is an animation that is a few seconds slower than the alternatives. It’s faster to shoot the vent twice than to melee it twice, so that’s what I do here. I move through the vents as quickly as possible to get to the bathroom stall. Unlike Goldeneye on N64, it’s possible to jump over the stall door by sprinting at the right time. This saves roughly 2 seconds. Then I shoot the window in the next room to save time traveling around it. I sprint past some guards and get to another set of rooms with several glass panes. Just like before, I shoot through it and continue onward. After completing the first phone objective, I take an alternate path through some vents to get to the next objective. Unfortunately, there is no way around this. After completing the next objective, I run through a few more rooms until I get to the breach.
Like Dam, the breach is based on a timer, so it doesn’t matter when I kill the two enemies. All that matters is that I kill them before the timer runs out. Then I start the cutscene and get the scientist to override the lockdown. At this point, I have 2 ½ bars of health and there are some really angry guards in the next room. I shoot one of them, turn the corner, and get another one to attempt a melee attack while I run to the door. This way, I was able to reduce the damage I take. If I didn’t do that, those two guards would have easily drained my health in a matter of seconds. There are two other guards in the back corner of the room, but they are far enough away that the damage they deal isn’t worth caring about.
After meeting with Trevelyan in the atrium, I head over to my next objective where I need to take a picture of some blueprints. It’s also important that I keep stealth here. Unlike Goldeneye N64, two bars of health aren’t gonna get you anywhere if you sprint past some guards with AK-47’s. So I go down the stairs, kill a few enemies, then go up to the room with the blueprints. Once I’m done with that objective, I head back down and sprint toward the research labs. A guard saw me as I was running toward the labs, but I could get inside without getting shot too much.
I meet up with Trevelyan yet again to start a cutscene. Fortunately, this isn’t as much of a cutscene as it is a waiting section. I hack the alarm in the scientist room so Trevelyan does his thing while I go back and complete an objective I ran past earlier. I have to wait for Trevelyan to unlock the doors, so I go back to complete that objective and grab some body armor. Even with that, I still had time to spare. After Trevelyan unlocks the first door, I do this funny thing where you sprint and reload at the repeatedly while going down stairs to make Bond hover in the air for a short time. Little did I know that these seemingly random inputs would later result in the discovery of the hovering glitch. There is one more waiting section in this mission before I get to the room with the gas tanks. Until then, I just had some fun with a guard to pass the time. For some reason, Bond’s fist was invisible during the melee animation. It’s also worth mentioning that Bond has some past beef against Trevelyan. He just can’t stop pointing his gun and shooting at Trev’s face repeatedly. This will be important later. The gas tank room is the final room in this mission where something happens. I kill two enemies to keep stealth, place the mines in the designated spots, and sprint to the end of the mission. Killing the first guard in this room didn’t lose any time because I was able to shoot him while turning around the corner. I was also able to take a better line after placing the second mine because I killed the guard standing nearby. Now I just place the remaining mines and sprint to the final cutscene in this mission.
Airfield
Objectives:
- Escape from the facility
- Neutralize the helicopter gunships
- Destroy the air tracking consoles
Airfield is the shortest level in the game, lasing only 3 minutes and 34 seconds on the in-game timer. It’s also one of the few levels where stealth is not an option. Thus, completing Airfield without grabbing the first armor is a challenge, but the TAS does it effortlessly. At the start of the mission, I kill a guard who is in my way and sprint straight to the first objective. This is the first of two helicopters I need to destroy to complete the first objective. Then I vault down and sprint to my next objective. I killed three armored guards who are a threat to my health and who can get in my way. Then I keep sprinting past some bad guys until I get to an open area after the next checkpoint. I killed one guard who was directly in front of me, thus, wasting no time at all. But here is where Airfield gets a little strange. At the very end of this room, before leaving the area, a scripted explosion will happen. Unfortunately, if you sprint as fast as you can, you will always be caught in one of the two explosions that happen and die immediately. However, there is a way around this. There is a specific guard that is running in the middle of the road ahead of me. There is another guard to my right, slightly behind me. These two guards are the causes of the explosions. As soon as they get to the doorway, the scripted explosions kill them one at a time. So I shoot the guard in front of me, but what about the guard behind me? Turning around all the way would be slow, so I shot some explosive barrels beside me. Then I sprint forward and the explosive barrels kill the other guard. Now the scripted explosions don’t happen and I’m able to keep moving forward without waiting.
After destroying the last helicopter to complete the objective, I pick up some body armor that is right next to me. With this armor, I’m able to sprint past a ton of bad guys that are shooting at me. The end of the level is in the next building, but I have to go to the top floor to destroy the air tracking console. I switch to the AK-47, Kill two guards (one would be in the way later, the other will kill me) and shoot two consoles. These consoles behave exactly like the security cameras from Goldeneye N64. Shoot the screen once and they will explode. Each console has two screens, and you can shoot either one to destroy it. I go upstairs, destroy the remaining consoles in about one second, then go back downstairs to escape.
The last part of Airfield is pretty simple. I kill two enemies on motorcycles, then another enemy on the plane. It doesn’t matter how fast I kill these enemies, just that I kill them before getting on the plane. I take some time here to show off the crazy physics in this game. For some reason, dead enemies seem to gain speed on the runway. The only thing left to do is mash L and R as fast as possible during the cutscene to finish the level.
Nightclub
Objectives:
- Locate Sergeant Garcia
- Obtain Zukovsky’s contact list
- Obtain the nightclub’ security footage
- Photograph evidence of Zukovsky’s arms deals
Nightclub is a straightforward level with a lot of cutscenes and waiting. But there is some cool gameplay in the second half of the level. In the first half of Nightclub, you are unarmed and cannot sprint. So I’m forced to move slowly through the nightclub until I meet with Zukovsky.
