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Posted on April 25th, 2004 - 8692 Reads

Rated Teen James Bond 007: NightFire GameCube Review Bronze Award

-- Written by Andrew Rogers



 Bond's first game on the GCN was an above average game, yet failed to keep my attention for too long. The level design was good, graphics were good, control was decent, but the missions were bland and often left you wandering around for a while trying to figure out what to do exactly. I decided I'd give the newest title a chance, and I'm glad I did, but it's still not something worthy of a purchase. Continue on to see how it stacks up to Agent Under Fire and Goldeneye for the N64.

Presentation: Upon booting for the first time you'll be shown a stunningly professional opening movie. It really looks good enough to be an intro for a new Bond movie. After the movie you are thrown right into the action as you snipe some speeding cars from a moving helicopter. This got me pumped up about the rest of the game, but unfortunately the next level is one of the slowest paced levels in the game. The game case and instructions look great, and feature the real Pierce Brosnan's photo. The menus screens look nice, but can occasionally get confusing. The best game intro I have ever seen, and the prelude level is presented to you before you enter any kind of menu screens.

Graphics: The graphics are a little bit nicer than Agent Under Fire, but not by much. Everything is top-notch quality, including textures, animation, effects, and geometry; yet fails to go above and beyond what you expect. The only level I found myself impressed with was the nuclear plant, which is also by far the best playing level in the game. The frame rate never stutters, it's locked on at a speedy 60fps. Everything is anti-aliased, eliminating all jagged edges. The lighting is middle-of-the-line, showing some nice lighting variation, but is nothing when compared to something like Metroid Prime or Eternal Darkness. As with Agent Under Fire, everything just looks too simple and clean to be real looking.

James Bond is extremely well ed after the current Bond, Pierce Brosnan. All of the characters in game have a distinctive look, and none are outrageously stupid looking like you might find in some of super-hero movies. You might spend some time looking at the beautifully ed Bond s as well. All of the characters, except for Bond and crew, are completely original. The guns themselves are all original as well. I was pretty disappointed with them, as there is nothing new to see. I have seen every one of those guns in previous games. The guns usually look bland and unexciting. It simply pales in comparison with the awesome collections in Goldeneye or Perfect Dark, or even Time Splitters 2. Thankfully, they removed the bullets that you could see (they looked like white paintballs) like they had in Agent Under Fire.

During the vehicle based levels you'll find much less impressive visuals. The V-12 Vanquish Bond drives looks exceptional, but the worlds you drive around in normally look fairly dull. They lack any kind of atmosphere or mood, which they should have. I actually was much more impressed with the driving levels in Agent Under Fire than NightFire. Everything has a polished, clean look to it, yet fails to impress.

Sound: Everything you hear is of great quality. Most noticeable is the great voice acting. Everyone sounds as they should, and there is no poor acting whatsoever. Sound effects all sound good, from the explosions to the screeching of your car breaks. The music includes the classic bond theme, and fitting, atmospheric tunes. Great voice acting and classic Bond music. Nothing to complain about.

Gameplay: If you ever played Agent Under Fire, you'll probably notice that it feels almost exactly the same. The controls are a bit stiff, but offer more than enough different control schemes. The default scheme is like this: you move forward or backward and strafe left or right with the main control stick, and look around with the right C-stick. The right trigger fires. Of course you can change it to any of the control schemes you like, but most will stick with this.

The level design in NightFire steals from Goldeneye and Agent Under Fire quite a bit. There is more stealth involved than previous games, but the stealth usually equals uneventful and boring. One of my favorite levels, the abandoned nuclear power plant, has you constantly alert for snipers, while changing from indoors to outdoors constantly. The level looks like a real, gritty old power plant. You'll have to climb numerous ladders, cross steel cables, and use stationary artillery throughout the entire level to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting. Other levels have you chasing after an evil henchman, while finding your way through a confusing storage building, and others have you infiltrating and retrieving top-secret information. Most of the levels in first person are exciting and intense.

The vehicle-based levels take up the other half of the game. I have always felt like the car levels were a distraction from the main game and entirely unnecessary. The driving levels are much less entertaining than the normal first person levels. They are also worse than the driving levels in Agent Under Fire. They are much, much more linear this time around, and they all take place in uninteresting locales. You'll often be wishing you could just skip through and get back to the normal first person levels again. The submarine level is especially boring, and you'll most likely have to retry over and over again. The final level is also semi-vehicle based, and probably one of the easiest, most disappointing endings I have ever played. Plenty of control options, good level design, and decent driving levels.

Fun: The first person levels are almost rival the excitement experienced in Goldeneye. The different levels boast a lot of variety, ranging from outer space to a mountaintop castle. You can choose different levels of difficulty, but even the easiest will keep you on your toes. Vehicle based levels offer lots of high speed, e action, but lack much depth or excitement. Multiplayer is good fun for a while, until you get bored of its 2 or 3 good levels and its uninteresting alternative game modes. Single player will keep you excited until the very end, except for the driving levels in between. Multi-player will keep you entertained for a while.

Multi-Player: I noticed that this game almost tries to parallel Goldeneye in the Multiplayer department. It pulls it off successfully, and even attempts to throw in some twists, yet they fail to add any fun. You'll be able to play as most of the characters in the single player, as well as some classic Bond villains. Level design pales in comparison to Goldeneye, and you'll likely only want to play the 2 enjoyable levels. The menus can seem confusing at first, until your learn what each option means, as sometimes its vague. The weapon sets are OK, but it would have been nice to see a few more or have a customizable one. Bots, as usual don't make up for shortcomings, as they normally are nowhere near as fun to play against as another person, or better yet, 3 people. Still, it was required to include bots, as whiny people will then criticize the game simply because useless bots were left out. While it offers as many options as Goldeneye, the poor level design leaves much to be desired.

Replay: The first player isn't so exciting that you'll want to go through it again just for the heck of it, but it you want to get the cheats, you'll have to. Probably the reason behind this is the fact that the game tries to do too much beyond regular first person shooter, and usually these different types of play aren't very fun. In Goldeneye, I found myself going through a few of the levels over and over again, simply because they were so much fun, and there were so many levels with so much variety. The Single player is also far too short, lasting only about 6-8 hours on the easy setting. Even Agent Under Fire's car based levels were fun to go through many, many times over, yet NightFire's aren't. Multi-player is the only reason to come back prior to completing the game's short single player. Multiplayer will keep you coming back, but the 1 player mode isn't worth another run through. Single player is especially short as well.

Overall: If you are craving for a great single player FPS, and love James Bond, this game is highly recommended. Although Time Splitters 2 is a much better game overall, there is still plenty here to warrant a rental, or a purchase if you decide you really like this game. If the driving levels were replaced with more First Person levels similar to the later levels, I am almost positive this would have been just as great as Goldeneye. One of the best console FPS this console generation, and the best Bond since Goldeneye.

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