007: The World is Not Enough

"Good game, but it isn't Goldeneye."

Well, Rare ware didn't make the new Bond game. Now look what's happened to it, thanks to EA and Eurocom (the company's that made it).

Gameplay: 8/10 The gameplay is actually pretty good, except for some little problems. Fortunately, the controls are basically the same as Goldeneye's. Except for the addition of having to jump. Considering that you can’t actually see Bond's feet, you can see how this gets frustrating. The other problem is the ridiculous amount of objectives; you also get constant extra objectives throughout the mission. The other thing is that most of the stages don’t really have the same feel as, say the Train or the Archives. Most of the stages seem like a maze. On the plus side, TWINE has a great selection of weapons (23, I think), ranging from pistols, to automatic assault rifles, to a Surface to Air Missile Launcher. There is also good attention to detail on the weapons, as you can choose secondary functions such as putting the silencer on or off the P2K, or a burst instead of full auto. Unfortunately, there's only 14 stages (compared to 20 in Goldeneye and 21 in PD). Another thing is that the guards in agent are about as strong as the 00 Agent guards from Goldeneye were.

Story: 9/10 Unless you haven't seen the movie, there isn't much to this section. Basically, Renard, an international terrorist, has stolen a nuke, and you have to stop him before he sets it off. The game follows the movie pretty closely, except for some necessary changes to make the game longer.

Music/Sound: 7/10 Unfortunately, EA didn't get the rights to use the Bond theme, and the music really suffers from that that. Some of the music is used as a variant of the title song's theme (which is passable), and the music for the final stage is pretty cool, but other then that, the music is pretty weak. The sound effects are better, though. The gun shots, reloads, explosions, etc. sound cool, and fairly realistic. The sounds of glass breaking are good too. The voice-overs aren't as good. They used imitations instead of the real actors’ voices, and their imitations are far from impressive. Another thing missing are the guards shouting stuff after you shoot them.

Graphics: 8/10 Most of the graphics look good enough. The weapons are look fine, as do most of the buildings. Most of the enemies look OK, but their death throes leave much to be desired. In Goldeneye and PD, the enemies will react differently depending on where you shoot them, whereas the guards in TWINE just fall over on their backs no matter where you blast them. Most of the main characters (especially M) look bloated, although the faces look fairly real. In fact, some characters appear to be 2-Dimensional at times!

Multi player: 1/10 This is where the game truly fails miserably. Some of the multi player stages are OK, but all the good ones have to be earned as cheats. You can only choose from pre-selected weapon settings. Plus, you can only have 4 players total. So, if you have 3 players, you can only have 1 sim, etc. That brings me to another problem- the simulants. One of the problems is that you can’t choose how good they are. Plus, once they see you, they just stand in place shooting at you, which makes for very boring shoot-outs. The other problem is that for some stupid reason, you can't have good guys fighting good guys. You can’t save any player statistics either.

Replay ability: 7/10 Since the multi player already bites that option for replaying is shot down. I had figured I'd just earn the All Guns and Infinite Ammo cheats to use in single player. Then I found out they don't exist. If you beat one of the cheat times, you will get new stages, characters, scenarios, or weapon settings for the already horrible multi player. WOW (yes, that's sarcasm there). There is not a single cheat for single player. True, you can beat the harder difficulties for fun, but your only reward will be more multi player options. Still, it can be fun to just replay some of the stages. You can also have fun failing them, but many of them end once you've failed an objective.

Buy/Rent: Despite it's shortcomings, TWINE isn't that bad of a game, and it is worth buying. However, you should still rent it to see if you think it's really worth it. Also, you shouldn't buy it unless you also get a controller pack, as you need that to save.

Overall: 8/10 Despite my complaints, this isn't that bad of a game overall. It is fun to play, I do enjoy it, but it just doesn't live up to the standard set by Rare ware's games.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/02/01, Updated 08/02/01