Cube

It's now been over a year since we got home from hospital after Ollie's second surgery. While he's not due another checkup for a few more months, he's doing great. He's just starting to walk and is absolutely non-stop, and his imagination is already coming through strong.

The way it originally worked would be a letter box within a 4:3 screen, while the NSO does that but also automatically stretches it sideways so the 4:3 picture is stretched to a 16:9 picture. They should either keep it at 4:3 with the letter box, or stretch it both ways to fill the screen - just stretching it sideways distorts the image.

While I was posting about playing Star Trek games, I've managed to play all James Bond games (with a few lost flash/LCD/mobile games I couldn't play). Rather than doing roughly 7 games on a weekly basis, I'm going to separate them out differently, although still in date order. Board games and non-main games will be in bigger batches while the main games will have a bit more time to focus. The first two updates will be just board games - there was a lot of early James Bond board games. --- James Bond 007: Secret Agent Game Original Release: 1964 Developer: Milton Bradley Publisher: Milton Bradley Platform: Board Game Old board games are either hard to come by, or expensive. Many are missing pieces or have other damaged. Trying to play these out-of-print games with the original physical copies is pretty much an impossible task. Thankfully, a game called Tabletop Simulator has tools that can help recreate board games, so by finding as much imagery of the components, along with pictures or scans of the rules, I can re-create these old games to play – as well as letting others play it. This Milton Bradley game seems to be the first James Bond board game, coming out in 1964. My experience with licensed games from this era is that most are roll and move games, but this one has no dice at all. It is still, however, heavily dependant on luck, although there is some strategy involved. Each player has three cards, depicting one of the 11 locations in the game (or a “Spy Anywhere” game). Your goal is to move to the centre of that location (to the yellow spot) and play the card to score points. You can move between 1-3 spaces. However, for every space you move, the clock hand seen on the board moves that number of hours. If you score after your move, you score an amount equal to what the clock hand is pointing to. This means it’s not as simple as going to the locations on your cards, you want to time it just right to get the most points. In the middle of the game, you can bonus your points by having multiple agents in the same area, if you time this right, you can store a ton of points in one go. It’s nice to see a licensed board game try its own thing, it’s a decent idea for a board game and is quite fun. --- The James Bond 007: Secret Service Game Original Release: 1965 Developer: Jumbo Publisher: F.X. Schmid, Jouets Éducatifs Universels, Jumbo, Spear’s Games Platform: Board Game This board game went though a few different designs, for my recreation I went with the Spear’s version – the game itself is exactly the same, it’s mainly the board graphics that are different between each version. In Secret Service Game, you are all competing to capture the briefcase at the centre of the board. Each layer of the board has different movement rules. In the outer layer, you play airport card to move between airports. In the “car” layer, you can move one space at a time, or two if you get in a car. The “shore” layer is similar, but has boats that help you get to the island – you can also play a helicopter card to move between these points. To get across the water, you can use a boat or play a swimming card. You’ll also need to have the relevant “gate” card to access the island. Once you’re there, you’ll need to play a card that allows you to pick up the briefcase, then make your way back to your starting spot with the same rules. However, other players can capture the briefcase from you if they land on your spot and play the correct card. Whoever gets back to their base with the briefcase is the “real” James Bond. It’s simple and a bit silly, but fun and beats all the “roll & move” games. --- James Bond 007 Tic-Tac-Toe Original Release: 1965 (Possibly) Developer: Marvin Glass Publisher: Marvin Glass Platform: Board Game There’s not a lot to say about this game – it’s Tic-Tac-Toe (or Noughts & Crosses), but one person plays as 0 and the other plays as 7. The main significant thing is the rather nice metal casing the game is made in, with rotating parts to swap between blank, 0 and 7. --- James Bond 007: Thunderball Game Original Release: 1965 Developer: Milton Bradley Publisher: Milton Bradley Platform: Board Game A roll and move James Bond board game was inevitable, but this one has some nice ideas – although clearly inspired by Cluedo. In this game, you are travelling to 6 different areas to try and identify nuclear bombs – one of them is the real one and the others are fake. Movement is done