Everything until the cutscene where Bond is offered some counterfeit vodka is self-explanatory. It’s just simple movement until that point. After that, there is a little bit of luck involved. You are supposed to use the face-recognition app on the smartphone to locate Sergeant Garcia. Once you located her, she shows you the way to Zukovsky’s office, where you can complete the next objective. However, she does this very slowly. Sergeant Garcia can spawn in one of three locations, so the fastest possible spawn point is the one that is closest to Zukovsky’s office. This TAS gets that spawn point. The other two spawn points are 10 and 20 seconds slower, respectively.
After the cutscene with Zukovsky, I pick up the P99, go inside the office, and get the contact list from the safe behind the painting. Then I sprint toward the next checkpoint. After the breach, there is a door on the other side of the room I need to go through. However, three enemies spawn here that can ruin my day. Thankfully, these guards aren’t the brightest tools in the shed, so one of them opens the door toward himself, trapping him in the corner. The next enemy tries to melee me while I sprint past him, and the last enemy gets shot almost immediately. They shoot me in the back a few times as I run past them, but it’s not a big deal. At this point, I’m already on my way to the next room, where I grab a useful set of body armor and complete another objective. This armor takes no extra time to get, which is nice. While I’m in the freezer taking pictures of guns as evidence, I walk behind an enemy who doesn’t seem to realize I’m there. Maybe he did know I was there and just froze, because he’s in a freezer and he didn’t know how to handle the situation.
After getting out of the kitchen area, I head to the final room in Nightclub. However, there is still one more objective I need to complete. I run through the restaurant area and go into one of the side rooms, which contains a vent that leads to the final objective. I obtain the security footage, then open the exit door as soon as I can. It’s possible to open the door before getting the security footage, but it closes when you get close enough to the computer to use your smartphone. So I’m forced to wait here until Bond puts the phone away. Once that happens, I run through the restaurant one final time to complete the mission.
Carrier
Objectives:
- Meet with Sky Briggs
- Rescue all hostages
- Disarm the explosive charges
Carrier is one of the coolest levels in this TAS. It has the first use of the hovering glitch, which saves 15 seconds in this level.
After the cutscene with Sky Briggs, I run into what I consider to be one of the most dangerous rooms in the whole game. There are enemies with SMG’s everywhere and I don’t have time to kill any of them. I sprint to the gate and use the smartphone to unlock it. During this waiting time, I walk over to some obstacles so the enemies can’t shoot me as much, then I go through the gate as soon as possible. Now there are three enemies in front of me who will deal massive damage if I don’t do anything about it. I kill two of them, pick up one of their guns, and sprint up the stairs. Then I use this gun to quickly kill many of the enemies later on. After only 20 seconds of gameplay, I’m already down to two bars of health. However, killing enemies with the SMG is so fast that it’s worth it to kill more enemies later with that than killing them earlier with the P99.
Immediately after the next checkpoint, I start the first hover of this run. As mentioned above, hovering is done by interrupting sprints while you’re in the air. The easiest way to do this is by sprinting and reloading repeatedly. You won’t lose height while you’re going down stairs and you can climb onto objects you aren’t supposed to. This is used to climb on top of the carrier and skip going through a few rooms inside the carrier. It also prevents several enemies from spawning. After getting back inbounds, I disarm the first bomb and fall down a ladder.
One of my Objectives is to rescue all the hostages. So I need to do three breaches throughout the mission. During the first breach, I take advantage of animation cancelling. If you aim down sights after shooting in a breach, you can perform an action immediately after shooting. For this first breach, I skip the gun animation and put on the silencer, which will be important for keeping stealth later. This animation skip doesn’t save that much time but it lets me sprint a little sooner after finishing a breach. I take advantage of this a few times in this TAS.
After rescuing the hostage, I fall down a ladder and rescue another hostage. I skip the animation here to reload the P99 without losing time. I run through a room with a few bad guys, disarm a bomb, and get out. Now I’m down to only half a bar of health. It’s critical that I keep stealth in the next room. If the alarm goes off, tons of armored guards will spawn and kill me while I’m waiting to complete the phone objectives. I won’t be able to shoot back because Bond is holding the smartphone the whole time. The whole carrier is on lockdown, so I need to fix that by hacking the computers with the smartphone. I enter the room, kill two enemies, and hack one of the computers. While I’m waiting, I pick up some much-needed body armor and head to the next computer I need to hack. I kill two more enemies to keep stealth and hack the last computer. Then I drop down, disarm the last bomb, kill one more enemy, and rescue yet another hostage.
The cargo lift area is probably the second-most dangerous part of the game. But the TAS just goes through it like it’s nothing. I kill the first two enemies to keep stealth for just a moment longer, then run past the remaining enemies. Once I activate the cargo lift, I just have to wait for it to come down. I switch to the Vargen FH-7 and destroy all the enemies who pose an immediate threat to my health. Then I dispose of the enemies on the cargo lift itself. There are a few more enemies in the room but they aren’t going to do much damage. While the cargo lift is going up, I shoot a few enemies here and there to make things a little more entertaining.
Now all I need to do is escape. The carrier is sinking and the EMP-hardened chopper is now shooting rockets at me. There are two specific places where Bond can be killed very easily since the rockets are fired on a cycle. I was barely able to run past these rockets without taking too much damage. I had just enough health to sprint past the final enemy and complete the mission.
