It‘s been said time in and time out that ever since Goldeneye was released on the N64, no other game based on the secret agent James Bond has been able to even hold a candle up to the masterpiece that was Goldeneye007. After the Bond license was sold to EA, they’ve never really been able to release a James Bond game that could even compete with Goldeneye Their most recent failure in most eyes, Agent Under Fire, came out last year. Actually, there were mostly mixed reactions about Agent Under Fire, some liked it, some didn’t. I was one of those who didn’t, and I thought it was a disgrace.
Well, I’ve always thought that anybody should have a second chance (for some people it goes up to three or four or five). When things started to surface about the next Bond game planned to coincide with the release of the new Bond movie, (Die Another Day) I was actually starting to warm up to EA, because Nightfire was looking mighty fine.
p l o t / s t o r y
Bad guy wants to take over world. James Bond won’t let him. Bond has to save world. Bond meets girl. Bond and girl meet bed. The world is a better place. C’mon people, it’s James Bond, what kind of plot line do you expect?
g a m e p l a y
Considering the major fan base that Goldeneye had under its belt, it’s kind of evident that a lot of people will relate any new James Bond games to it, and usually nothing can compare. In Nightfire, there are 13 missions that take you to different parts of the world in order to restore peace to Earth from bad guys once again. One of the weaknesses in every single James Bond game released after Goldeneye is that there aren’t nearly as many missions as Goldeneye, and none have yet to reach the caliber of Goldeneye, in that there is an incredible amount of replay value.
Anyway, completing each of the 13 missions will further your progress into the “plot”, and depending on what you did during the mission, you’ll receive a rating that rates your accuracy, the amount of stealth you used, how many 007 “stunts” you pulled off, etc. EA (once again trying to fill the giant boots left by Goldeneye) tried (keyword: tried) to add a little bit of spice to the gameplay in Nightfire. This was attempted by adding 007 “stunts”, or moves that would mirror what James Bond would do in the movies (such as blowing up a pair of barrels to blast away a bunch of guards). This would have been a rather cool feature, had EA not made it part of the ranking system (meaning you have to do a certain amount of them to get perfect points for that part of the ranking), and had they not made them so damn hard to figure out. I mean, you’d think that it’d be easy to spot a situation that could be handled in a way that James Bond would handle it himself… However a lot of times you’re forced to search for that to happen, and so it makes getting a perfect rating very hard to achieve.
Like in Agent Under Fire, missions are balanced between controlling Bond himself in the traditional Goldeneye retrospect, and controlling some sort of vehicle so that Bond’s buns can get a little bit of rest. In Nightfire the tried and true vehicle chases are a lot better than those in Agent Under Fire, as EA had a couple of members who worked on Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2’s car model’s and physics. Both the control, look, and feel are all damn near perfect, and the same great Bond gadgets built into the car are at your use once again. The vehicle missions are really fun, however a sacrifice was made in Nightfire: You can’t just switch between the different weapons, gadgets, etc. that are in the vehicle. Instead you are forced to use the specified weapon when they “say” to use it, stuff like that. It’s a totally linear approach to the driving missions, something that I enjoyed the most in AUF and I wish it had continued in Nightfire, and it has; just not executed as well as I wanted it to be. Also the enemies are a LOT easier to kill, and there’s really no challenge to the driving missions.
You really know that EA is desperate at getting new gameplay ideas when there is a mission where Bond’s car turns into a submarine, and you drive through an underwater mission after the first few missions. This actually wasn’t that bad of an idea, but when I actually got to the mission, trying to enjoy it was hard, to say the least.
Most of the missions aren’t that long, but each one is broken into parts. You’ll receive your objectives either when you get to a certain part (the loading screen comes up showing your next objective) or you pass a certain point in the mission (your objective will come up on the screen). Mission objectives range in difficulty level from easy as taking candy from the candy dish, to moderately difficult where you might have to redo that part of the mission once or twice to get past it.
The AI difficulty of the enemies usually rises from mission to mission (sounds about right don’t it? It’d be kind of weird it everything started out hard and got easy...oh wait, a few RPG’s are like that, hmm...), and once again you have the option of choosing three different agent types which make the game a little bit harder for each agent type (there are three, sort of like the Agent, Secret Agent, and 00 Agent in Goldeneye). Even if you’re on the hardest difficulty level, most of the levels are very easy and I’ve yet to encounter any kind of mobs where I’m surrounded with constant gunfire like in Goldeneye (Facility). There are also no “bosses” that have any kind of difficulty to beat (like Xenia from “Jungle” in Goldeneye).