by dice, you roll two and pick which one you want for your movement and which one to move the spectre agent (who will injure anyone he lands on), although the latter only moves in one direction. Once you reach an island (which requires an exact roll), you secretly look at the bomb and the triangle token, this will give you a colour and a letter. You then need to return to the centre island an pick a new number island to head towards. Once you’ve looked at all six bombs, you use the code on your sheet to identify which colour is the real bomb, and then head to it to win (if you figure it out early, you still need to have looked at all bombs and filled in the sheet to win). Instead of heading to an area, you can also choose to go “on the prowl”. You can’t visit any islands, but can move around the board looking for other agents. If you land on one, you will get to look at one of their answers. It’s quite simple, but has some nice ideas. --- James Bond 007: Card Game Original Release: 1965 Developer: Milton Bradley Publisher: Milton Bradley Platform: Board Game James Bond’s skill at casino and bluffing games is well known from the books and films, so a bluffing game makes a lot of sense for a James Bond game. In this bluffing game, each player is dealt three cards – these are numbered 1-7 with a “007” wild card. Two cards are face up with the middle one face down. The object of the game is to get “winning combinations” – which are three of the same number or a straight. When you have – or want to claim you have – a winning combination, you let it be known. People can bet against you if they don’t think you do. If they call your bluff, you have to give them chips, but if they call you out and you have a winning combination, you get chips off them. It’s simple, but a nice little filler game. --- 007 Original Release: 1965 Developer: Milton Bradley Publisher: Milton Bradley Platform: Board Game This James Bond board game is an abstract strategy board game where you are trying to capture your opponent’s tiles. It’s best placed as a 2v2 game, although the rules do cover 1v1 and 1v2 versions. Red team plays against black team. The game starts by taking turns to place tiles in a 4×4 grid. These tiles are numbered 1-5 (worth that many points) or have a 007 logo (worth 10 points). More of one colour may appear on the board than another, but the game assuses us that this is “fair”. Once these have all been placed, the main part of the game appears. Each player picks (face down) one of their B-O-N-D tiles that matches the row they want to use. Once all players have picked, they’re placed on the relevant position. Any crossroads signifies tiles that can be “captured”. Any tiles goes to the side of the opposite colour. Capturing seven tiles ends the game, with the team that has most points being the winner. This is an interesting little game, but doesn’t really have much to do with James Bond other than the logo on a few tiles and “BOND” being four letters. --- 007: Underwater Battle from Thunderball Original Release: 1965 Developer: Tri-ang Publisher: Tri-ang Platform: Board Game This board game is exactly what the title describes: it lets you play out the Underwater Battle from Thunderball. The game came with pre-painted miniatures, so my Tabletop Simulator version uses some simple royalty free models to represent them,: they’re not accurate, but they get the job done. Each side has a boss (Bond or Largo) and a squad of frogmen. Bond and Largo can move six spaces, while the rest can only move four. There’s also a SPECRE submarine, which Largo has to escort to Miami or Bond has to capture and take to the US Warships. After you move, you then roll the dice and you can use this to move sharks. Fighting is quite simple: each larger red square is a “fighting zone”, if opponents are in one you tally up the “fighting score” for each side: 1 for each basic Frogman, 2 for Bond/Largo. The SPECTRE sub reduces the rider’s score by one. If it’s your turn, you can also use sharks to add to your score. The losing side is killed. It’s a very simple system that removes luck from the equation. It’s a simple game that is almost pure strategy – with the slight exception of dice to help with the unpredictable nature of sharks. The physical figures also look good, so it’s a nice spectacle as well. --- The James Bond Box Original Release: 1965 Developer: Waterman’s Publisher: Waterman’s Platform: Board Game In this game, everyone takes turns trying to open a briefcase by moving the letters of “James Bond” over numbers and uncovering all the items. On your turn, you roll the two dice and move numbers that perfectly add up to the total shown on the dice. You keep doing this until you move all the numbers or you can’t use the total of the dice, where you record your score based on the numbers you still have showing. The person with the lowest score (or any that open the box) win the game. This game is more commonly known as “Shut the Box” and has many different versions. The box art for this one is quite nice, though.

