James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing

"A good step for the franchise, but still some flaws"

Once again you can be James Bond 007, the legendary MI6 agent with some great stories, but in this game EA decided to change from the normal perspective of first-person to third-person, an interesting and good decision for the franchise.

Gameplay: The third-person shooting levels are absolute fun. The difficulty is solid for me and not too hard. The controls are a little complicated at first and if if you have been playing any other third person games the controls will seem unorthodox, but play a little bit more and you'll how tight and efficient they really are, but the responsiveness of the controls can be a bit spotty. For example, the targeting button sometimes doesn't seem to respond when I press especially when behind cover. Which brings to me to another point, this is the first Bond game where you must use cover. Hiding behind crates and walls is absolutely essential to survival. The new lock-on system is great in which you use cover and slowly pick off enemies. Also a new Matrix-esque feature has been added, called the Bond Sense when the screen turns gray and time slows down while you either select a weapon or find new targets. At first I found that feature almost useless, but in later levels it certainly helps a bit. Also a new gadget called the rappel is absolutely fun. Most of the gadgets in this game are cool and fun to use. But the driving levels disgusted me. I really despised the driving levels. The car moves too fast at times, making it inevitable that you run into something. The objectives get too tedious and frustrating in driving missions. The driving missions really irritated me, but the shooting levels were done brilliantly. Gameplay gets a 7/10. The shooting levels were fun and excellent while the driving levels frustrated me and detracted from my experience.

Story: The story here is your average Bond story about an evil villan trying to take over the world, but this story combines technology in an interesting way. Once again Bond meets a variety of women on his quest. this game also does something hte movies tend to do, and the is an MI6 interlude where Bond receives new gadgets and gets briefed on mission objectives. even a classic bond villain returns, but you need to play the game to find out who. It's a solid all around story, but the only flaw with it is the missions themselves are too short. Story gets a 9/10.

Graphics/Sound: The sound effects are good such as bullets being fired and glass breaking when you shoot it. The voice acting was great, characters were voiced by the actors the play them in the movies, except for the villains who were still voiced by celebrities. The famous Bond witty one-liners are there and sound just as good as in the movies. The music was good as well, especially with the classic Bond theme. The graphics were absolutely beautiful. The environments were stunningly life-like and the character models were great. The animations were solid and life-like as well. This game is absolutely gorgeous. Sound and graphics gets 10/10

Replay: This game features a slew of unlockables based on mission performance which creates tons of replay value. Gold and platinum medals are given for mission performance judged based on things such as Bond moments, mission duration, and ammo efficiency. The game has good replay value overall and the multi-player is a blast so you will always come back for more, though some will find the unlockables pointless. Replay gets a 9/10.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/04