I wanted to have the entirety of GoldenEye 007 (all levels beaten on all difficulties, all cheat codes unlocked) by the end of 2024, but here’s what I missed:
-Facility level (00 Agent difficulty, Invincibility cheat unlocked–this has since been accomplished)
-Control Center level (Secret and 00 Agent difficulties, Infinite Ammo cheat unlocked)
-Caverns level (00 Agent difficulty, 2X RC-P90s cheat unlocked–this has since been accomplished)
-Aztec Temple level (any difficuties, plus whatever the cheat is and the Laser unlocked)
-Egyptian pyramid level (any difficulties, plus the All Guns cheat and the Golden Gun unlocked)

I was a little burnt out on doing 00 Agent level stuff on most other levels, so I sort of put the game aside for awhile (this has happened several times with me in the last few years, such as stopping Final Fantasy VII at the Temple of the Ancients, and bizarrely enough, Super Mario RPG, where the change in a year will make me quit playing a game for awhile). I took many tries to get the Statue Park cheat, then after that, the Archives, Depot and Train cheats, which was a throwback to when it took me a zillion tries in 1997-98, but the Invisibility cheat (Archives–you have to beat it on 00 Agent in less than eighty seconds) was kind of an encouragement this time, because it only took about 20-30 tries. It was the Caverns cheat, which requires you to beat the Caverns in 9 minutes and 30 seconds on 00 Agent, that brought me to a standstill for several months. I finally got it about three weeks ago.
I have yet to even set foot in that damn Aztec Temple because as of right now I’m doing just what you described–getting repeatedly killed in the Control Center (on Secret Agent, no less–how bad is 00 Agent going to be? I can’t remember what it was like in 1998) trying to keep Natalya’s dumb slow ass alive. And you have to do the first several minutes of the level with all those drone guns over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It’s really making me want to stop yet again, but I won’t. I knew not to kill Boris, though. However there are all these conflicting answers as to how you’re supposed to protect Natalya. One strategy tells you to go up to the second floor where all you’ll have to do is shoot enemies coming down the stairs from the third floor, but that never works–some doof always busts through the glass walls down on the first floor behind me and nails Natalya! It doesn’t show that happening in the videos I watched! One says that it works better if you stand behind Natalya on the first floor but that’s still really fucking nerve racking. Fuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!! Fuck.

Now for a list of things I did to cheat–i.e., things I had to look up in strategy guides and Youtube videos of people playing GoldenEye 007 because I didn’t remember them from 1998:

1)That you can use a remote mine on the stairs at the beginning of the Facility level to make getting the Invincibility cheat easier (it’s still quite a bitch, though.) This is what I actually did to get the cheat, leading me to wonder how in the fuck I got the cheat back when I was 16 years old. I know I looked up strategy guides in fucking Web 1.0 text form–yikes!! But I can’t remember using any particular strategy to actually get the cheat, which is made far worse than the Invisibility cheat because Dr. Doak could be in one of eight places to give you that door decoder.
2)That you need to strafe to the right a bit when you open the door and shoot Xenia through Trevelyan at the end of the Train level to even beat the level on 00 Agent (it buys Natalya time to hack that computer), let alone get the cheat.
3)That you only need to open the door and hear Natalya say “James!” in the Archives level to free her–she will miraculously break free of her captors without you even seeing it!
4)That there’s a bunch of hidden stuff at the beginning of the Streets level (the tank level) behind walls when you go to talk to the Robbie Coltrane character
5)That you can get past the drone guns guarding the corridor at the end of the Caverns level by zooming back a couple steps, kneeling, and aiming upwards to shoot them, they won’t know you’re there.
6)That you can make fighting Trevelyan on the Antenna Cradle at the end easier on higher difficulty levels by peeking around the stairwell he’s waiting at the end of and popping him in the head with a shot.

It is, of course, little to no fun whatsoever to actually play the game’s levels using most of the cheats–really the only ones I’m personally interested in are All Guns and Infinite Ammo, and even now I’m not going to spend much time doing that, because I want to move on to other games, I started this GoldenEye replay project in October of 2024. (Playing the levels with invisibility is just plain fucking dumb, not fun at all.) But just as OCD will compel me to master shitloads of Materia in Final Fantasy VII even though the game isn’t actually terribly challenging at all and you don’t need them, I’ll sure as hell do all of this GoldenEye shit.

The level I actually seemed to have the most fun playing this time is, for some reason, the Frigate level, I like sneaking up on those hostage situations. I really nailed this on 00 Agent the first time around. That felt good. I wish the plain Shotgun (not the Automatic from the Statue Park level) was available in an actual level and not just the All Guns cheat.

Here’s the better way to get the Invincibility cheat:

And here’s the supposedly better way of protecting dumbass Natalya…really, I swear to God they must not be playing this on an N64, the frame rate is too good.