James Bond Bingo Original Release: 2021 Developer: Laurence King Publisher: Laurence King Platform: Board Game This is just a regular Bingo, except that the numbers are replaced with James Bond characters and locations. --- James Bond 007 Cluedo Original Release: 2021 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game This is a variant of the popular game Cluedo (known as Clue in the USA). It has a few differences: there are player figures and villain figures, which means you won’t be moving your opponents away from their destination. The game also has SPECTRE cards, which can give you a bonus or slow you down. -- SPECTRE: The Board Game Original Release: 2022 Developer: Javier Angeriz-Caburrasi Publisher: Modiphius Platform: Board Game In this worker placement board game, you get to be one of Bond’s villains, trying to be the one to take over the world. It was made by Modiphius, who published a brilliant Thunderbirds game, so it has a lot of promise. By far the biggest issue with SPECTRE occurs before you start playing: the rule book. It’s really badly written, with the elements of the game explained in a non-linear manner, some rules only being told in examples and some that are not clear. There’s a fairly hefty errata to further clarify some stuff, fix mistakes and sort out mistranslations. Because of the complexity of the game, you can play the game many times and still not be sure you’re doing things right. Each round, a mission appears that you and the other villains can choose to contribute towards it. The villain that does the most gets a reward, but if the requirements aren’t met, all players get punished. To do this, you use your villain, henchman and goons to gather resources and bonuses from either the map or your own personal board, which has abilities and locations specific to your villain. The two dice are used to simulate what James Bond is doing – he can disrupt everyone’s work in one location or it’s possible for someone to get him to target one particular villain to cause them a huge hassle. The main thing SPECTRE has going for it is theme, with the game mechanics being based on the concept of being a Bond villain rather than designing a game and throwing the theme on it. Unfortunately, the game it a but too convoluted, especially with the poor rules. --- Top Trumps: 007 Vehicles & Gadgets Limited Edition Original Release: 2022 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game Top Trumps is a series of many different games. It contains cards that have stats. Players take turns picking stats and compares against their opponent’s card. The highest value wins. This pack focuses on vehicles and gadgets, particularly those from Q Branch. --- GoldenEye 007 (Xbox Series) Port Release: 2023 Port Developer: Code Mystics Publisher: Xbox Game Studios Platform: Xbox Series In 2023, a deal was finally worked for for re-releasing GoldenEye on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One/Series. While the occasion of releasing GoldenEye again should have been met with some effort and enthusiasm, what was got was….just acceptable. On the Swich, it was released via their Nintendo Switch Online Plus subscription service, with the original ROM with some very minor differences – the unused textures for Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton have been removed (incidentally, the orginal game ROM also contained unused Mickey Mouse graffiti textures that weren’t removed). Controls are a bit of a pain to set up, due to needing to use a mixture of both the in-game control settings and the Switch’s remapping. It does support online (with split-screen) via the service’s multiplayer emulation. On the Xbox Series, the game is still running in an emulator, but with various enhancements. It supports up to 4K resolution, but the biggest change is with the controls. The game has full support for the Xbox controllers, with dual analogue as default. Reload and crouching now have dedicated buttons and you can have buttons for moving up and down through your weapon selection. It is lacking a handy way to rotate through gadgets like the unreleased XBLA version, though. I found the controls to work really well. One minor change that did grab my attention was on Train, where you have to use the watch laser. Usually when I play, Bond keeps crouching and standing up in an annoying way, but that section was improved here. Unfortunately, that’s just it for improvements. The HUD and text hasn’t been given higher resolution textures, so the blurriness sticks out immensely when the game is running in a higher resolution. I also noticed a number of graphical glitches, such as cracks in the level on Surface and the “tree