007: Nightfire

The Good
I am a die-hard James Bond fan and so my expectations on this game were high. You can't imagine my joy when I booted this game up and it started right with the Bond eye sequence and then ofcourse the introductory "5 minutes warmup" scene every Bond movie has to have. This scene consists of full motion video sequences (very cool looking!) and player interactivity - first, you need to shoot some enemies from a helicopter and then you need to take over the steering wheel and drive a lady home safe ;) After the intro scene was done, well, what to expect? Yes - there is no Bond movie without the colorful and often weird "women-dancing-with-guns" sequence where the credits are displayed. Sure enough the game sports this and with an original song too!

After user creation, you'll be dropped right into the action. The game consists of three gameplay modes: first person shooter, rail shooter and driving. In the first mission, you need to get into a castle in Austria and steal some chip from the safe, then escape with your fellow woman spy. It's almost dark outside, snow is falling, and the guards are on alert. Here you can use your Bond gear and weapons. You start with the Walther PPK but you'll get a sniper rifle and submachine gun quickly. In this mission, you'll also need to use your watch laser to open a safe and cut some wires (beware: cutting the wrong wires like I did results in alert).

After some shootouts, you'll escape with the female spy in a gondola down the mountain where you'll be attacked by a bad guy in a helicopter. You will need to shoot it down with your rocket launcher ;)

Next on is a railshooter segment where the lady spy is driving a snow mobile down the mountain and James is at the gun, shooting everything that moves. These are very well designed sequences with lots of speed and great full motion video - you feel like you're watching a Bond movie.

The third mode was imported straight from the EA game "Need for Speed" - you need to drive the Bond car and accomplish the given mission.

Most of the sequences will be shooting scenes, but they will be alternated with railshooter and driving scenes so it doesn't get boring. There is always action on the screen, be it hard shooting stuff or tense sneaky intruding into buildings. There also are 10 different locations in various countries.

All movie sequences, be it in game or full motion video, are very nice modelled and of course with full speech. James Bond himself is spoken by the current movie actor Pierce Brosnan.

Ok, so now after all this gibberish I need to tell you what I liked ... well, I liked that it's like a Bond movie. EA didn't do the mistake and waste this license on some stupid shooting game without a proper story, they really put effort into it, wrote a story which is like a typical Bond movie story (crazy dude wants atomic war etc.). They made great movie sequences, used the original actor to speak Bond, created interesting missions with pretty graphics, let you use new and classic gadgets... well - it's a Bond movie! They even designed a sidekick to the bad guy who really looks and talks like Oddjob or his likes, and pretty (!) girls. Even the dialogue is really typical Bond style - on the party in the first mission, the bad sidekick approaches Bond, grinning like a shark, and asks with a threatening voice: "Do you enjoy the party, Sir?" :)

Yes, thank you - I did!

The Bad
The controls are a bit unprecise and the speech is too low - you often can't hear a thing (but there are subtitles). I also found the guards in the first mission were way too dumb - they never even walked around a corner (in later missions they get better though). Also, the sound the guards make are not well positioned - it always sounds like they stand next to you, but they often enough are far away.

The Bottom Line
If you like James Bond movies and action games, it's the one for you! There never was anything more authentic to the original movies than James Bond Nightfire. Hell, there was never a better movie licensed game (apart from Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza, but that was for the PC only I think).

The Good
The shooting mechanics hold up very well because you can choose what kind of controls you want to use. Normally you can just the way you look around in a game (normal or reversed), but here you can actually customize pretty much every button function into the way you like it? Want to feel like you're playing Resident Evil and use A to shoot, well you can. There is also a wide variety of weapons that you can use, ranging from crossbows where you actually need to keep in mind that the arrow will lose height in it's flight to powerful laser technology. Almost every weapons also has a secondary firing mode which mostly means switching between single shots and salvos.

I am sure most people already guessed this, but this is indeed yet another old game I used to play at parties and family gatherings back when I was eleven years old. Is that a bad thing? No, but I sincerely hope we are almost through all of these because they are an ass to review. The multiplayer is really good in this one and in terms of customization it is almost on par with Timesplitters 2. You can meddle with pretty much everything, ranging from what weapons will be available to the very exact behavior used by the AI opponents.

The story mode really does have that special Bond-feel to it, that special feeling you get when you watch the movies too. You are not just playing as James Bond, when you play this game you FEEL like James Bond. Sneaking around the castle, been rewarded for entering through a risky cliff-passage without been detected and cruising around in the Aston Martin Vanquish while explosions happen in the background. It is all just like in the movie, except you are the one triggering it all.

One detail that is rather fun and well implemented are the gadgets that 007 uses. I have played some other Bond games, but most of them limit themselves to the grappling hook only, while this game also has a Laser Watch for sabotage, a micro-camera for zooming in, a stunner for taking out enemies without violence and a decoder that hacks passwords.

The enemy AI is pretty good in both the singleplayer and the multiplayer, though part of it naturally depends on what difficulty you choose and how you configure their behavior (the latter only applies in multiplayer). At the easiest difficulty the game can be completed by a kids (roughly aged between 8 and 12) without too much difficulty, while the higher difficulties can be rather tough and challenging. I also like it that you can determine how the AI will act in multiplayer, you can make him gather all the weapons and ammo he can find, have him focus on priority targets and also set his movement speed and health. All the settings required to craft your own, meaty challenge.

Driving sections occasionally break up the action on-foot in the singleplayer mode and there are even controllable mini-helicopters and tanks that can be used in the multiplayer. The controls for vehicles work pretty well and allow you to use gadgets and built-in weaponry. In multiplayer it also nicely balances out because the vehicles are not very durable and while they do a lot of damage, they leave the user stationary on the spot where they started using them.

