Mark

With last weeks look at the 8-bit and 16-bit era Bond games behind us I’m turning my attention to the games released in the decade between 1997 and 2007 and, despite the advances in hardware, licensed software still hasn’t gotten much better.

Unless it’s this…

Before this was released, console first person shooters (to be referred to as FPS’s from here on in) where always seen as a bit of a joke. Sure there where conversions of FPS classics like Wolfenstein or Doom but without the mouse and keyboard control scheme it just didn’t fell right. Goldeneye changed all that and is still seen by many to be the best console FPS ever made. Why? Well let’s start with the aforementioned controls with the default control scheme that mapped every control or move you could ever want all onto the N64 pad with a simple button press or toggle almost eliminating control error induced death. Then there’s the game itself, a beautifully balanced challenge that even when completed has replay value thanks to added mission objectives and extra levels on harder difficulties.

The single player game is only the tip of this digital iceberg as it came with a multiplayer mode that get regular play even today (and will be at Peowwfest ‘08, have no doubt) along with all manor of fan remakes and map conversions for classics like Facility. More or less perfectly balanced the only down sides being the lack of bot support for players who couldn’t get three mates around a TV and the need for a gentleman’s agreement to not use Oddjob or to place proximity mines on the collectable crates.

I could (and might if there’s enough interest) write a whole feature just about this game as the impact it has was HUGE with it even taking more money than the film it was based on! This along with Super Mario 64 *spit* basically saved Nintendo back in the mid nineties from total Sony domination and has yet to be bettered by even the company who made it with direct and non direct sequel alike falling short of the sky high standards it set.

Authenticity: 5
Gameplay: 5

Now this might have been made just to cash in on the success of Goldeneye or it might just be that Nintendo wanted to milk the Bond licence for all its worth, its not to clear but despite all that what it is today is JAZC or ‘just another Zelda clone’ The plot is laughable and the gameplay as shallow as you’d expect from a licensed game with a complete lack of Bond style thrills and spills and an overabundance of talking to boring characters to find a tiny clue about how to proceed while performing tedious fetch and carry missions interspersed with combat so bad you wouldn’t even see it in a Godfrey Ho movie.

Just to give you an idea of how bad things are, here’s how the first stage plays: talk to fisherman who needs a hammer to fix a bridge so you can cross, talk to every identical looking character around until you find the one guy who can tell you where the secret passage is to get to the safe which you can open by finding a key which can… and so on and so on. The combat that breaks up all this coffee housing consists of holding the block button until the enemy attacks and is blocked then tapping punch before blocking the next attack and so on and so on until enemy one of three on this screen is defeated.

Now in playing all these Bond games I’ve had to endure some dross like View to a Kill’s rubber cars or Licence to kill’s insane on foot controls but this game is by far the most boring, flawed and downright shitty game in the series ever made.

Authenticity: 1
Gameplay: 1

Thinking about it James Bond 007 on the Gameboy might not be the worst Bond game ever made given the shear shittyness of this entry in the series. Switching to a third person camera should make it easier to navigate compared to a first person camera given that you can look over obstacles and around corners but here moving Bond around is akin to driving a very slow tank stuck in second gear with Marty Feldman aiming you automatic targeting for you. Bond refuses to run and strafe in a straight line leading to you getting stuck on scenery and getting shoot which stuns him for a second meaning he gets shot again and so on until the enemy has to reload leaving you at the mercy of the auto-targeting which more often than not refuse to lock-on unless your practically touching him.

Nowadays third person controls are pretty standard with you using one analogue stick for movement and one for aiming but here it’s a strange mix with the shoulder buttons being used for strafing and a very unintuitive inventory system that will often having you scrolling through useless items before finally getting to the important stuff like weapons and med kits. Following the plot of the film loosely it starts of with you having to infiltrate a terrorist arms bazaar before becoming ensnared in Elliot Carvers plans to sell some more dodgy satellite channels in China, a task far simpler if he’d taken the C5 route and just put some soft-core porn on every night after eleven.

I won’t bother to talking about the non run and gun sections as they’re just as incompetent with the skiing section epically bad or even the liberal use of FMV taken from the game as it only serves to remind you how much better your time would be spent if you’d just watched the DVD rather than playing this lemon.

Authenticity: 3
Gameplay: 0

More franchise milking here with this entry being composed entirely of driving sections inspired by the various car chases and vehicular action in the Bond franchise. Things start off well with Basil Fawty… sorry Q telling you how to drive the good old Aston Martin DB9 and use its different gadgets like machine guns, missiles, smoke screens, nitro etc. Later levels have you bombing (literally) around New York before moving on to Louisiana, Mexico and Eastern Europe.

The driving engine handles well with most of the cars having a good felling of weight and the different gadgets all having a useful function despite having to be constantly scrolling through them to get the one you need as the game always selects the last one you collected despite how inappropriate it might be. It didn’t do to well on release and even today it fells like a series of levels taken from other games strung together than a standalone game but compared to most of the EA Bond games it fares better than most.

Authenticity: 2
Gameplay: 3

After seeing Tomorrow Never Dies go down in flames, developer Black Ops went back to a first person perspective for their second (and thankfully last) Bond game this time based on film nineteen. Of course with such a move it brings the inevitable comparisons to Goldeneye on the N64 and sure enough if falls far short of Rare’s near definitive entry. The most noticeable is how stiff and angular everything looks and fells from rigid controls that fell more digital than analogue to the angular character model designs and boxy level layouts. The levels follow the film’s plot very well with early missions taking place in Spain and London before moving east to Russia and finally Turkey for the submarine finale, although the PS1 version is missing a few stages compared to the N64 version.

For those players lucky enough to have the N64 version there was also a multiplayer mode complete with bot support for solo players and anyone wanting to practice. But just like the single player game it sadly falls far short of the standards set by Goldeneye. Just like TND before it and most Bond games after it TWINE was obviously made to turn a profit rather than to stand as its own game and no amount of FMV and actor likenesses can change that.

Authenticity: 3
Gameplay: 2