Outpost
Objectives:
- Track your Smartphone
- Find the supply crates
- Find the black box
Outpost is a really short level with a little bit of action and two simple objectives that don’t require going too far out of the way to complete. The mission takes place during a crossfire between the Janus troops and the Russian military, so I can run past more enemies than usual because they are also shooting at each other. The only time I intentionally remain stealthy is at the very beginning of Outpost. I kill the first three enemies, pick up an AK-47, and keep moving. Many of the walls and corners in Outpost are large rocks and steep slopes, so I do a lot of smooth turns in this level. The collision for the walls in this level go out further than you would expect. Before starting the cutscene with the helicopter crashing, I switch to the AK-47 as late as possible so the weapon swap animation plays during the cutscene. As a result, Bond gets out the AK-47 instead of the P99 after the cutscene.
Now I sprint past a few enemies, kill one of them who would have gotten in my way, and shoot the first supply crate on my left. This is the first of five crates I need to open to complete the objective. These supply crates have weapons inside, usually assault rifles and snipers. I won’t be picking up any of these weapons since it would lose time. There is also some body armor next to the crate, but I won’t be needing that, either. I reload for the first time in this level while I’m crawling under a piece of a crashed airplane. It saves time to reload here since I can’t sprint anyway. For the next minute or so, I open another supply crate and keep sprinting down the path I’m on. Nothing really happens until an RPG kills a few guards in front of me. I purposefully slowed down a little bit here because the RPG would kill me otherwise. After that, I open the third supply crate on my right and head toward the black box. The third supply crate doesn’t spawn until you get close enough to it, so it’s impossible to shoot this crate from far away. Unlike Goldeneye N64, the black box (aka ‘flight recorder’) is always in the same spot. I pick that up, then go around the crashed plane toward the fourth supply crate, which is inside a building on the other side of this area. I’m down to two bars of health and I won’t be picking up any body armor, so I need to conserve my health. I kill a few more enemies for safety, which really helped later on. Because Outpost takes place during a crossfire, I’m able to run past many of the guards in this wide-open area. Normally everybody would be shooting me, and I probably would have died in any other level. But most of the enemies here are too distracted to worry about me.
After going through the vents and shooting a few guards, I come up to one of the most annoying parts of the game in a speedrun. There are two snipers and four armored guards on the other side of some rubble. You can’t get over to where they are and you’re intended to use the sniper rifles to kill them. However, the AK-47 has enough range to kill everybody with one headshot each, so that’s what I do here. There is a locked door to my left that will not open until everybody here is dead. After I kill the enemies, I pick up the sniper rifle since it will be useful later. Then I run through the door as soon as it opens. I switch to the P99 because I need to be stealthy for a short time while I open the final supply crate. If I opened the crate with the AK-47, all the guards would hear me and I wouldn’t make it to the end of the level. This last bit of stealth buys me just enough time to barely make it to the end. There is one particular enemy who always shot and killed me, so I used the sniper I picked up earlier to kill him. It would probably be a few frames faster to kill him without aiming down the scope, but I couldn’t land the shot after a few hours of trying. It was also my only chance to quickscope an enemy for the whole TAS so I just took that opportunity. I no-scoped two enemies then ran as fast as I could to the finish. I was one hit away from death with I opened the final door.
Bunker
Objectives:
- Investigate the bunker
- Gather intel from the bunker
- Disarm explosive charges
Bunker is the second-longest level in this TAS, Cradle being the first. I killed quite a few enemies here to remain stealthy. When an enemy sees you, they take a moment to think about what’s going on before they raise the alarm. The amount of time enemies wait depends on the difficulty. On 007 Classic, you have about 3 seconds to kill an enemy before they set off the alarm. At the start of the level, I kill two enemies before defusing the first of five bombs. There is still one more enemy behind me, but I’m able to turn around quickly and shoot him before the alarm goes off. Then I take the optimal path to the first bit of intel I need to get. There is a locked door in the same room as the intel. So after I kill the bad guys, I shoot the lock, cancel the gun animation, then take a picture of the intel. There are seven enemies near the next bomb I need to defuse, so it’s not worth taking the time to kill all of them. I simply sprint past them and defuse the bomb. The damage I take here is negligible. Enemies will forget about you if they can’t see you when you get the next checkpoint. I take advantage of this because there is a checkpoint right after I run past the armored guards. Just like most of the breaches so far, the first breach in Bunker is time-based. So all I need to do is kill the two guards before time runs out.
After regaining control after the cutscene, I turn around to turn on the power generator. There is also some really quick body armor here, which will be useful. On Dolphin, the game is just bright enough to play without the night-vision goggles, but it makes it hard to see some things, so I turned them on. If you find the night-vision annoying, it won’t be on for very long. Anyway, after defusing the third bomb, I do a really crazy hover that makes me fall all the way down to the bottom of the bunker. There are some things I need to do down here later, but none of the objectives here can be completed before going to the next checkpoint. So I go back up the stairs and into the elevator to get the checkpoint I was supposed to get before the hover. This route saves about 2 seconds of travel time compared to doing this part normally. Now that I got that checkpoint, I can go back down to the central room and complete those objectives I ran past. There is one bomb I need to defuse and two pieces of intel I can get. Once I do that, I go down the stairs and defuse the final bomb before going down an elevator. The next section is one of the most entertaining parts of the entire TAS. I have one minute to do whatever I want with the enemies, so I take advantage of that.
From here on, stealth is impossible. My presence has made the enemies much more alert, so they are constantly shooting at me. Thankfully, there are several sets of body armor still left to grab, so I get the two fastest ones. Now I’m in a rush to get to the surface as quickly as possible (after getting the remaining intel, of course). The rest of the mission is moving as quickly as possible through the bunker to get back to the starting area. I had barely enough health to finish the level. The final part of Bunker involves following Natalya to the exit. You can’t run past her, so I just follow along and save my energy for the final sprint to the end.
Archives
Objectives:
- Escape the military archives and pursue Ourumov
- Destroy the servers
- Recover the interrogation footage
- Gather Russian intelligence for MI6
Archives is one of, if not, the most action-packed level in this entire TAS. Stealth is impossible, so Archives is a full-on sprint with an AK-47 and a ton of bad guys to shoot. There is also several minutes of playaround at the end, which I take advantage of.
