Growing up in the late 60's and 70's, I loved two types of movies - Universal Studios monster movies and James Bond films. Back then (for those of you who don't remember) you couldn't just pick when to watch a movie. You had to peruse the TV Guide (the little one) and mark down when a movie was going to be playing. (I usually opted for circling in red pen.) Then, you'd try to make sure you were in front of the TV when it was on. I always looked forward to Bond movies because they were such great action movies (and my parents let me watch them...I think because dad was a big fan too). Sean Connery was, and still is to me, the best Bond, but I didn't mind Roger Moore after I got used to him.
So, fast forward about four decades...
Along with new Bond's, movies on disc, and, of course, videogames, we can now play the famous agent instead of just pretending with our friend in the backyard with a toy plastic gun. (Let me tell you, those 70's plastic guns were awesome!) There hasn't been a new James Bond game since 2012, but there are a number worth (in my opinion) going back to. Some of these I've played a little of previously, some not at all, and that's why I decided to make a streaming project to get through them. I'm going to keep adding my thoughts on the games here, so check back from time to time, or better yet, follow the progress on my Twitch page,
twitch.tv/chessasaur , and watch the games in action!
007: Agent Under Fire (PS2/2001/EA) Plot: Stop an evil organization from substituting the leaders of the world with clones. Sort of a generic James Bond game - the names are there, as well as the music, but none of the actor's participated. The model for Bond looks like a mutation between Pierce Brosnan and Christopher Reeves. It's probably no coincidence that this is the only console Bond game that doesn't have a recognizable actor on the cover (Rogue Agent not included). Missions 1, 2, and 3 were fairly easy and I got Gold on them without trying. After that, my score began to drop and it became a parade of Silver and Bronze medals. Some levels took me over an hour to complete. Not helping is the fact that this, being an older game, runs on "lives" so if you fail more than 3 times, you are all the way back at the beginning. Mission 7 really got me stuck to the point that I had to look up an FAQ on how to get past the end "boss" - I should have seen the subtle hint to shoot for the train, not the tanks. The driving felt particularly good, almost like a Burnout game, but not as fast. Mission 8 was rough but what I realized while replaying it (over and over) is that these older games made you learn the level more by sending you back to the beginning. Newer games (like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which I'm playing concurrently) just put you back where you died with no real loss of progress. Saves time, but you don't learn as much I think. Mission 9 is best described as Disneyland's Matterhorn ride...with machine guns! Had to look up the FAQ on that one too. Who knew you had to shoot out lights to get a rocket launcher? (It wasn't required but made the last section easier. That part also had a unique fire-and-direct missile segment to send Bloch into a Gollum-esque fall to a pit of lava.) The rest of the game was easier from that point and ended with Bond saving the world's leaders from missile silos. (It was supposed to be the members of the G8 Summit - which would be the G7 now. Thankfully, I didn't have to save Trump.) It was disappointing that the game ended with no final cut-scene or even credits. Since it just went back to the mission select screen, I had to check the FAQ to see if there were more missions. Overall though, it was a very enjoyable game - a lot like Goldeneye, but better.
007: Nighfire (PS2/2002/EA) Plot: Evil genius fronts as a company that safely cleans up nuclear reactors, while instead taking the materials, making his own missiles, and then taking over the world. At first I didn't think this game had the classic Bond music, but I was happy to hear it was there; they just mixed in some generic Bond-ish music for variety. This time there's a realistic model of Pierce Brosnan's Bond, and the cut-scenes are considerably improved over AUF. There's even a short Bond song/music video to start the game. In addition, thankfully, there aren't a set number of "lives" when playing levels - you can keep playing from checkpoints. It is really a shame that they didn't get Brosnan to do some voice work (it wouldn't have taken long - not many lines). The "actor" they got didn't sound much like him. One thing I was impressed about in Nightfire was the variety of level design. There are a lot of newer games that just reuse the same mechanics over and over in different settings (Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, I'm looking in your direction). I've gone from stealth missions to driving missions to sniper missions to an underwater mission that reminds me of the Lotus-sub sequence from The Spy Who Loved Me! Then it ended with Bond armed with a laser gun in a zero-g mission outside a space station. There have been a couple of glitches - some dialog at the beginning of the "Deep Descent" mission didn't make any sense (for the PC version, maybe?) and I got to what should have been the next segment of the "Countdown" mission, but the event wouldn't trigger until I kept hitting the Action button around the bottom of the wall. Nothing too bad. When the game was over and before the credits ran, I got to see a brief live action feature about the team that made the game. Nice touch. I think more games should do that.
GoldenEye 007 (N64/1997/Rare) I was originally going to skip this generation of games - I mean, haven't people seen enough of GoldenEye? Well, apparently not. My chat during streams almost always had someone say I should have started with this one. So, after some miscellaneous finagling (including the installation of an obscure sound plugin for Project64 that seemed to fix a graphics issue as well, and changing settings so OBS would play nice) I've decided to go back and tackle GoldenEye. I did play some back in "the day" (ie, on a real N64 probably around 1999), but never finished it. I think I stopped on the mission that takes you back to the Siberian radar station. I didn't feel like doing that level again. Ultimately, I have decided to at least put this one on hold. I'm just not enjoying the experience after all these years. My hats off to anyone who can still play this today. (No, seriously, my hat is sitting here next to me on the desk. Really.)
007 Tomorrow Never Dies (PS1/1999/EA) I tried this for about an hour, running it on a PS3 and I could tell that it wasn't going to get any better. It's not a bad game, but after so many years of 3rd person shooter development, it's just very hard to go that far back. And the faces look like paper masks stretched over coffee cans.
007 The World is Not Enough (N64/2000/EA) While I do have this one in original cart form, I decided to try it via emulation in the same way I did Goldeneye. Unfortunately, the gameplay wasn't much better than Goldeneye. Going to put this one aside as well.
From Russia With Love (PS2/2005/EA) My original plan had been to play the Bond games in order of their release, but I jumped ahead to play this one in honor of Sir Sean Connery, who passed away on October 31, 2020. The fact that the game includes the likeness and voice of Sir Sean is only slightly marred by the unavoidable issue that 40+ years has changed his voice from a young man to a serious Scottish brogue, so you end up with a young Bond who sounds like Dragonheart. Gameplay does a pretty good job of following the movie - Bond is tasked with acquiring a Soviet encryption machine, the Lektor, before SPECTRE Octopus can get it and hand it over to Blofeld Goldfinger. (Rights to "SPECTRE" and "Blofeld" were held by producer Kevin McClory. This was an issue with the movies too.) In general, this was an enjoyable game - not too padded out, with some pretty decent character models for the PS2 era. The Bond Focus wasn't very useful (the one in Quantum of Solace was better implemented), but it was one way to earn points to "buy" things like video features. There was a
Overuse of the jet pack (which was from Thunderball, not FRWL)
Red Grant gets run over by a train but makes an appearance at the end.
Last mission was taken from Thunderball - Octopus threatens to use stolen nuclear weapon if not paid 100 million pounds.
Everything or Nothing
Quantum of Solace (PS3,PS2,PS3)
Blood Stone
