In this day and age, many indie games use “Remember the thing?” as their main hook even if the nostalgia-fuelled gameplay ends up feeling miserable, and while the GoldenEye-inspired FPS Agent 64: Spies Never Die wears its influences proudly, there’s more to it based on my time with its Steam demo. Soon, we’ll be able to play the full thing.

After several delays – it was meant to launch in 2022 at one point – and a worrying amount of silence from solo developer Replicant D6 at times, it’s been confirmed the game will release 11th August on PC via Steam. To celebrate the announcement, a new trailer full of silenced headshots, judo chops, and even split-screen multiplayer has dropped:

If you’d rather experience this 007-influenced throwback to 1990s shooters on console, we’ve been told ports are coming, but the timing is classified. Regardless, the description on Steam is promising local co-op and player-versus-player action on the same machine on top of the usual online options.

Even more impressive is the inclusion of cheats and custom modes built into the experience at launch, with no need for paid DLC to enjoy Agent 64 in different ways. “Relive the glory days of gaming and create custom lobbies with 70+ nostalgic cheats and gritty modifiers like Big Heads, Melee Disarms, slow bullet speeds, and random weapon changes in Paradox Mode,” the press release states.

The prospect of a GoldenEye revival that isn’t yet another refresh of the classic 007 game is exciting on its own, yet my time with the latest demo – which gives players a serious taste of Agent 64’s 14-mission campaign – proves it’s way more than a simple refresh of the licensed title. The aiming is snappier, the levels are more sprawling, and there are subtle but welcome quality-of-life additions to the shooting and movement which feel heavily influenced by other ancient FPS titles like the original Turok games and even Valve’s first Half-Life. There’s a lot of love for the genre as a whole there, and I think it’s what might ultimately separate this one from the chaff.

Looking for a more modern spy adventure that’s classy all the same? We thought 007: First Light was pretty good: “It utterly sells you on IO’s decision to give you their Bond rather than your Bond. Hence why I say that First Light is a fifteen-hour long bluff.”