James Bond 007: NightFire

"Woman want him. Men want to be him. Video gamers want to play as him. Even if he is old enough to be your dad. Ladies and gentlemen, it's James Bond"

Mr. B starts every new film episode with the dramatic, exiting, lady-packed climax of an unseen earlier adventure, before returning to London for a mission briefing about dangerous things to come. So does his new game Nightfire, which throws you straight into an easy, ''Press this! DO that! Now!'' spoon-fed introductory sequence that reaches out of the screen, slaps you in the face and shouts ''Bond! Raaa!'' at you to get the experience off to a cracking, excellent and authentic start.

In the space of thirty actual real life seconds you're sniper-rifling out car tires, flipping your Aston Martin onto two wheels, launching rockets, smoke screens and electro-magnetic pulses, hitting your car's turbo boost to jump bridges and wrinkling the dinner jacket in all sorts of exciting ways, ending up Bond tinkling a glass of champagne with his de-distressed, rescued and damn attractive damsel. That, in a nutshell, is what Bond is all about.

Then it's on to the usual story line and character development bits, which, for once, I actually like. No really, all of the plot stuff in Nightfire is great, it's rare game where we don't sit there tutting and hammering the Start button, looking at our reflection in the black bits of the screen thinking we need to lose some weight. The story is long but interesting - evil Drake and his nuclear plans for world domination, blah blah, double agents, blah blah, travel the world, drive cars, yada yada - and is a mini Bond classic in itself, with equal parts of sauciness, action, intrigue and the heavy clichés that make up the Bond myth. Anyone could think it up, and it's hardly novel or new, nut its Bond through and through.

It's also the sexiest 007 game yet. Some kissing is done (for England, naturally) and girls are everywhere, with ladies in posh and revealing evening gowns getting their hands dirty throughout. In terms of atmosphere, the presentation, story and look of Nightfire is spot on right from the start.

The female attendees of Drake’s evil society party flutter eyelids at Bond, say hello and jiggle the booty for his attention, with the eyes and heads of enemies and civilians following Bond (as in you) around the level. The detail is high everywhere, of a similar level to EA’s stunning Medal of Honour, although it could benefit from some off MoH’s impressive smoothness. But the game looks good for the most part, and hell, even GTA3 got a bit jerky sometimes. That didn’t stop it becoming a small success did it?

Setting up and storyline formalities over with and it’s into the game. Well, it’s into the game then back ouyt of it agin to invert the Y-Axis in the Options screen, then once again back into the game, pausing only to curse when you realise it’s possible on the Pause screen itself. It’s nice little user-friendly touches like that which restore our faith in human nature. Well done there, EA.

Select your difficulty – Operative, Agent or 00 Agent – and pile into the introductory mission. It’s The Exchange, a spying infiltration sortie into the heart of Drake’s evil castle hideaway, a mission which has everything. Snowy effects, stealth, girls in party dresses, sniper rifles and double-crossing abound, as Bond photographs the important wrong-doers, kills the rest and shamelessly flirts with anything that shaves its legs.

“Earn extra points by performing special Bond moves” says one off the between0mission loading screen tips, highlighting one of the many ways in which Nightfire adds to its longevity. The Exchange mission has you sneaking through a shadowy, frozen courtyard, one full of alert gauds shining spotlights down to try and catch you out. Unless, that is, you pop into the mini control room beforehand and snip the powers wire with your laser watch – der der d-der der! – that’s a Bond Move. Well done you.

It’s not essential, and neither are many of the other bonus tasks, like completing missions in a humane manner by discretely stunning people instead of shooting them in the face, and it’s not essential to get the best possible medal in every level either, but if your keen, unemployed or just really, really into games, there are enough mini-missions, sub-goals and personal targets in here to keep a Nightfire player busy for months.

Well, actually, there is one small reason to persevere – to access the secret stuff. The secret stuff, as secret stuff tends to be in games, is locked. Many of the multiplayer modes and characters are inaccessible to begin with, requiring a bit of one-player action and performance to open Bond greats as Pussy Galore, Xenia Onatopp, May Day, Jaws and cute little Odd Job. These are used in the multiplayer game, more details of which you will find below.

Nightfire accommodates up to 004 agents in its split-screen man-to-man combat section, with an astounding number of additions and enhancements making this so much better in the multiplayer bureau than last year’s Agent Under Fire. The default Arena is where most of the drunken lairiness will take place, with Team Arena for gangs, and the usual themes of King of the Hill, Last Man Standing and Capture represented. Friendly fire can be switched on or off, respawn locations changed, weapon sets altered – it’s tweakable beyond your wildest tweaking dreams.