walls” having strange transparency. The menus (including the watch pause menu) don’t support widescreen, either. For buying GoldenEye on Xbox Series, it’s a bit strange. If you go to the Xbox website, it will brag on about how this is included in Xbox Game Pass, you can’t buy the game on it’s own. However, if you have a digital copy of Rare Replay (which is a wonderful package and often on sale for £5), you can also download GoldenEye. If you want a quick blast on GoldenEye and want an easy way to play it on Xbox, then this version is adequate. It’s just a shame as the game deserves so much more – and even more frustrating because a lot of the work for improving the game was already done by Rare for the cancelled XBLA version. Over 25 years of licensing issues finally solved and all we get is a low effort port. --- Cypher 007 Port Release: 2023 Port Developer: Tipping Point Publisher: Tipping Point Platform: Apple Arcade Not played: Locked behind a subscription exclusive to expensive devices. This is a game locked behind the Apple Arcade system. The game takes place entirely in 007’s mind, so it all “it’s a dream” in a Bond game. Like 007 Legends. As I am unable to play it, and it will probably be deleted before I can do so. Just this one last update - a bit of a downer that it ends on a subscription-locked game on a device I'll never own. I'm already a good amount through my next one, which is every game on the Nintendo 64. Some games I'm not giving much time (just a few rounds of most sports games, for example) but ones with an actual story mode I'm trying to complete (although using save states/cheats because I want to have fun doing it). Might do a daily(ish) game post in the Nintendo forum for that one. I wanted to experience lots of games I remember reading about in N64 Magazine, and I even found all the issues online to include quotes from their reviews. This is mainly emulated versions (using various different emulators as some are better for certain games), and some remastered versions (with my own personal judgement of them having the right "feel" and not being too different). I do have plenty of ideas to keep me busy, including GameCube, Zelda, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Thunderbirds and Thomas the Tank Engine (although for some I may drop the board game aspect due to the difficulty of finding information - although for Zelda, other people have already made Tabletop Simulator versions of all of them, including translations for the Japanese ones). I haven't thought about trying franchises I haven't played before like Castlevania (although I will be playing a couple on the 64, I know they're quite different), but it's an interesting idea.

James Bond: World of Espionage Original Release: 2015 Developer: Glu Publisher: Glu Platform: Android/iOS James Bond: World of Espionage is an example a lot of terrible aspects of moden mobile games combined with absolutely zero gameplay. This is an “energy-based” game. You gain a certain amount of energy each day (although there’s a maximum so you can’t build up too much) and spend it on completing challenges such as driving and fighting enemies. You don’t get to do or see these actions, you just click a button and get rewarded. You can use these rewards (or your own money) to buy items to let you click on more buttons as you take part in an endless grind. There’s no grind here. It’s just navigating a menu as it constantly begs you for money. The game was shut down after 18 months due to a lack of people that stuck with the game, and it’s impossible to play due to reliance on a server. --- Trivial Pursuit: 007 Edition Original Release: 2015 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game This is a series of cards containing trivia questions. It can be played on its own, but for a proper game you need to use a regular copy of Trivial Pursuit. --- Monopoly: 007 (2017) Original Release: 2017 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game Like the 2006 Collector’s Edition, this is another James Bond edition of Monopoly. This one was released to celebrate the film SPECTRE. --- Goldfinger 64 Original Release: 2017 Developer: SubDrag + Others Publisher: Self-Published Platform: Nintendo 64 This if a fan made mod for GoldenEye on N64 that completely transforms it into a Goldfinger game. It has the same number of missions, including the two “bonus” levels, retelling the story of Goldfiger as an N64 game. It needs to be patched into a copy of GoldenEye to run, but can be played on an emulator or the original console. In terms of recreating settings form the film, this game does a great job, with lots of great looking levels in glorious N64 graphics. But, while