Thank you Nintendo 64.
Goldeneye paved the way for first person shooters. Medal of Honor took up the challenge and succeeded, and many war games on consoles and PC followed the same standard. Yet, Goldeneye's success compromised of quite a few other perfected components.
1) Only RPGs had a larger weapon variety. Remember putting in the "all weapons" cheat for the first time and salivating? You had to test them all out and some more than others (hunting/throwing knives come to mind). In fact, stages were worth playing time and time again simply by changing the weapon. Just throw in an "invincibility" cheat with 2x Rockets and let the good times roll.
2) Cheating's never felt so good. You can make your enemies run fast, or you can make them move as fast as growing grass. If the mood strikes, you can even give them huge heads. Outside of the already awesome standard gameplay, you can remodel an entire stage's fun factor, simply by combining cheats. You'll find valuable glitches doing this. For example, enable the "invisibility" cheat on Cradle and go down to the platform where you fight Trevelyan and wait. You'll see what I mean. Or put the game in slow motion, add DK mode, and throw mines behind the scientists in Facility (best place overall for cheats). Or enter paintball mode and give some color to their plain white shirts.
3) You can blow just about everything up. Need I say more?
4) Even though it was the first Bond game for the N64, you can unlock Sean Connery and Roger Moore nemeses like Oddjob, Jaws, and Baron Samedi. And if using cheats on the clumsy KGB got tiresome, trying it on your friends added a whole new level of fun.
But I digress. When you actually play the game seriously, you'll surely appreciate the ample supply of stage selection. And each stage can be played on three different difficulty levels, enhancing the replay value. The game provides you with countless hours of fun, yet the controls and setup are comfortably simplistic.
Rare found something special in the 007 series. Coincidentally, it was Pierce's first (and best) outing as James Bond. And although no one really remembers the movie, the game is absolutely unforgettable.