James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire

"Probally shouldn't have been Bond..."

James Bond, 007 Agent Under Fire is the first 007 game released on the next gen' systems, Gamecube, Xbox, and Playstation 2. Now, I'll be putting the fact that I am writing this review about 6-7 years after the game was release and the fact that we have the "new next-gen" systems out (Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3), and write this review on my experiences years back when I first started playing it.

I played both the N64 James Bond games, Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough. The first thing I'll do, is make a comparison to the real James Bond, A.K.A, the movie Bond. Goldeneye and TWINE are, I'm sure you know, both movies, and both got remade into games. In my opinion, the transition was done quite well and it worked out just fine. Goldeneye, compaired to TWINE, was longer, but had choppier graphics, no speech, and a faceless Bond. TWINE, on the other hand, had much better and smoother graphics, along with speech that was not only believable, but Bond sounded like Bond. He even sported a believable face. Both these games did well on the market, but I feel Agent Under Fire was pretty dang flawed.

The first thing you will notice about Bond, is that he looks like NONE of the actors. I actually did look at the 5 different movie actors, then compared them to AUF's Bond, and no connections, except you could say it's kind of like Roger Moore and Sean Connery put into a blender, topped off with George Lazenby, and despite that "sounding" Bondish... Trust me, it's not pretty. His voice, well, it's more or less like a French person trying to do a British accent. And what makes it worse, is that half way through the game; he actually looses his accent, then gets it back near the end (Sounds a lot like Carlos Olivera from Resident Evil 3). Personality wise... Well, he "acts" like Bond I guess, but I noticed there was an extreme lack of "beautiful women" in AUF. I think there was a total of... One. Yep. One. How un-007ish. Sure, he hits on her every now and then, then near the end, you get a one second scene suggesting you-know-what is about to happen, but it's so out of place and corny, it wasn't even funny. It was a scrunch-up-your-face-and-think "Wow that was lame" moment. That's not Bond. That's... A stand in...

But Bond not being Bond aside, let's move to the #1 aspect of any game; game play. It's a first person shooter, like the 007 games before it. You get to choose your difficulty, which is operative, agent, and double agent, which in other words, is easy, normal, and hard. On easy and normal, you get boatloads of ammo, weapons everywhere, and it's easy to get rewards, and enemies that you can head shot with ease, but can somehow take 8 shots to the chest without dying (weird), as well as a small amount of enemies in a specific room. However, in the all-impossible double agent (hard) mode, you get... Boatloads of ammo, weapons everywhere, and enemies that you can head shot with ease, but can somehow take 8 shots to the chest without dying (weird), as well as a small amount of enemies in a specific room. Do you see the difference? The only difference between the difficulties is how easy it is to get rewards. That's about it... Maybe one or two new enemies, and as if the game wasn't unrealistic enough that some enemies can take headshots without dying, amount of ammo it takes to kill one bad guy is 'probally' (meaning if it's true, it's really not all the noticeable) increased. Enemies, in any difficulty, can take about 10 shots to the chest before dying. Some enemies can take headshots and just flinch. And then there's the "super-over-powered-henchmen" that can only be killed in certain events of the sorts, which in it's own little way is lame. One "boss" is a girl wearing green. I took a sniper, shot her 3 times in the head, and nothing happened... The heck? How is that possible? Only way to kill her is to "lure" her to a special area where you can push her into a vent of sorts. Other than that, she's pretty damn immortal and bullet proof. So, with the ability of carrying an entire armory in your pocket, ammo everywhere, and god-like enemies, the game play is lacking in the realism department, and has taken a nosedive.

The story is so corny and ridiculous, I couldn't believe it when I finally uncovered it. From the words of an evil person, the story is basically "I'm gonna use my evil clones to take over the world! AAAHAHAHAHAHA *thunder bolts*". Don't ask, that's enough said already.

The voice acting for Bond was done by... Mmmmm, someone else. I don't know who. I don't want to know, because if I found out, I'd probably do something mean to that person. What I do know, is that all "British" accents in this game are fake. Is anything real in this game? The voice acting for the main antagonist, which is a woman *gasp*, works well with the "I'm gonna use my evil clones to take over the world! AAAHAHAHAHAHA *thunder bolts*" line. She has the voice acting of a comic book's antagonist, and that is worsened by the fact that she has VERY unintelligent lines and is most definitely not very intimidating at all. The rest of the actors range from average to bleh. M, the briefer, whom you never actually get to see, has a weird computery voice. Bond's gadget maker in the game (Can't remember if it's "Q" or "R"... I don't think it really matters) has a "bleh" kind of voice. And the "beautiful woman" has a manly voice... Creepy.

The music in this game is just plain off. The "exciting" battle music is basically a techno remix of church music. I'll let you figure that out for yourself. The other alternative music to that is a stealth-like music, which is sounds like echoes in a tunnel and computers mixed to a beat. Again, I'll leave that to your imagination. I could suggest you to turn the music off completely, but... Well, if you do that, you won't be able to hear your enemies, and trust me, you're going to NEED to hear them. Otherwise, you're going to get shot from who knows where and you won't even know. And enemy will shout and completely give away their position BEFORE they try and kill you. And I suppose that's one good thing about the sound, is that it does give you a good idea of the position of something, but that's all it's good for. Guns make a weird, and not to mention cute "pew pew pew" sound when fired, foot steps don't match the environment you're walking on, and background noise is so jumbled and computer generated poorly. Sound is a major turn off, but if you turn it off, you'll probably die. How awful.

When you watch the opening scene for the first mission, you'll probably say "Wow, that's good graphics". 5 minutes later, everything will look like a bunch of boxes taped together, or like paper. Things like alarms and switches on the walls; from far away, they look nice. Close up, they look like flat paintings on the wall. No detail, no bulk, just paper taped to a wall with a red dot in the middle and word "alarm" scribbled over it. Furniture is blurry, blocky, and lacks detail, there is only a VERY small variaty of enemies, and, in short, everything looks terrible up close. How rushed looking...

The game also has it's share off glitches, and "off" things. For instance, in cut scenes, "Bond's" (that's Bond in quotation marks, as in indicating sarcasm) hand will go right through ropes, gadgets, railing, walls, you name it. In one scene where he's climbing down a rope, he's not even touching it, other than one point where his hand somehow goes right through it. Glitches include some parts where you can magically go through objects, and in a couple parts, through walls and hurling into glitchy nothingness. Things just aren't right in this game...

In conclusion, I will just say, this game should've been something else. By something else, I mean, not 007, not Bond. It should've been just a stand-alone new game of it's own. Instead, we got something that could've hurt the Bond games altogether if it weren't for Nightfire in all it's gloryness. Rent this game if you must, that is, if it's still possible to see on a shelf ANYWHERE this day. Otherwise, don't bother. You won't be missing much anyways.

Presentation: 5/10
Graphics: 2/10
Story: 2/10
Gameplay: 3/10
Sound/Music/Voice: 2/10
Final Score (not average): 2/10

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 12/25/07

Game Release: James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire (US, 03/13/02)