this is impressive, it’s also the biggest weakness. These levels are absolutely massive, and for GoldenEye gameplay, it really doesn’t suit these level sizes. The game feels extremely drawn out due to how spread out everything is, and you can spend ages trying to find the right way to go. It’s a shame, as the objectives themselves are well thought out, but the aimless roaming around really does spoil them. One of my favourite levels was the Fort Knox vault, and that was in one room. The Crab Key bonus level (based on Dr No) also feels a lot more like a more compact and refined level. One big highlight is the music – the GoldenEye style tracks sound great and capture the style of Goldfinger really well at the same time. Goldfinger 64 is a great accomplishment with a lot of impressive aspects, but the level design itself lets down the playing experience. --- Legendary: A James Bond Deck Building Game Original Release: 2019 Developer: Ben Cichoski, Devin Low, Daniel Mandel Publisher: Upper Deck Entertainment Platform: Board Game Legendary is a semi co-op deckbuilding board game, originally about Marvel superheroes but has now expanded into other franchises. The “Legendary” games all play in a similar way: you build up your deck by buying cards, draw a new villain card each turn and try to defeat them to gain points. The person with the most points wins, but the villain can defeat you all so nobody wins. That said, most people tend to play these games fully co-op, and the rules now state that you choose before the game starts. At the start of the game you pick a mastermind, a scheme and some villain cards that will determine your difficulty. As you draw from the villain deck, cards will trigger events on the mastermind and schemes. You need to build up your attack value enough to attack the mastermind multiple times, while also keeping the villains appearing at bay. The game is very difficult – especially if you’re competing with points – but also a lot of fun. My main confusion about the James Bond version is that the license seems more suited to the Legendary spin-off game, Legendary Encounters. That one has event in a more linear fashion (rather than random) and are more objective-based. The core game of Legendary James Bond includes stuff from Goldfinger, The Man with the Golden Gun, GoldenEye and Casino Royale, but more films are available in expansion packs. --- GoldenEye 007 (1964GEPD) Emulator Release: 2020 Developer: Graslu Publisher: Graslu Platform: PC Emulator 1964GEPD is a version of the 1964 emulator which has been configured specifically for two games: GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, aiming to make the best experience of playing the original N64 games on a PC, running in HD, but not modifying the game itself. The emulator has been configured to the best settings to run the game faithfully. One major addition is the “mouse injector”, which allows you to use a full keyboard and mouse setup with the game. This also lets you have specific crouch and reload buttons. Unfortunately, there is currently no additional controller support and I oddly couldn’t get Steam controller support to work with this, so I had to use the method of mapping one Xbox controller to two N64 controller to use the game’s own dual analogue mode. Hopefully improved controller injection can be added in the future. In terms of graphics, you can install texture packs if you wish. By default, however, this emulator has better fonts and icons, which means that the HUD itself isn’t a blurry mess. If you want to play the original N64 game on a PC, then this is by far the best way to go about, although the leaked XBLA game is another great choice if you want the updated graphics. That said, by emulating the original, you can try out a mod or two. --- Top Trumps: 007 Every Assignment Limited Edition Original Release: 2020 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game Top Trumps is a series of many different games. It contains cards that have stats. Players take turns picking stats and compares against their opponent’s card. The highest value wins. This pack focuses on the James Bond franchise as a whole and was re-released in 2022. --- Top Trumps Quiz With A Twist: 007 Original Release: 2020 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game This Top Trumps game is completely different from the rest: instead of the usual type of cards, each one features five James Bond questions. --- Monopoly: 007 (2020) Original Release: 2017 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game Like the 2006 Collector’s Edition, this is another James Bond edition of Monopoly. This one was released to celebrate the film No Time to Die.