When I gained control in Archives, I ran past two enemies who used some tables as cover. They took some time to knock over the table, so I took slightly less damage than I would have normally. I decided to sprint past them and shoot the two enemies in the next room instead. I took 3 bars of health at the start, which came back to haunt me later. It would have been better to kill all the enemies at the start since I would have had more health later, but I was able to work with it.
I reloaded while crawling through the vents since it doesn’t lose any time and it will allow me to shoot more enemies. The nice thing about the AK-47 is that a headshot will always be one-hit kill, except in some very extreme cases. So having 6 more bullets means I can potentially kill 6 more enemies before I have to reload again. Now I get out of the vents go to the next room, which has the interrogation footage I need to collect and a button to unlock the next door. I punch an enemy who opened the door for me then I shoot the fire extinguisher, killing most of the enemies in the room. There was one enemy left so I killed him, skipped the gun animation, and got out the phone to record the footage. Unfortunately, there was no way to exit the room while using the phone. The door I entered through will always shut when I get close enough to the footage to complete the objective, and you can’t open doors or vault through windows while using the phone. So the fastest way to get past this part is to use the phone, wait for that to finish, then unlock the door.
After completing the first objective, I run up the stairs and shoot a pipe to kill 3 enemies in a group of 4. Then I simply shoot the remaining enemy. Killing these four enemies is required to unlock the next door, for whatever reason. In the next room, I ran through a gate just as it was closing. You’re supposed to go around and unlock that gate, but it’s possible to sprint through just before it closes, saving a few seconds. I also got the two enemies here to punch (and miss) instead of shooting me, saving a little bit of health.
Now, I’m at the server room. The goal is to destroy all of the servers in this room as quickly as possible. My only tools are the AK-47 and my powerful melee attack. First, I killed most of the enemies here before getting started since I don’t have much health and they would have just gotten in the way. This route for this room went through several iterations in this TAS, each one being a little bit faster than before. The route shown in this TAS was as fast as I could get it. Anyway, there are four columns of severs going down the center of the room and a few more servers on the sides. There is also another room with some servers in it. While I’m holding down the trigger, the servers take four shots with the AK-47 to blow up. Alternatively, I can punch the server once to blow it up. The best route I could come up with was a combination of these two attacks. I strafe left through the center of the room, shooting the servers on the sides while punching the servers directly in front of me. Once I go all the way down the room, I reload while moving to the other side of the room. Then I repeat a similar process the opposite way. I go into the other room, destroy the servers in there, and get out. I blew up the 3 remaining servers on my way out. One thing you might notice is that I didn’t hold down the trigger on the last 3 servers. Instead of shooting four times like I mentioned earlier, I was able to blow these ones up by shooting only two times. I found out on my third time TASing this room that you can destroy a server by only shooting it twice if you wait a few frames before shooting the second bullet. This saves 2 bullets and 1 frame per server, which is huge. However, it doesn’t work. For some reason, it doesn’t count the objective as complete if you do this with every server. I’ll be honest, I don’t know why this happens. I believe it may have something to do with completing an objective too quickly, but I don’t have any way of proving that. I tried to blow up as many servers with just two bullets as possible, but those three at the end were the only ones it worked for. Assuming this worked for all the servers, it would save 20 frames of shooting, and could possibly allow for one less reload. But unfortunately, it just wouldn’t complete the objective that way.
After finally finishing the server room, I go upstairs and vault through a window where another objective is located. The only way to access this room is through a vent that is hidden behind some furniture. Normally, you’re expected to move the furniture first, then shoot the vents. This is slow because you have to wait a second or two to get your gun out again. Thankfully, there is a small part of the vents that is still visible, so I shot the vents first, then moved the furniture. Now I’m able to crawl through the vents before Bond can get his gun out again, saving a little bit of time.
One thing you might notice is that my health is extremely low. I have less than one bar of health, and I’m about to enter one of the toughest parts of the entire game. I have to kill almost every enemy or I’m toast. I was able to run past a few enemies, which was nice. Having low health here wasn’t a big deal since shooting a bunch of enemies ended up being pretty entertaining. I picked up the next set of body armor I could, which was in a crate near an objective I need to complete. The rest of the mission prior to the playaround is pretty straightforward. I simply run past a bunch of enemies before unlocking a door with my smartphone. The enemies near that door needed to be killed or else I would have died.
Now we’re at the infamous elevator room. Well, it’s infamous for RTA runners. In this room, you have to wait for an elevator for two minutes. During that time, several armored guards will spawn and ruin your day. This two-minute wait is basically a survival mission. That’s not a problem for a TAS, though. The TAS can walk all over the enemies in the most entertaining way I could come up with. I also took some time to pick up an SMG and draw “Rip Sheldor” on the wall. This is a reference to an RTA runner by the name of InfiniteSheldor, who speedruns this game every now and then, depending on whether he’s retired or not. I wish I would have shown the text on screen for a little longer, but I didn’t realize how little screen time it had until I was already done with Archives. I tried to draw “fuckin’ 1:12 baby!” but the bullet decal limit in this game is pretty low, so I wasn’t able to draw that. Maybe something like “an MR-RL time” would have worked, but I didn’t think of it at the time. The rest of the level is hilarious. There’s nothing I can do to speed it up, so I have a few minutes to play around with the bad guys.
