Overall: 4/5

“What is your name?” “Bond. James Bond.” It has to be one of the most famous lines in all of movie history. It was certain that this extremely popular series of movies be translated into console games. Although I haven’t played it, I hear Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 is THE definitive Bond game. I can’t say whether that is true or not, but I do know that EA Games’ latest entry, Nightfire is pretty damn good looking and fun to play too. This installment of the Bond saga pits him against Rafael Drake, a well-respected industrialist whose company Phoenix Corp. decontaminates and cleans up old nuclear power plants. Contrary to his benevolent exterior however, Drake is secretly planning to take over the world (but I think we all saw that one coming, didn’t we kids?) That’s where you come in. Bond’s mission, as always, is to stop the bad guy, save the world, and of course, get the girls (but I think that’s kind of assumed, don’t you?) The game is a pretty standard level based first person shooter, where all you see of yourself is your weapon/gadget in front of you.

Ahhh, the gadgets. I could probably write a whole review just on the gadgets Smile The thing about it is that the gadgets aren’t just tacked on as an afterthought, as in “Well, Bond is supposed to have gadgets, so we’ll throw a few in there to make people happy.” In Nightfire, the gadgets are necessary. You have a pretty wide array of super-spy gadgetry at your disposal, including a laser, camera, grappling hook, lock decryptor, low-light sunglasses, and a stunner. In true Bond fashion, all of your gadgets look like something else. For example, your laser is on your wristwatch, your grapple is hidden in a Palm Pilot, your camera is also a lighter (and you can actually flip the lighter open and light it, how cool is that?) and your stunner is hidden on your car key. I could go on and on about the gadgets, I like them so much. I actually felt like Bond when I was using them. But enough about the gadgets, let’s get on with the review, shall we?

I’m going to talk a little about the weapons now because A) I like weapons and B) They’re necessary and cool to use. You start out with your standard issue Wolfram P2K handgun as well as your fists but you can pick up anything your enemies drop, from heavy pistols to submachine guns to rocket launchers. Picking up doubles of any weapon will just add to your ammo for that weapon. Almost every weapon has a laser sight and an alternate fire mode. For example, your Wolfram (and some other guns) can be silenced (and you actually see yourself screwing the silencer on, cool!) On some weapons you can switch between full-auto and semi-auto or between regular and armor-piercing rounds, things like that. In addition to hand-held weaponry, you also get to play with a pretty good array of vehicular mounted weaponry (sometimes you have to drive and shoot and sometimes someone else drives and you just shoot). Just like your personal weaponry, most vehicles have alternate fire modes, usually between guns and missiles. There’s just something cool about speeding around and blowing up cars/helicopters/snowmobiles/planes/submarines with missiles, don’t you think?

Now, about the game itself. Every mission starts out with a CG cut scene which explains your goal for that mission. The cut scenes are pretty well done, including the voices. They didn’t get Pierce Brosnan for Bond’s voice, but the guy they got does an admirable job. Everyone else sounds pretty much like you would expect. The levels are all really large give you a good sense of proportion. I found that there are two ways to play most missions. You can go in guns blazing, or be stealthy and find alternate ways to accomplish goals. Usually the second method is preferable because you can find 007 bonuses (adds to your score) as well as other bonuses such as body armor or ammo. When you finish a mission you get a medal, based on your score. The higher your score, the better goodies you unlock. Goodies include gadget and weapon upgrades, multiplayer levels and skins, and so forth. Ways to increase your score besides the 007 bonuses are to be stealthy, be accurate and accomplish goals using a “Bond move” as I call it. An example would be to sneak into somewhere by jumping in the back of a truck and riding in instead of shooting the guards at the gate. You can also get Bond moves by using Q gadgets on your car at various points through the game. Thankfully for people like me, there are an extensive set of cheat codes you can enter to unlock everything if you don’t want to play through the game multiple times or just aren’t necessarily good at first person shooters (and I’m not). Also, the game does have an auto-aim feature, where your crosshairs will snap-to an enemy when you get close to them. For all you marksmen out there, the feature can be turned off though.

For all its good points though, the game does have a few flaws, albeit minor ones. First and foremost, although the levels themselves are large, the game in itself is fairly short and I think that kind of detracts from it as a whole. Secondly, while I like long and involved levels, there is no way to save your progress inside of a level. If you are in the middle of a difficult mission and want to stop, you either have to play the mission through to the end, or just restart the level over again later. Pretty frustrating especially if you just finish a tough area and want to go to bed (I speak from personal experience here). A way to save anywhere inside of a level would have been a nice addition. All in all, these are the only real flaws to the game but thankfully they don’t flaw it fatally.

Oh, I almost forgot to talk about multiplayer mode. Thanks for reminding me Smile The game has an excellent multiplayer mode which has both cooperative and competitive versions of capture the flag, king of the hill and arena, as well as numerous other missions, ranging from assassination and protection missions to a mission where you must collect all the pieces of the Goldeneye weapon upon which your opponent loses. You can have up to four players and six bots in any scenario, which makes it a good party game, as long as all your friends like Bond. It really adds replay value to the game, at least in my opinion.

So, to sum it all up, I would say if you are into Bondage at all (ha ha....*sigh*) and you don’t get frustrated easily (you can get overrun with enemies on some levels) then you might want to pick this game up. If you’re just a fan of first person shooters, I would probably rent it, but there are better FPS out there for your money.