The female characters are very pleasing to look at, which is a requirement for everything with the James Bond name on it. You got the opening with the girls dancing with guns too, so that's a check, but the actual ladies hold up pretty well too and actually build-up the sexy. First you got the rather clothed French Intelligence woman whose name I always forget, followed by the rather bland Agent Nightshade who has a taste for good dresses and finally there is the Australian Alura who takes the grand prize due to her wearing an armored bra instead of actual clothes.

The Bad
The story mode is very short and not very interesting to follow, it is mostly a collection of cinematic missions that can be completed in about a day. The characters are not really all that interesting and aside from James Bond himself none of them really seem to put up the performance they should or read from the script that the game deserves. Another little flaw is that the game is often very dictatorial on when you have to use stealth and when you have to go around blasting guns, meaning that sometimes enemies instantly turn around and put bullets in you just because you were in a no-sneak section or that you end up having to retry a mission because you weren't allowed to blow an enemy to pieces.

Talking about retrying, that is probably my biggest problem with the game. Every time you make a mistake that leads to your death or compromises the mission, you will have to do an entire section of the mission all over again. There are some checkpoints along the way, but they are not particularly well distributed, so sometimes I get a checkpoint five minutes after the last and sometimes I need to do an entire two hours without messing up even once.

While the multiplayer is pretty good, this game can be easily overlooked due to the huge amount of high-quality shooters with a singleplayer and multiplayer. I admit having fun with the game, but it's rather standard compared to Timesplitters 2, Freedom Fighter, XIII and Halo: Combat Evolved. It has gadgets, yes, but it doesn't really do enough to shine. Strip away the James Bond theme and all you'd be left with is a very bland action game.

The Bottom Line
Let's go over some other business real quick first: I tried Need for Speed 2 and Shadow of the Colossus. NfS sucks due to insane pop-in, too many loading screens and poor driving mechanics and Shadow of the Colossus is on hold until I am mentally prepared to go through a game that only had Japanese voices.

With that said: Nightfire is a pretty nice game to still have around. It is a functional shooter that lives up to the License it's part of and the multiplayer is rich with content due to customization and entertaining gameplay. There are some flaws though, mostly related to the story mode, but these are not big enough to completely ruin it for me (though it does diminish the joy entirely from time to time).

If you're a fan of 007 then this game is good enough to warrant a purchase, if you and your friends like competitive multiplayer shooters with a nice twist to them, then the same story applies for you too. However, if you are not a Bond fan and not particularly moist about multiplayer shooters this game likely won't cut it for you. Also, if you're a nostalgic adolescent/grown-up then get this game right away, because I had fun with it again and you will likely have the same too =)

The Good
| The Name is James, Bond James |
From the very start, this games hooks you up as FMV opening sets a unique theme song and as the game starts, you see a typical "James Bond shooting atcha" screen and the story opens with a dynamic action sequence. Being my first and currently the only James Bond game in my collection, I'll put aside my personal feelings for EA and keep getting these games if they keep making them this good, and this James Bond alike. The plot is different yet so perfect for James Bond universe, it has all you need to it, women, loads of badguys, a madman, and secret agent, and captures the essence of James Bond in the best possible sense you could imagine.

| Ready 2 Rumble |
This is basically a FPS (first-person shooter) with some huge exceptions. Aside from regular weapons you may find in other shooters, there are Q's gadgets that James Bond could do without, plus you get to drive Aston Martin (it'll probably be BMW in next one) with explosive Need4Speed experience. But that ain't the only vehicle, you'll drive heavily armored battle jeep, submarine version of your car, or be at a gunman point of a snowmobile or a small plane with, duh, woman at the driving seat. When you're on foot, you can only play in first-person view, though some actions will trigger third-person view automatically (e.g. cable walking), but when in your car you'll be able to switch between first-person and third-person view on the fly. Engine works splendid and graphic and sound effects are top notch as well as James' humorous responses.

| Bond 2 the MAX |
On the fun side, you'll never get bored or see just more of the same, each mission will be unique experience and with extraordinary quality of speed of visuals and dynamics on the screen. There will be stunts like you could only expect to see in James Bond movie, like driving snowmobile through the Alpes and jumping off the cliff and right through the pursuing chopper, or driving a car right through the restaurants due taking the shortcut. This game has a hype that'll live up to your expectations, whether just an action fan or James Bond fan in general, this is something you gotta love to try.

The Bad
Not much, perhaps it might've been a little longer, but when you spot all the details it has, you just take it as one of those masterpieces that end up being short because it simply takes time to make even the slightest level with such quality.

The Bottom Line
| The Game That Injected Me Some Hope About Electronic Arts |
You can forget about watching any James Bond movies after getting this game. It gives you more time to enjoy than a movie, and has better plot than most of James Bond movies, takes you to more exotic locations, and gives you plenty of scenes to let you believe you're being a renowned secret agent himself in the movie of top quality. I used to love James Bond movies as a kiddo, but kinda lots the touch for them a few years ago. This game I actually bought as it was on a special discount. Luckily, I never imagined it could achieve this level of amazement and perfection, and ensure my step back in the world of James Bond series. The reason I liked this one so much may perhaps be it's very similar to Moonraker, the second best JB movie I've seen (first one is The Living Daylights), and the voice actor that gave voice to James Bond fits perfectly, I could barely notice it isn't Pierce Brosnan, since character model is made after him. This is not just a game, nor an interactive movie, this is a true experience which I can hope will be followed by equal in quality series, and not just give-us-more-money-'cos-we're-EA sequels.