Tank
Objective:
- Pursue Ourumov
Tank is the only driving level in this game. As the name would imply, you are driving a tank through the streets of St. Petersburg. There are lots of enemy choppers and Humvees that deal massive damage. There are three ways to kill enemies: Shooting them with the main cannon, shooting them with the minigun, or running over them. Running over enemies is usually slower, but sometimes it’s possible to run over someone without slowing down at all. Because body armor doesn’t fit on a tank, this is the only level that has regenerating health on 007 Classic difficulty. Tank is a really straightforward level because the only goal is to get to the end as quickly as possible. Because of this, I’ll be talking about the strategies I used to optimize this level rather than the play-by-play commentary I’ve done for the other levels.
The interesting thing about optimizing this level is that shooting the cannon causes the tank to recoil a little bit. The speed loss is minimal, but it usually loses 1 frame each time you shoot. However, if you lock on to your target before shooting, there is no recoil at all. Deciding which enemies to kill was a big part of routing this level, although it isn’t always possible to skip enemies on 007 Classic difficulty. I locked on to as many enemies as I could, but it isn’t always possible. If you’re at a weird angle or the enemy is too close or far away, it won’t lock on. Sometimes it ended up being faster to shoot without locking on, to kill enemies without a direct impact or to kill multiple enemies at once. There are specific examples of this throughout the level.
It’s also possible to shoot two shells very rapidly if you lock on to one enemy, shoot, then shoot again. For some reason, the cooldown period doesn’t start if you lock on to an enemy before shooting, which allows you to shoot two shells instead of one. This, combined with the minigun, makes my tank basically unstoppable. I can kill huge groups of enemies in a matter of seconds, because this is a TAS we’re talking about here.
Shooting will cause the tank to recoil upward. This loses time on flat ground but saves a lot of time when trying to climb over obstacles like the one shown here.
Another small optimization is shooting streetlights before running over them. If you run over a streetlight, you’ll slow down a little bit. But if you shoot it first, you’re able to drive over it most of the time without slowing down at all. This TAS does this all the time to take better lines and turn around corners more quickly.
The nice thing about this mission is that you can move and shoot independently. So it’s possible to aim wherever you want while still holding the control stick in the direction you want to go without losing time. This is extremely useful on 007 Classic difficulty because I can shoot as many enemies as I want without slowing down. It also gives me limitless opportunities to make the level more entertaining, and I feel like I did pretty well.
With these techniques, this level is a piece of cake for the TAS. Unless a new technique that saves time is found, I don’t think the time can get much lower than it is here. 4:02 might be possible, but everything in this level is as optimal as I could get it.
Station
Objective:
- Enter the Train
Station is a really short level with a lot of action, much like Airfield. There are two objectives but really the only goal is to get to the end as fast as possible. The two objectives “Enter the train” and “Confront Ourumov” will always be completed because it’s part of getting to the end quickly. Many of the levels from this point onward have very few objectives that deviate from the normal path.
There are a ton of enemies in this level, and they are constantly shooting at me. Body armor is a necessity. At the start, I run past most of the enemies since they are on a set path and won’t bother me until they get to where they’re going. I shot two enemies in front of me before going outside. The construction zones outside are a real pain to deal with in individual-level speedruns, but as I’ve said before, it’s not a problem for the TAS. I simply headshot some enemies in front of me and keep moving. I went so fast that the enemies didn’t have enough time to kill me. However, my health is already really low. But there is some body armor right on the path, so I can pick it up without losing time.
After the construction zone, I go back inside and wait for an explosive barrel to blow up. The explosive barrel rolling down the hill is completely scripted. If you go any further than I did before it explodes, you will die. After the explosion, I crawl through the rubble and shoot an enemy before I can sprint again. The two guys on the other side of the room are too far away to kill with one headshot. I ran forward and shot them when I was able to then picked up some armor. I have four bullets left in my P99. This will be important later. Just before vaulting down, I switched to the Terralite III assault rifle I picked up earlier, but it doesn’t have a full clip in it. So I shoot one enemy with it then I start reloading. I get on a ladder on the same frame Bond finishes reloading, cancelling the rest of the animation. At the moment, I have the P99 with four bullets, the Terralite III with 30 bullets, and the Kunara V machine pistol with 8 bullets.
Now that I’ve entered the train, the only thing left to do is confront Ourumov. The train has crashed, so there are crates and other obstacles everywhere. I have to crawl, vault, and sprint to the end as quickly as possible. There are a few enemies in the way, but they are no match for the assault rifle. Once I navigate through the train, I switch to the machine pistol right before starting the cutscene with Ourumov and Xenia. It’s important that I use a pistol here because this breach can be sped up by killing the enemies quickly. Pistols are faster for breaches because they take less time to get out than other weapons, meaning you can start shooting earlier. The machine pistol was the weapon of choice here for this reason.
When I gain control in the breach, the pistol does take some time to get out, so I have a short amount of time before I’m able to shoot. I use this time to look further to the left than I need to. Much further left than the enemy is. This might seem weird, but I look to the left to build up aiming speed. When I’m ready to shoot, I start moving the crosshair to the right and shoot the enemies as soon as possible. I saved a few frames because I started accelerating the crosshair sooner.
The four bullets I had left in my P99 are very important here. After the breach is over, I have to shoot some locks to escape from the train. This part is very different than the Train level in Goldeneye N64. Instead of taking a lot of time to break out, you can just shoot the locks four times to escape in this game. There are actually 8 locks, but you can destroy two of them at once if you shoot in-between them. So those 4 bullets were all I needed to break 8 locks.
