James Bond 007: NightFire

"Just like the rest"

Whoa, well I'll be, if it isn't another James Bond game. Why the sarcasm I hear you ask? Well, all James Bond games except for Goldeneye were all literally torn apart by the press, and I've played just about all of them, and I must say I have too agree with the press, Bond games all suffer from one mayor shortcoming: they are all tediously shortlived. You can play through any Bond game in less then 2/ 3 hours and after that....there's very little left to do, because all Bond games that have one, have a horrendously lacking multiplayer mode! Or is this one different?.....

Graphics

Ofcourse the Xbox version of this game looks better then the other console versions, and although some environments look a little dated, most look absolutely 'the bizz'. The character movement is brilliantly done, and so is the lipsinck. Some levels look pretty dark though, luckily you have the Q-specs which you can put on, but I don't think this is how it was supposed to be.

Graphics: 8

Gameplay

The singleplayer mode features 12 levels, and you'd better be ready for this, because just like Bond you're gonna be shooting, driving, flying, and even steering subs around. Anyone who's played Agent under Fire knows what to expect.
The thing is....some things are EXTREMELY unclear and illogical, like the mission in which you have to steer your submarine version Aston-Martin around a lake for example. When you are detected, you have to start over, so while underway, you have to hide and sneak all over the place. But how come enemy subs CAN detect you when you hide 2 miles down inside a cave, but not when you hide in a shipwreck which is full of holes the size of football fields???? Besides this, you are just thrown right into the action, not knowing what to do, and all you can do to find out what it is you have to do, is by trial and error, which is very irritating, after every error, you have to restart. Sure you are given objectives which you can view any time, but for most you have NO IDEA on HOW to complete them, because the help Q and M provide you with is either useless, or incredibly vague. Besides this, they also have the irritating habit of providing this info, while you are in the middle of gunfights, and therefore you can't even hear them, and the only way to find out what they said, is by restarting the entire mission and holding perfectly still when you know they are about to say something, which is nigh impossible, because your foes certainly won't hold still for you!
Other irritating features this game suffers from include the ability of enemies to be able to spot you while you are behind a wall, not being able to really customize the controls, (the game only supports a few different layouts, of which most only differ one button or so and therefore you will be struggling with the controls for hours)etc, etc.
The multiplayer mode offers some amusement, with the ability to enable bots, but the game has a maximum of 6 bots! 6 Friggin' bots! While any self-respecting game (Unreal championship or Timesplitters for example)let's you battle at least 12 bots at once! Therefore the arena's feel very empty, besides the fact that most of these arena's are very lame and uninspired. Last but not least: the amount of arena's is unbelievably small. And even on their best, the bots act like a bunch of morons, and the arena's are far to large for 4 player-mode, let alone 2 player mode!

The game brags about letting you do things you want to (go the sneaky way in, gunblazing, gadgetusing) but this can only be said about the first level, the rest of the levels either pushes you towards one option rather you like it or not, (if you choose another option you automatically fail the mission) or just completely forgets there are other options, like when you try to go in the sneaky way, it's no use, because the enemies will see you no matter what you do.

Gameplay: 4

Sound

Well, the sound is alright, the background music is what you would expect and the weapons sound okay. The only thing here that irritates is that a lot of badguys and civilians you run into, keep repeating the same word/ sentence for hours and hours, so after about 10 minutes, you start to think SHUT UP ALREADY! To bad the game doesn't let you shoot civilians, because that makes you fail the mission.....too bad indeed, cause it sure is tempting!

Sound: 6/10

So why is this game so good/ bad?:

Good

+ You get to play as Bond!, I mean....BOND!
+ There are things to unlock for multiplayer by playing
singleplayer

Bad

- Stupid AI
- Uninspired levels
- Multiplayer lacks in every way
- Makes you want to shoot civilians

Overall: 6 out of 10

Buy or rent?

Only for the real Bond addicts, everyone else should avoid this.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/03, Updated 04/12/03