007 Legends Original Release: 2012 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Activision Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii U Version played: Wii U For the 50th Anniversary of James Bond films, Activision decided to make a game to celebrate Bond’s history. 007 Legends takes us through six stories, one from each Bond actor. This sounds like an amazing premise, yet the came was panned by critics when it came out. Is it really that bad? I decided to play this one on a Wii U, for reasons that I’ll get in later. The game starts during Daniel Craig’s Skyfall, as Bond fights the assassin at the start of the film and Eve is ordered to take a shot, hitting Bond. As he falls down, he starts having flashbacks. This Bond is a reboot, so hadn’t experienced the previous films, but I’m fine with creative licensing to frame it in this way. Bond wake’s up in an apartment to find a body coated in gold – we’re in Sean Connery’s Goldfinger, a good choice for a game like this. However, there’s also a modern mobile phone, which is the first troubling sign. Unfortunately, these are Daniel Craig retellings of these films, similar to the previous GoldenEye, with modern settings. This does change what films are suitable for Daniel Craig’s Bond due to different styles, although Goldfinger causing a financial crisis does seem like something that can be adapted. To make matter’s worse, they couldn’t even get Daniel Craig to provide the voice, and the soundalike sounds quite bored. The gameplay, for the most part, is the exact same stiff combat from GoldenEye. Most of the weapons are the same, too. For the Wii U, the game forces you to use the Game Pad, but all it offers is a useless inventory screen (the guns don’t even have unique icons) and an optional way to control the hacking minigames. As Bond heads to Goldfinger’s headquarters, Tanner is orders him to find evidence of Goldfinger smuggling gold and to “remain undercover”. In a first person cut-scene Bond sets off a massive EMP from his phone, causing massive explosions, before he jumps onto a truck and rolls into an airfield, ready for you to shoot your way through legions of his men. After blasting your way through enough of the facility, Bond asks Pussy Galore for help, who is very quick to side with him. You get to investigate Goldfinger’s office for clues, solving a few simple puzzles, such as scanning for fingerprints to work out combinations (although the last one is the “strongest”, and I think it should be the other way round). These are easily the best parts of the game, but it would have been even nicer if they were based on the aesthetic of the original film. After making it out of Goldfinger’s building, but gets captured but convinces him to keep him alive during the crotch laser scene. As Goldfinger attacks Fort Knox, Felix Leiter ambushes and frees Bond. While the Daniel Craig era was the first to have a consistent actor for Felix, this game goes back to the old tradition of recasting the character, although this is a very different version to the one Craig’s Bond has previously met. After fighting your way inside Fort Knox, you have to don night vision goggles. You can’t take them on or off when you want, and you can clearly see that the lights are on, so it makes no sense. You can’t even see enemies easier, it’s just a grainy sepia filter. All I can think of is that this is an attempt to make it look like an “old film”, but why do that with the modern setting? The section wearing the mask goes on for ages, and it doesn’t even change how enemies act. You fight though the vault, have a quick time event fight with Oddjob and stop the bomb. Apart from the initial looks, the levels are just really dull in layout, and quite often the game will have enemies infinitely respawn. There are also many times where the game tells you to hurry, and it’s up to you to guess if it actually means it. Sometimes you’ll fail for not being quick enough, other times it leads to death and you’re actually supposed to take your time. At the end of this mission, you do get a first person cutscene of the end where Goldfinger attempts to kill Bond but gets sucked out of a window, but it then fades to black as the plane is crashing with Bond and Pussy Galore still on board. For George Lazenby, there’s no choice, so it’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It starts off as Bond gets attacked while skiing. At first is feels pretty good, but you’ll then get a message saying that you’ve lost “Theresa”, who the game never properly introduced to. This section is utterly horrible as any mistake means failing the mission. You have to take out a few helicopters and guards along the way, but the main difficulty is dodging everything. Bond eventually falls over and wakes up to find Theresa captured, Bond calls someone for help and says that it’s strange