Memorial
Objectives:
- Investigate Memorial Park
- Obtain intel on Janus technology
- Record the encrypted transmission
Memorial is the stealthiest level in this game. In the first two-thirds of this mission, it’s much faster to kill a few enemies here and there than to deal with the onslaught of armored guards that would spawn constantly if I got caught. For the first few minutes, every enemy I kill is only to remain undetected. Much like station, the objectives I have to complete here don’t really deviate from the main path. So I simply sprint through the level while shooting enemies that see me. When I go into the sewers, I do a small hover down the stairs that saves about 0.3 seconds. It’s not that much time, but every little bit helps. When I exit the sewers, I go up a ladder to access the roof of a nearby building. There is a sniper up here, but he doesn’t hear me. Anyway, I shoot the glass ceiling and fall down in front of a crate I need to open. After I press A to open that crate, I shoot a lock to open another crate with armor in it, then aim down sights for 1 frame to skip the gun recoil animation. This is because I need to get out my smartphone as soon as possible. While I’m getting the phone out, I open the door, take a picture of the Janus technology, and walk outside. When I leave the building, I lose stealth for a short time before reaching the next checkpoint. It didn’t matter if I got caught here because you will almost always regain stealth if you reach a checkpoint when enemies can’t see you. So the enemies shot me for a few seconds but didn’t do that much damage.
The body armor I picked up earlier comes in handy after the phone call cutscene. There are a whole ton of enemies here and stealth is not worth killing everybody over. I run into the next building as fast as I can and start the cutscene. I also picked up some extra body armor. The unique thing about this building is that you’re supposed to secure the area before the next cutscene can start. So I press a button to lock close and lock all the doors. If an enemy were to get inside before the doors close, you have to kill him. So it saves quite a bit of time if you can get to the button and close the doors before the enemies can get inside, which this TAS does. There was one particular enemy who would get inside sometimes, but I was able to manipulate him to stay outside by looking in a particular direction, as shown in the screenshot below.
Now comes the fun part. Just like many of the previous levels, stealth is no longer a concern after a certain point. Now we are at that point of Memorial. I get out the Strata SV-400 Sub-machine gun and destroy a room full of enemies in a matter of frames. There was still one guy left, but I guess somebody needs to survive to tell the tale. I’m kidding, of course. This enemy was way too far out of the way to kill quickly, so I just let him live. He took away my body armor, but it didn’t affect me that much since there was more armor to get later on. So I use the phone to gather some more intel and continue to sprint through the level.
Now I’m going back underground. This time, with night-vision goggles. Many of the enemies will either do a ton of damage or get in my way. So I kill a bunch of bad guys really quickly because the gun I’m using has a really high fire rate. I took off the night-vision goggles when I entered one of my least favorite rooms in the entire game. This is the only required stealth section in the entire game, and it’s really annoying. Almost every enemy needs to die because I will fail the mission if I get caught. I vault down, shoot some bad guys, pick up some armor, and take a picture of some more intel. Unfortunately, there is one enemy who would always see me if I was moving in his line of sight too quickly. So after taking the picture, I had to wait for a second or two before progressing. It’s not possible to kill this enemy from an earlier part of the room, so I just had to deal with it. I lowered my movement speed here a little to make the waiting time less obvious for the viewers. Now I go up the stairs, kill one more enemy, and record the encrypted transmission. This is what the stealth was required for. If I got caught anywhere in the room, this guy would have known about it and stopped the transmission. Once I’m done here, I head down into the sewers again and sprint to the end of the mission.
Jungle
Objectives:
- Locate the Pan-African Power solar plant
- Disable the drone guns
- Destroy the ammunition caches
As soon as I gain control in Jungle, I sprint toward the left side of the crashed plane and hover over it. This hover is extremely precise. If you stop at the wrong time or fall in a bad spot, you will fall through the map and die. This hover saves a second or two because it’s faster than going around the plane and down the hill normally. I get caught by some enemies at the start but it’s not a big deal. Four more enemies will spawn as a result, but I can kill them pretty quickly without taking much damage. After I vault over the log and get a checkpoint, there is a small cutscene skip I can do here. Normally, bond slides down a steep slope when you get to it. But if you sprint in the right spot and at the right angle, you will just fall down. It’s very similar to falling down a ladder like I’ve done several times in this TAS so far.
One of my objectives is to destroy nine drone guns. There are these little laptops that control the drones, so I need to destroy those. It’s also possible to hack the drones and get them to shoot enemies, but it’s slower than just destroying them. I destroyed one drone gun after sprinting up a small ledge and destroyed two more after reloading and killing some enemies. There are a ton of enemies in the area after destroying the third drone gun, but they will forget about me once I get the next checkpoint. The next minute or so is simply sprinting to the next area, killing a few enemies, and moving on. Once I get into what RTA runners call the “waterfall area”, things get crazy. A picture of this area is shown here:
I kill the enemy that is just off-screen in this picture and do another hover to climb up some rocks. This saves a lot of travel time, since you normally have to go to the left and circle back around to the area I hovered to. I kill a bunch of guys and destroy another drone gun, then do another hover to save a few more seconds. I managed to skip the next checkpoint, which prevents several enemies from spawning. Thankfully, the rest of the level functions normally, but with some slight side-effects. The last set of body armor will not spawn and some of the boxes you’re intended to take cover from will not spawn. Otherwise, the level functions as expected. Anyway, I hover over some rocks to get to the next door a little bit faster. None of the enemies spawned here, so I didn’t get shot at all.
The next area is called the multiplayer area, because the multiplayer map is based on this part of Jungle. As I’m sprinting outside, I shoot a drone gun way off in the distance. There is one enemy walking next to the first ammunition cache I need to blow up. The ammunition caches are extremely deadly. If you are anywhere near them when they explode, you’ll take a lot of damage and possibly die. So I kill the enemy, go down the stairs a little bit, turn around, and shoot the cache from farther away so it doesn’t hurt me. As I’m going down the next set of stairs, I shoot the second ammunition cache across the map, then I shoot the final drone gun. Instead of using the smartphone to slowly open the gate, I can simply hover over it and save time.
I’ve taken almost no damage for this entire mission, so I have more than enough health to sprint past most of the remaining enemies and fight Xenia. I take down one more ammunition cache before sprinting to the end and finishing the level.
