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March 26, 2004 -
Shaken, not stirred. Well, I finally got fed up with Mr. Bond, so I had him executed by Solid Snake. For all of you that haven't gotten your greedy little Brosnan-loving hands on it yet, James Bond: Everything or Nothing is worth a rental, but nothing more. The first few missions will wow and amaze you. "It's really him!" you'll shout at the closest person doing homework. After scanning your memory card and finding no data, the loading screens phase flawlessly into that random opening Bond mission that begins practically every recent movie, having no particular bearing on the rest of the story, but still managing to be quite interesting. Then you see the cutscenes, complete with digitized Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, John Cleese, Willem Defoe... (deep breath) ... Shannon Elizabeth, Heidi Clum, Mya, and others. It really is quite amazing... until you get past the initial campaign. You see, you begin to realize that despite the fact that James Bond claims to be a spy for the British government, there's absolutely nothing stealthy about him. He walks into a room with all the elusiveness of an atom bomb. Upon glancing at some of the previous movies, this horrible fact dawned on me. He had charm -- oh god, does he, even in the game. Sex about every other line, as expected. But then, the action? He's discovered at every turn, and you realize that, much like the movies, this game's sole purpose is for you to shoot people. Lots... and lots... of stupid people. There's no other interactivity in this game other than shooting a gun, ducking behind something for cover, pushing a button or using your gadgets. The story is not lacking, but it's hardly ever-present with the overbearingly consistent gunfights, where the controls are shaky. The lock on feature surrounds your target with a bracket, and a single red dot in the center. If your target was crouched, but his head were visible, you could use another analog stick to move the red dot higher, and thus, shoot him in the head. Hurray for interactivity. That's the end of it in this game. The controls themselves are somewhat shaky, and the movement is nowhere near as smooth as, say, the Metal Gear Solid series (Gamecube & PS2... and X-Box, now, apparently). The graphics are stunning, but mostly just for character models. The actual environments are nothing above ordinary; they are done well, just not amazing. Music? Well... it's Bond. Expect to hear the Bond theme every 8.6 seconds. Literally. As I mentioned before, the cutscenes are adequate, but this doesn't feel like a spy game as much as Mission Impossible, Metal Gear, or Splinter Cell. This is more of a...slow Resident Evil, without dead people. Or, walking dead people. ... you know what I mean. In the aforementioned spy games, you are often delighted with in-mission cutscenes to advance the storyline. In Bond, half the time, I'm not entirely sure why I've traveled into a new location. There are cutscenes before a chapter, or after, but they are often too short. The voice acting is phenominal, and everything you'd expect from a Bond movie, but this game just didn't live up to my expectations. Not to mention, for some reason, the controls were giving me motion sickness and migraines, which is extremely rare for me, although there is a short list of probably 3-5 games that have ever done that to me. Regardless, I'd probably rate Bond 7/10, with bonus points for the voice acting and character modeling, but lower scores for actual gameplay value. If the single crowd-drawing feature of your every mission is just shooting people, I'll play Devil May Cry 2, where it looks, flows, and feels 50 times cooler. - Don
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Master Biscuit