James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire

"007 oddly enough only deserves a 7.00"

You've Played Goldeneye, and The World is not Enough, and you even thought Perfect Dark was a good shooter. Does Agent Under Fire carry the legacy for Gamecube? Read on...

Story-
Agent Under Fire doesn’t come from any one bond film but more like a bunch of movies all thrown together. You got tank driving from Goldeneye, you got a sub from TWINE (no I’m not going to spell out the whole thing again) and many other films too. Your first mission has you setting out to save a CIA agent who was captured in Hong Kong, and the game just keeps adding more stuff from there. Once in a while ''R'' will give you a new toy to play with that is really absolutely useless except for that one time that you have to use it.

Gameplay-
Controlling Bond is like trying to drive your car on snow. You get the feeling that you could be going faster if it weren’t for the crappy conditions on the road. Well replace road with pre-set controls. There are actually 4 different sets of controls but I hate every one of them so you’re pretty much better off learning to use the first set. For some bizarre reason EA thinks it has to use EVERY SINGLE BUTTON on the controller. So you find yourself in the middle of a gun fight only to have accidentally hit another button and now instead of shooting your big rocket launcher you now are trying to kill the bad guy with a Q remote (Don’t even get me started about the ''Q'' Laser). On the subject of ''Q-stuff'' You are practically overloaded with ''Q-objects''. Q-Jet pack, Q-boast, Q-grapple, I’m sure after bond had a busy day he takes some Q-aspirin for his Q-headache. The worst part about Q-crap is once you pick something up you never get rid of it. So even if the mission doesn’t need a laser you still have it on you, which becomes a problem if you have to scroll through 15 different items to find the thing you want.

Of course there is some redeeming qualities for Agent Under Fire. I’m talking about the driving mission. These missions either have you sticking out of a Tank or car or something and you have a big o'le gun and you take out enemies. Or you drive around and take out enemies by your lonesome with a big o'le gun.

Graphics-
Agent Under Fire has a love/hate relationship going on with this. The graphics themselves look very good. I mean when a car explodes it looks good. When you run over a Hydron it sprays water everywhere, and when you take out a flammable train it blows up everything. The models of the people, buildings and cars all look good but Its nothing you haven’t seen before (some of the people remind me of Half-Life on the PC). The animations are a different story though. Remember Goldeneye on N64? You shot you PP7 and zoom, the only thing you saw was the hole in the wall or a guy falling over dead. Your shots were fast and dangerous. In Agent Under Fire, its like everything you shoot has a tracer. Every gun acts like it’s a flipping peashooter. This also brings ''Bullet Time'' to a whole new level, Because I almost think you can out run the bullets in this game. The animations are clunky.

Sound-
You got your famous bond them playing everywhere (especially when you do something with a cut scene). Some of the music fits the mood in the game. Sneaking in to some place you got that slow eerie music going on. Fighting a tough villain and you get the ''tough villain music''. Of course everyone simply has to talk in this game. Bond looks like Pierce Brosnan, but sounds like Sean Connery (a little odd wouldn't you say?).

Replay-
Well I’m not so sure you will want to play the 1-player mode more then a few times even with all this ''Earn lots of points get gold medals and unlock a gun''. It simply isn’t very fun to keep dying, do to bad controls. But along as everyone can’t figure out their controls then Multiplier should be equal. There are a lot of Multiplayer options ala Halflife; Terrorist, Counter Terrorist, Capture the flag, Fragging, and everyone favorite, things one the screen that can kill you (like moving trains). If you can get past the controls you will probably have a good time.

The Final Tally:
Story: 7 (The story is a little hard to follow with everyone dying and new people popping up)
Gameplay : 5 (My grandma moves faster then Bond)
Graphics : 7 (Nice explosions but nothing you haven’t seen before)
Sound : 7 (Nothing the N64 didn't do)
Replay : 7 (If you can convince your friends to get over the control problems then you could probably have some fun)
Final Score : 6.5
GameFaqs Score 7

Sidenotes:
I know no game will ever match Rare's Masterpiece ''Goldeneye'' but come on EA. The Gamecube is twice as powerful as the N64 and there should be no excuse for the hideous control scheme. I can only recommend this game to serious bond fans only. Everyone else would be better off renting.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/16/02, Updated 03/16/02