Solar
Objectives:
- Infiltrate the Pan-African Power solar plant
- Disable the perimeter defenses
Solar is the first level of this TAS that takes advantage of the newly-discovered sprint cancelling technique. It saves quite a bit of time and the movement looks so clean because of it. Solar is also a very short level with a lot of action, especially at the beginning.
At the start of Solar, I sprint to the right and take a weird-looking line. This is to avoid alerting the two guards to my left. Running past them like this is a little bit faster than cutting off the sprint and killing them. I kill a few enemies at the beginning to remain undetected long enough to make it through this first part of the level. The alarm goes off when I run past two drone guns that are mounted in the hallway. By that point, the alarm isn’t much of a problem. A few more enemies will spawn but I’ve switched to the Khallos-TT9 assault rifle, which has a much faster fire rate than the P99. So I destroy a whole bunch of enemies while I’m on my way to the next checkpoint.
The outside area is pretty straightforward. I run up the stairs after the cutscene ends and kill some enemies to remain undetected. When I go down the next set of stairs, I turn to the left as quickly as possible and fall down. For some reason, this set of stairs doesn’t have a guard rail so I can just fall down. Now I’m about to do a hover, but I don’t have enough energy to do it. The problem with hovering is that each hover will only last as long as your sprint would. So I stop sprinting for a little while beforehand so I can build up some energy and sprint longer. I also reloaded since I wasn’t sprinting for a short time anyway. This hover takes a while to do, but it’s still significantly faster than going down the stairs normally. When I go over the guard rail, I kill two enemies while falling down, then I go a little further and do another hover similar to the one I just did. Then I pick up the mines and go to the elevator. Both of the hovers here save roughly 12 seconds.
While I’m in the elevator, I reload all of my weapons then shoot one bullet before switching to the next weapon. I shot one bullet in each gun so I would be able to reload, so I can sprint cancel. I shoot a bad guy as the elevator door is opening, then I turn to the left and shoot a camera. Stealth is very important here. After I kill the next enemy, I go up some stairs and you can hear the sound of an enemy seeing me. This is extremely important. I’m going to use this enemy to do a glitch, and he need to see me for that to be possible. Right before the alarm goes off, I shoot him once (without killing him), wait a little while, then kill him. If you shoot the enemy at a specific time, the alarm sound will go off but the other guards will not be alerted just yet. So I wait a short amount of time, then kill him. The alarm stops. This “alarm delay” causes several enemies to despawn, which will save time later.
After delaying the alarm, I use the phone to complete part of an objective, and move toward the other part of this objective. I killed one enemy just as I got my gun out, then ran to the other room to use the phone again. The guards know I’m here and they are shooting at me, but they’re so far away that they can’t land a single shot. Now I need to get out of here. Just as I put the phone away, I start doing a hover. Normally, you’re supposed to go press a button to call an elevator, wait a long time, get in the elevator, and then wait even more. But this hover lets me skip all of that. However, I have to go toward the bottom of the elevator to get the next checkpoint. Had I progressed through the level without doing this, the next area would not work and it would be impossible to complete the mission. So I go up, get the checkpoint, pause, and restart from the last checkpoint. This is required for the rest of the level to work properly. Overall, this saves about 20 seconds.
After the game loads again, I place the mines where the game tells me to, then go down the next elevator. There was also some quick body armor here, so I picked that up. This armor will prove to be essential in the next area. I also switched to the Masterton M-557 fully-automatic shotgun. This is easily the most overpowered weapon in the entire game. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to use it as much as I had hoped, but at least I got to use it here. You don’t even have to aim with it. Everything just dies, it’s crazy.
When I get out of the elevator with the cutscene in it, I enter the final area of Solar. There are enemies everywhere, and I only have the best weapon in the game to deal with them. I sprint, shoot, sprint, shoot, and so on until everything is properly destroyed. I take a little bit of time out of my destroying schedule to do a hover that saves a few seconds. When I’m done, it’s time to destroy stuff again. I shoot a bunch of bad guys and blow up a truck to kill even more bad guys. Then I finished the level with only one bar of health left. Mission complete.
Cradle
Objectives:
- Defend Natalya
- Settle the score with Trevelyan
Cradle is the longest level in the game, but it’s also one of the simplest. There are basically three parts to it. Defending Natalya, traveling to the boss fight, and the boss fight itself. Defending Natalya is the most complicated part. It’s very similar to the part of Control in the original Goldeneye game where you have to wait for Natalya to disarm the goldeneye satellite. In the N64 game, you can’t speed that up. But here, you can. The enemies spawn in waves. For each of the three terminals Natalya goes to, twelve enemies will spawn (for 36 in total). My only goal here is to kill all of those enemies as fast as possible. I found out just days after starting Cradle that you can stand in a specific spot and have all of the enemies spawn directly in front of you. This is a huge time save because I can shoot the enemies very quickly. I don’t want to shoot them as soon as possible, though. Because I also found out that the sooner you kill the enemies, the less frequent they spawn. So I wait for a little while before killing an enemy to get more enemies to spawn faster. Basically, an enemy will spawn at the door, run to a specific spot, then another enemy will spawn behind them. But if I kill the first enemy too soon, the second enemy will spawn much later, causing me to lose time. I think I optimized the killing pretty well, and I’m happy with the result I have. I can take a short break between waves because bad guys won’t spawn while Natalya is moving to another terminal. So I have some time to play around here and there when I’m not shooting bad guys.
