Re: How many hours of my life did I spend on this!?
You couldn't jump in Perfect Dark - maybe in the heretical XBox 360 spin off, PD Zero - or are you referring to being able to drop off ledges more readily?
I played Goldeneye to death, got all cheats (Except all weapons, a friend got me that) and just ate it up for over a year near non-stop.
I think both Goldeneye and PD still stand up as one of the best all round FPSs ever released - both multiplayer and single player have withstood over ten years of multiple repeat plays, and mutliplayer is still as frantic and fun as it was on release day - mainly thanks to the excellent controls and staggering variations of play - pick your weapons, your arena, how much auto-aim you get, whether you get crosshairs for manual aiming, time limits, one hit kills, etc.
In that regard, I think it's pretty fair to describe it as the "Doom" moment of the console world - it made console FPSs get real and be taken seriously, as up to that point the phrase 'lacklustre' would describe pretty much all of them. Goldeneye wasn't just the best console FPS at the time, it was the equal of the best FPSs available across all platforms, period.
Steven R