James Bond 007: NightFire Review

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.