James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire

"Girls, Guns, and Gadgets, Oh My!"

Summary: James Bond makes yet another appearance on A Nintendo system and while not quite in the same veins as Goldeneye, it's still manages to be a very fun and enjoyable game.

Gameplay: 7/10 - Yes it's true that this game plays very little like GE and more like TWINE, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The game revolves around a made-up story in the JB universe. Most of the Bond games have used a movie plot to revolve around but EA takes it in a different direction this time. There are MANY new and interesting characters this time around such as Bloch (the bad guy)The Asian twins, Bella and Bebe, and even our regulars such as Agent R, taking place of the Late Agent Q (I'll miss that guy). There are about 12 Missions You go through. In the FP missions you must use stealth and brute force to defeat the enemy, while also having the game acknowledge and award you points for going about doing things the ''James Bond'' way. It's just something new and different and adds a little more to the experience. You'll use a different assortment of guns to use including the usual Grenade Launcher, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, and the ever trusty pistol. There's Also a good amount of gadgets that will be at your disposal, some more useful than the others.
The other Type of missions are surprisingly the better ones. These missions will either have you shooting out of the car or driving the car will using it's mounted weapons and hidden gadgets. Fun Stuff. If the missions weren't as simply laid out and easy to defeat I would've given Gameplay a higher score.

Graphics: 9/10 - Amazing. While not up there with Halo, the graphics are really great. The guns and gadgets are nicely detailed, even the way JB's hand looks while holding different guns is good. All of the player models look great, though it would've been nice if they added more distinguishable types of baddies you encounter......*Thinks back to perfect Dark*. The Player faces are nicely detailed but only for the main characters and ones used in cutscenes. The Cars esp. JB's Car look excellent. They even have a bit of pedestrians (low polygon modeled but still a nice touch) on the streets. The levels are all textured and modeled nicely, even if a bit on the simpler side. The tiny bits of FMV they use also look decent. Everything in this game gives you a clean and crisp look. Very Next Gen stuff.

Sound: 8/10 - Everyone seems to say that they basically use the JB theme song everywhere in this game but I didn't find it overly used. The music does a good job of stepping up when you encounter enemies and become more mellow when your being stealthy. It's a mixture of techno like music and basic stealthy music with a pinch of that JB good stuff. The Voicovers are really good for Agent R and a few others but sometimes it seems as though they ask the actors playing the villan to sound CHEESY. I guess historically most of JB's villans are typed-casted to talk with a bit of cheese. The guards and other baddies will also yell out various stuff when you encounter them, but that's pretty much a stadard by now. The guns and other weapons have your typical fare of sounds and such.

Replay:6/10 - This game also features a mulitplayer mode. If you don't have any friends or none are over at the time then you can simply use the ''bots'' they included in this GC version. The Multiplayer has a bit of getting used to as the arenas are nowhere near as big as PD or even GE. The addition of the Jet-Pack and Q-Claw are pretty fun but you really need another person to enjoy the Multiplayer mode. As for the Single Player Missions, the Driving missions add a little to replay as do the different dificulty settings, although the easiest difficulty setting is WAY too easy and isn't even worth playing in.

Buy/Rent? Well it's a toss up. If you LOVE JB or FPS, then definetly get this game. other-wise, rent it, and then make your decision

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/02, Updated 03/26/02