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Doing some more bonding... The sixth James Bond outing is easily one of the better ones. Using a third-person dimension opens up new doors for the designers at EA and MGM and it allows them to do things that they wouldn't have been able to accomplish in the more confined world of the FPS dimensions. What we have here is a really good game that falls inches short of greatness.
The story is one of the better ones since Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein lended his creative energies for this Bond game. The story is a little convulted at first, but it quickly starts to fit together. Max Zorin (A View to a Kill) has a protege named Nikolai Divaolo who wants to take over Europe using nanotechnology as a weapon that can destroy just about any military hardware. Divaolo stages a kidnapping and lures Bond all over the world from Russia to New Orleans to Peru. The story does go on too long, which is a problem the movies have, but it manages to tell a good basic story and it keeps the Bond formula very much alive. Feirstein gets high props for this one.
Graphically, the game is a real winner. The dimensions are very real and so are the textures. James Bond looks like Pierce Brosnan, and that is a very good sign. The cities look pretty close to home to what you would see in a Bond movie and there is plenty of exoticism to the whole thing, giving it an added layer of realism. Pop-up is only a minor issue here.
The controls reminded me a lot of Syphon Filter. I had a little trouble at first with the basic configuration, but after a while I got the hang of it and I was shooting bad guys dead with no problems at all. Crouching and wall hugs play a major factor into the stealth component and the aiming is really easy. Maybe a little too easy, but it keeps you from getting shot all over the place. Moving from item to item can take a while and it can cause some cheap deaths. Hit detection is kind of iffy at close range, but it only starts to hurt you at 00 Agent difficulty.
The level design is much stronger because it allows the gamer to play both the action and stealth format seamlessly. You can play as rambo and shoot everything up, or you can take disguises and work your way through the levels as a true spy. The choices are yours and they really add dimensions to the game. Several of the levels are very short, but there are a lot of levels to make up for that. EA really took their time making sure that there were plenty of surprises for this one. It harkens back to Goldeneye in a few ways.
The voice-overs are a mixed bag. Brosnan and Dench are very good as James Bond and M, respectively. John Cleese is uproarious is Q, which is fitting. He gets some real good lines in the game. Heidi Klum does mediocre is Q's assistant. Shannon Elizabeth and Mya are okay, but they really don't throw their all into it, which is a little disappointing, especially for Elizabeth. This could have been a real chance to make a name for herself. Mya does a more credible job singing the memorable theme song Everything or Nothing. Kiel does an okay job as Jaws, but I would have liked to see some dialogue. The one who steals the show in the voice department is Willem Dafoe, who gives a knockout performance as Diavolo. He really makes him a villain that you won't forget too easily with a subtle performance that shows him with plenty of menace. His laugh is a little agitating, but to see Dafoe have a gay old time with this is really pleasant to see and it was good to see him take advantage of this. The sound effects and musical score (24's Sean Callery) really help the game give it more of that old-time Bond feel with mixes of classical Bond music.
The gameplay is very deep across the board. Online actually has some value and so does multiplayer. They're not even close to Goldeneye as far as fun goes, but they do a solid job. The single-player runs a little too long at twenty-seven levels, but most of the levels are pretty short at around four to five minutes a pop. Some are shorter at around ninety seconds. Everything or Nothing is a real pleasant surprise because it really takes advantage of what it has and it allows James Bond to become more real. It still needs some of that old-time panache in the multiplayer, but EA is getting much better at this. -- Chris Vavra, PGNx Media
---- Feb 25, 2004
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