Once I’m done defending Natalya, I head toward the final boss fight as soon as possible. I did a small hover after the checkpoint to skip going around the room normally. At the end of the room, there is a way to clip through the wall and get outside. Normally, you go outside through the door you’re intended to go through, run forward, and the floor will break, causing a short quick-time event where you press L to get back on the walkway. If you stand in a certain corner close enough to the wall, you will get sucked into that animation and clip through the wall. Literally, all you have to do is stand there. I crouched and punched to make it look like I was doing some crazy glitch, but there’s really nothing to it. Once I’m outside, there is a specific path you have to take or you will get shot by the goldeneye laser thing. It’s basically a maze. It might look like I could go straight to the end, but that’s not possible.
The quick-time event with Trevelyan is really straightforward. The only thing I have to do it hit each button command as soon as possible. There are a few objects in this room that are invisible for some reason. I believe it’s because I was going too fast earlier and they didn’t have time to load, or maybe it was the animation clip through that wall earlier. It’s not a big deal since it doesn’t affect the speed of the run, but it’s pretty funny to see Trevelyan punch a computer that isn’t there, or the axe burning from a laser that is invisible. Once this is over, I go back outside and do another ladder skip to fall into the next room faster. I sprint through the next few rooms and eventually start the final boss fight.
The Trevelyan fight is actually the simplest part of the whole level. All I need to do is headshot him constantly, and the strategy used for that is hilarious. This boss fight is supposed to be incredibly challenging because Trev spawns a whole bunch of enemies part of the way through the first phase. However, we can prevent that by trapping him in a corner. That’s right, I stand in a specific spot and Trevelyan will never be able to reach the spot he’s going to. This means that no enemies will spawn and Trevelyan will do no damage. The only problem is that you can’t move, so cancelling the reload animation isn’t possible without switching weapons, which is slower than just reloading normally. If you move, Trevelyan will get un-stuck and all hell breaks loose. I cancelled the last reload because I was able to kill Trevelyan before the enemies became a problem. So now that Trevelyan is (almost) dead, I head to the final area of the game. Once Bond presses a bunch of buttons on the keyboard, Trevelyan comes back for revenge. This is a pretty long quick-time-event where I just need to press buttons quickly. Once that’s over, the game slows down and I shoot Trev in the face a few times with the P99. The interesting thing about this part is that the amount of time spent shooting Trev is scripted. All you need to do is shoot him enough times to lower his health to 0, then he dies after the time runs out. If you didn’t lower his health enough, he shoots you and you die. So the TAS shoots him enough times to kill him and then ends input just before he dies.
Known Improvements
Just like most TASes, there are a few known improvements, some larger than others.
- Sprint Cancelling saves a ton of time. A new TAS would use this technique in every mission to save as much time as possible. I don’t know how exactly how much time it would save, but it would probably be a few minutes Unfortunately, sprint cancelling wasn’t known until I was almost done with this TAS.
- There is a way to fall through the floor after completing the last objective in Dam, which would save a second or two.
- There is a place in Facility where hovering would save about 4 seconds.
- There is a grenade launcher about halfway through Bunker. Picking this up would probably make killing enemies slightly faster and more entertaining.
- It’s possible to clip through a certain wall in Bunker, saving a few seconds.
- There is a faster route in Station that I didn’t know about until recently. It saves a few seconds.
Special Thanks
While the TAS itself is entirely my input, I couldn’t have done it alone. There are several people I want to thank for helping me with this project as well as getting me involved with 007 speedrunning and TASing
- PurpleSunDeryl: For finding all sorts of time saves and optimizations throughout this game. He worked out so many of the TAS routes for this game, especially in Jungle and Solar. The final time would not be as low as it is without him.
- JamesBong3333: For doing great speedruns of the full game and time trials and pushing the times lower than we could have imagined.
- Aleckermit: For TASing 007: Agent Under Fire and getting me interested in TASing 007 games, particularly this and Nightfire. I learned a lot about the process of TASing from following his Agent Under Fire WIP’s
- InfiniteSheldor: For convincing me to play this game. I watched him speedrunning Goldeneye 007: Reloaded on PS3 and eventually bought the Xbox 360 version, myself.
- Kirchinator: For getting me involved in 007 speedrunning. I watched him playing 007: Nightfire and thought it would be a fun game to speedrun. From that game, I got much more involved with several 007 games, including this one.
- OllieNK: For getting me to keep speedrunning 007 games. We started running Nightfire at the same time and the community grew around us. I wouldn’t be where I am now without him.
Suggested Screenshot
Any of the following frames: 81657, 100418, 113607, 177614
Fog: Judging.
Fog: This was a great run to watch. The submission notes show a great attention to detail was put into working on this run. Audience reception was universally positive, with everyone who left a response enjoying the run. However, I do need to take a few things into consideration.
Because of how long the TAS took to complete, there were some new tricks and strategies found which make run a little bit slower than it could be with all of the new tricks incorporated into the run. I'm not going to take anything away from the submission because of the few minutes of possible time saves in a one and a half hour run. Dolphin is notoriously hard to edit the movie file, with editing the inputs almost certainly causing a desync to future inputs. Forcing the author to go back and make the changes required to add the new tricks would be essentially having the runner redo the entire TAS. This isn't an ideal situation, so it's better to let a run in the future improve upon this.
Something that did take away from the enjoyment of the run was the 35 minutes of unskipable cutscenes. The author has nicely provided an encode of the run without the cutscenes, which in my opinion improves the enjoyment of the run. Despite the cutscenes, I still found the run entertaining with James Bond going all aimbot on his foes.
Accepting to Moons.
feos: Let's have some real fun now. Pub.......................
Fog: Updated input file with one that goes to the credits.
feos: Cleared the branch.
feos: Even though the difficulty used here isn't impossible, as the author explained in a PM, it's pretty damn hard. So to indicate that clearly, and hopefully to attract more viewer attention (considering the unassisted world record was done on normal difficulty, so we also want to prevent confusion), I'm restoring the branch.