007: The World is not Enough

"Tomorrow Never Dies died and now I've had enough."

I used to own an N64 before I got the PlayStation. I got Goldeneye free with it. That game kept me going throughout university. It might not have been extraordinarily pretty, but by god it was good. The one player mode was fun, the two player mode was excellent, and as for the four player mode... wow.

Then I bought a PlayStation. Then I played Tomorrow Never Dies. I won't beat around the bush here, it was awful The one saving grace was that it had the full intro song from the film after mission three. The third person camera was useless, Bond was sluggish and hard to control, and the game was far too short even if you did enjoy it - which most people didn't.

So I got very excited when I heard that The World Is Not Enough would be going back to Goldeneye's first person roots. Maybe, I thought, a game worthy of Goldeneye's successor might be produced.

Nonsense. This game is as bad as Tomorrow Never Dies - maybe worse, as it got my hopes up and then dashed them.

The character is still sluggish, and the bad controller setup doesn't do too much to help matters. Okay, the N64 controller wasn't perfect - but it worked. This, for some reason, doesn't.

There's something missing in the whole atmosphere - something undefinable. Goldeneye worked (both as a game and a film) by being simply an action game or film with Bond in it, rather than by being a Bond game or film. The film of TWINE is the same. However, this submerges the player in a world of James Bond, with every gadget replicated, every note of the background music copied. With Goldeneye, less Bond was definitely more game. Here... no.

It's a shame that, while trying to get as much James Bond into the game as they could, the producers never thought to hire all the original actors (Desmond Llewellyn aside - RIP). John Cleese is in there, of course, but he's been desperate for money ever since he started doing adverts for Kwik Save. The rest of them are appalling. M is a bored housewife, and Bond himself is apparently either German or suffering from a really nasty blocked nose. Or both.

Let me rant about the gadgets quickly. Goldeneye didn't have too many gadgets - it only had the essentials. TWINE has loads. Too many. Maybe you'll need a gadget or two in the missions, maybe you won't. But you'll take several. They get in the way. They're annoying and, for the most part, bloody useless. The first mission has you sneaking into the bank that you saw at the start of the film. Why on earth, then, would you need a mine? Or bomb, or whatever it is. I never had the chance to use it. After using it, of course, you have to cycle back through your weapons (or pause and select from there, but that's just plain annoying).

The music's nice. At first I scoffed when I read someone's review, which said that there was too much Bond music. How can one have to much in a Bond game? Then I watched the film, and played Goldeneye. The other reviewer was right. In the films, there are several different tunes. And, no matter how much one loves the 007 theme, it still grates after a while. Believe me, it does.

And, speaking of music, here's my major, major point: I said before that Tomorrow Never Dies' best feature was the proper film intro. TWINE is filled to the brim with long clips from the film (given how few missions there are, they must eat up most of the disc). You are shown half the film, in effect... but do we see the intro? No. You see Bond (from the film) falling onto the Millennium Dome, and then... fade. Loading. Next mission. That's a real shame, as I'm a big fan of the Garbage theme song, and I was expecting the sequence to show. Big anti-climax.

But, for most people, I suspect, the real stinking pile that will force them not to buy TWINE will be this: there is no multiplayer. Nothing. The PlayStation can do multiplayer. Medal of Honor had a flawed but workable two player mode. Quake II had an excellent four player mode. This has nothing.

So what's good about the game? The graphics are pretty, but who really notices the detailed wood textures on the walls? The enemies are still stupid - I know this is true to the films, but it doesn't allow for much of a challenge. The film clips are good (they ought to be), and nicely edited to allow the bare bones of plot seep through without ruining the film for those who haven't seen it (but let's face it, no one watches Bond for the plot - there isn't one). And there are some nice ideas, like the whole skiing thing - a nice idea, shame about the way it's done.

Do yourself a favour - don't go near this game. It'll ruin James Bond forever - worse than anything Roger Moore ever did. If games were people, Goldeneye would be a proud war veteran with a license to kill and a flashy car, while TWINE would be his illegitimate son with a license to mop floors and a stolen Ford Capri. No, Mr Bond, we expect you to cry miserably.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/00, Updated 11/21/00