Bots are now present too, offering the same amount of dumb, predictable, ineffective combat as all bots do, although it’s possible here to alter aspects of their personality such as their aggression, or making them greedy, vengeful or just out of control berserk lunatics. You can even lower their shot accuracy, should you find the going a little too tough. I suggest not letting anyone know about it if you do.

It’s possible to play the multiplayer games on your own by setting up a series of bots to play against, but surely that just makes the loneliness even worse? Pretend friends? And how many people own multi-taps anyway? Seriously, I’d like to know. I only know two people who have one at home, and one of those was stolen so it doesn’t really count.

When playing against real people the multiplayer missions aren’t really that spectacular. Its runs smoothly enough and looks OK, nut to my collective consciousness I feel they lack the finesse of the likes of TimeSplitters. Weapons are piled everywhere, the deaths are quick, the stylish blood down the screen You’ve Been Killed screen looks good, but represents and annoying pause in the action. It also all a bit pedestrian and tame – Bond moves much too slowly, there’s no run button, and when compared to the speedy thrills of TimeSplitters it’s like playing death matches in slow motion. There are some clever levels, nice moments and good weapons, but it’s just not fast enough for my liking.

Like a single man in his early thirties who works in IT and still lives with his parents, Bond has all of the latest toys. From the outset you’re extremely well kitted up, with the electrical Stunner, your X-Ray specs, a grappling hook for when you fall off the edge after looking to see how far down the graphics go, and a laser watch, which sadly cannot be used to kill people with. Instead, the laser is used as a cutting/heating tool, with one particularly left-field challenge requiring you to melt the hinges off a safe. If it wasn’t for the on-screen tips (yes, I was playing it on Operative difficulty, you got a problem with that?) we would’ve been stuck there for days.

Sounds a bit complicated, eh? Luckily for rubbish gamers, Nightfire constantly dishes out tips on weapon and gadget usage to help fritter away the loading seconds, while playing on the incredibly easy Operative difficulty settings gives you further tips on negotiating tricky sections and solving those where-do-I-go-now? conundrums. Gadgets also open up new ways of playing the same missions. Using the stunner to peacefully negotiate levels via non-violent means is one possibility, which also opens up some of the secret things via means of bonuses for good play.

There are lots of minor niggles I could be really picky about (it’s a bit jerky, some of the puzzles are obscure, there’s a lot of Location A to Location B locked door boredom) but I’m not going to (things in brackets don’t count, see). Instead, I’m going to recommend Nightfire because of its perfect atmosphere and the excellent job done in capturing the Bond vibe.

Nightfire even has a classic, swirly, fire-based opening sequence completer with its own theme tune and slow motion bullet effects, and the obligatory dancing silhouettes of possible naked women.

However, was I to give Nightfire 10/10 for simply having a nice intro sequence with dancing girls in, it’s likely my house would be burnt to the ground by angry villagers. So why, exactly, should you be interested in Bond?

It all looks pretty superb, and if you’re the kind of player that doesn’t mind when games go a bit jerky you‘ll regard Nightfire as one of the best looking game son the PS2 today. But, to my sensitive eyes, it’s not quite smooth enough, it’s not quite smooth enough. The detail is great, the effects smart and impressive, but the random jerky bits hurt my sensitive eyes. And some of the stuff is just plain stupid – tough, decisive, intelligent Mr Bond is routinely stopped by locked doors – surely Q could equip him with a some sort of key device? On one ludicrous occasion a door is impassable because there’s a small rope barrier across it, while exploration bits make a mockery of Bond by requiring objectives to be completed in a rigid sequence. What’s that all about?

It also cuts to movie clips on occasion to illustrate key moments – why> Many of the story bits are shown with the in-games graphics, which look splendid, while this cutting to movie stuff just stinks of PSone to me. One sequence sees Bond escaping on a snow mobile, before pulling off a spectacular jump through an enemy helicopter – the excitement is pissed away by the pause taken to fire up the movie clip.

Stupid little whinges aside, Nightfire is a solid and impressive Bond Simulator. The story is great, the look, style and womanising authentic, and the presentation faultless. The mix of levels is good, the driving bits as boring as ever, and in total there’s a passably large enough amount of wheat to counteract any stray chaff. It’s frustrating in places, but ultimately a good-looking, atmospheric game that does more that does Bond justice.

Verdict

Uppers
-Great looking levels
-Gorgeous Bond babies
-Capture the Bond atmos
-Loads of varied missions

Downers
-Quite of bit of jerkiness
-Annoying use of movie clips
-Bond himself is wooden
-Locked door frustration

Graphics – Great levels and look, but not always smooth 8
Sound – The theme! And other standard shooty noises 8
Lifespan – Three difficulty levels, loads of secrets – good 8

Overall Score

Like the films – you know what to expect, you know the format, you know it’s going to end and who Bond’s going to be snogging when he gets there. No ground is broken, but it is still fun 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/03, Updated 02/22/03