It’s not likely that the secret agent man would go anywhere un-armed, so thankfully you’ll be equipped and have the chance to equip a variety of different weapons, including gadgets from Q that are actually useful this time around (they got used maybe once or twice in AUF). Many of the weapons have returned like Bond’s trademark handgun along with the silencer, an assault rifle, the Finessi Shotgun (still my favorite weapon in any game that has guns), and there are also two new sniper guns, one that’s silenced and one that’s not. When getting in a firefight that involves more than just you and another person, your weapon will fly back in the screen, (depending on your weapon’s recoil) causing you to not be able to see what you’re doing. This creates a greater risk of getting killed because you can’t see what’s going on. The heaviest recoil on any of the weapons was that of the Shotgun, and it has caused me many deaths. I fire and I can’t see anything in front of me because the damn recoil kicks the gun back where I am damn well blind to who I’m shooting at, or who I’m getting shot by and from where. When you’re out in a more open space while this happens, it’s not that bad. When you’re in close quarters such as a Japanese penthouse, it’s almost impossible to see what you’re doing while you’re shooting.
You are encouraged to be Sam Fischer or Solid Snake and hold stealth as your strongest ally, but it’s almost impossible to NOT stir up any kind of action in any of the missions. The stealth rating you get after completing a mission is a bunch of bologna.
Goldeneye didn’t just jump to success by means of the single-player alone. Yes, it was fun, but the multi-player is what lured everyone in to play. I remember many a time ago when I would play almost non-stop at friends houses, taking turns spending the night, staying up all night drinking Mt. Dew and eating cookies, popcorn, etc.; ALL because of the massive multiplayer. In Nightfire, as you complete missions and get higher ratings, you’ll unlock special bonuses in the multi-player such as maps, characters, weapons, and game types, but the multiplayer still falls short because of a lack of any kind of incentive to continue playing. The game types are boring as all get out, and you might be able to stand a round or two with one of your friends, but that’s it.
g r a p h i c s
There is a nice thing to say about EA’s third official attempt to propel James Bond to higher proportions: (Die Another Day was a Playstation exclusive and sucked too, so I don’t count that as an “official” game in the Bond series) and that is that the graphics are slightly better than they were in Agent Under Fire. The character and environment models consist of higher polygon counts than in AUF, however other than some smoother character/environment and weapon models, everything still looks the same as last year with fuzzy looking textures and pop-ups all over the place, and the frame rate still hasn’t been fixed to accommodate another year of time to fix bugs in the predecessor.
I surely wasn’t expecting Xbox caliber graphics (hey, even the Xbox version sucks a bit), nor was I expecting anything Halo or Splinter cell -ish, but damn EA... they’ve had a year to fix everything, and yet the frame rate problems still cease to stop, and now there are other little problems such as minor pop-ups in the backgrounds.
s o u n d
Surprisingly enough, EA took a step forward in at least one department (they certainly as hell didn’t improve in the visuals much), as the audio really captures the James Bond “scene”, especially since EA got the secret agent man himself (Pierce Brosnan) to do the voice acting for James Bond this time around. Now I’m not complaining, but I would have MUCH rather have had Sean Connery come in and voice James Bond’s character, because I still think that Sean Connery rules over all of the James Bond actors.
The music also captures the James Bond essence in that right from the get-go of the game, it starts out like the movies do, in that the trademark of Bond walking out into the middle of a scope and shooting the screen, causing blood to fall down the screen, and then it moves to the beginning of the movie. There’s always a fairly hot action scene that’s happening, and after about 5-10 minutes of the intro, up comes the theme song with the pretty naked ladies dancing to some cool music (A View To A Kill’s theme song is my favorite in case you’re wondering). The always annoying, but addicting James Bond tune still gets cemented into your head, once again causing you to find yourself humming it almost everywhere you go, even in your sleep (hey, I woke up doing it one time, weird? yes).
o v e r a l l
James Bond 007: Nightfire is by no means a bad game, nor is it a great game. It’s a very mediocre title that was released during a strong flow of game releases, but in the James Bond world Nightfire is above average; better than AUF, but still not as good as Goldeneye. Nightfire was released across all 3 platforms (GC, PS2, Xbox), and they’re all identical in almost every way except that the GC version’s frame rate stays at a higher pace and the graphics are a bit smoother than the PS2, and the Xbox controls are a little more fitting. No matter which console you own, Nightfire is a definite rental (as you can get a full week’s enjoyment out of it) because the single-player is short, and the multi-player still sucks.