for a spy and criminal to work together – while Goldfinger had a full plot, the rest of these tend to presume you’ve seen the films recently. The updated version of Blofeld’s lair looks really nice but doesn’t help with the actual gameplay. It starts off with a turret section before you make your way into his base. Going into the secret part, you don’t get to see any details as Bond puts on his sepia filter again. After going though the “madman” architecture of a few circular bedrooms connected to each other, you rescue Theresa and the other guy takes her away. You chase Blofeld and have a quick time event fight in a cable car. One thing to note about the quick time event fights is that Bond continues fighting after you “win” – the final part of is something you never have control over. The final cutscene has Bond and Theresa driving after getting married, getting shot at and Bond having a very unemotional response as Theresa is dead. Considering they only had two lines between them in the game, it’s odd that they kept it in. Saving Roger Moore until later, it’s Timothy Dalton’s turn next. A revenge plot against a drug lord is a good fit for Craig’s Bond, so Licence to Kill is a good choice. It opens with Felix having been shot (and his wife dead) and Felix asks Bond to help one of his undercover agents investigating Sanchez, so Bond fights through a temple before finding his secret base. This seems like a good place to talk about the stealth mechanics. They’re based on the same “once alerted, enemies always know where you are” terrible stealth on GoldenEye, but with two changes. First, if guards get shot while cameras can see them, it will cause an alert, which is a good change as you can take cameras out. The other change just destroys the stealth mechanics completely: bodies stay and if another guard ever sees it, everyone is alerted to your exact location. There’s no investigation or time for you to take out the guard spotting the body, and there’s also no way to move bodies. So stealth is just something you can attempt, but it will never last long. Going through the base, you also have some forced stealth sections. These are thankfully short as they’re horrible, and I’m pretty sure that one of the scientists here could see through one particular wall. After investigating Sanchez’s office, meeting up wit Pam and setting up some explosions, it’s time to escape. There was a section in the helicopter hanger that I thought was broken, but it turned out that you needed to kill all the guards in a section you can’t walk to, and there was one hiding behind some crates with a leg visible. We actually get a car scene! In this section, you casually drive for a bit as enemies shoot rockets near your 4×4. Once you slowly catch up with Sanchez, the game takes over – although you do get to do some slow motion shots as a couple of shows now take out any vehicle. It’s time for another quick time event boss fight with Sanchez as the cool stuff is once again not something you have any input on. Bond sets off an explosion as he walks away from it so you can’t see it. Next up is Peirce Brosnan’s turn. They already did a full game of GoldenEye, so it was one of the other picks. Die Another Day was the only one to not get a video game adaptation so I think that’s why they chose it, but I really think that Tomorrow Never Dies would have worked really well with Daniel Craig (especially if you link Carver to the mysterious organisation from the previous films). You get a brief section meeting Jinx in the ice palace and taking some photos, I was imaging how great this level would look in a firefight with the ice being damaged, but for now we investigate the big dome nearby and break into the office of Gustav Graves. In this version, we only know he’s a businessman and his rant turning into helping North Korea is odd as we have no idea if this Bond even knows the character’s real history (incidentally, Miranda Frost has been written out). After a really annoying chase where there are loads of guards, snipers and lasers from space, we end up in the ice palace where it turns out ice in invincible. With the environmental destruction of Quantum of Solace, this level would be amazing, but the levels in 007 legends are just a static background. We do get the car chase on the ice, though. The handling starts off pretty as you’re sliding everywhere bad before Tanner orders Bond to turn on his traction tyres, then later telling Bond to turn on his threat detection and then missiles, which reminds me of Metroid: Other M in a bad way. To fight Zao, you have to wait for your missiles to lock on before firing, then Bond takes him out in a cutscene. You then have to race to get on a plane as cargo crate home in on you and, again, the game takes over before you reach the ramp. I really was expecting the handholds to get taken off the “fighting” sections at some points. You push up/down on the sticks to perform a high or low punch with that ends, and the enemies all block in awkward ways to make it very obvious where you need to hit, yet the game never removes the prompts telling you exactly what to press. After this, Bond takes out Graves (you don’t even get a QTE to do the final action) and you hurry off the plane. For Roger Moore, they can certainly pick a more down to Earth film that Daniel Craig would suit, so obviously they went with Moonraker. Here you fight through a few corridors, investigate a toxin, then have a detour through some more corridors to turn off some sentry guns to investigate Drax’s office. You then have an annoying stealth section and then have to kill off a few waves of enemies before Jaws turns up for a QTE event. You defeat him, but Drax captures you before you escape, making it onto a shuttle. On the space station, you have a string of forced stealth sections which, like the License to Kill ones, are just really annoying. Then you have to stop pods from being launched by looking for big numbers and putting the codes into a keypad. Bond gets captured, but turns off the artificial gravity. Now, while it would be better with Roger Moore, this is more like it: a zero gravity laser fight. Moving around is quite good, although the floating objects are completely static. The moonraker laser also just looks like a regular gun. You get a slight detour into space to shoot a few turrets before you deal with the arms loading the pods loaded with toxins, in a scene that’s far less impressive copy of Nightfire’s ending. After planting a bomb in some glass, a cutscene takes over as Bond throws Drax out of an airlock and it fades to black as the space station starts exploding. If you play this game on PC, 360 or PS3, then the credits will roll. The end of the game was free DLC that came out after the game initially released. While people who added the DLC to their account at the right time can download it, there’s no way to get it – I couldn’t even find a pirated way to get it. The Wii U version came out later, so the end of the game is actually on the disc. The game abruptly cuts back to before the start of Skyfall – you go straight form the Moonraker base exploding to this – as two unknown people are dead and Bond has to chase the assassin – a man called Patrice. You chase him over some rooftops, but you can’t actually hurt him. After a while, you’ll get onto a motorbike for a vehicle chase. Remember the awful skiing section I talked about? The motorcycle chase is a worse version of that, with random cars trying to swerve into you. It’s completely on rails, so you’re just swerving form side to side. Eventually, Eve blocks his path and you follow him onto a train with the last QTE fight of the game. We see Bond get shot and then waking up on a shore. What he’s been through never gets brought up as this game isn’t really about Bond himself, or what he’s been through, just “this is like X film”. The strange skyscraper with all the internal glass walls is the next mission. Bond stops Patrice from assassinating someone and it’s time for a really dull boss fight as Patrice is a bullet sponge. You hide behind cover, pop out, shoot him and duck back down. Half way though he’ll run upstairs and you’ll repeat it again. He’ll set off a smoke grenade and you’ll investigate. The game takes over as Bond ends up throwing Patrice off the building. He calls M, who apologises for ordering the shot, and Bond is fine with it. With the assassin killed, the job is done. Yup, that’s all we get of Skyfall. The film’s villain doesn’t make an appearance at all, and the film’s climax would actually suit a game of this style. 007 Legends is just a really poor cash in that likely stated with a good idea, but just has dull gameplay and tedious level design. It also loses out on nostalgia by having a modern day setting instead of the retro settings, with all the cool gadgets replaced with a product placement mobile phone. The films chosen aren’t even picked well for Daniel Craig, and there’s no actual narrative linking them together in any way meaningful. With a game of this quality, it’s no surprise that there was no proper James Bond video game for a while. --- Top Trumps: Bond in Motion Special Edition Original Release: 2012 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game Top Trumps is a series of many different games. It contains cards that have stats. Players take turns picking stats and compares against their opponent’s card. The highest value wins. This pack was an exclusive to the Bond in Motion exhibition and focuses on vehicles. --- Monopoly 007 50th Anniversary Edition (2012) Original Release: 2012 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game Like the 2006 Collector’s Edition, this is another James Bond edition of Monopoly. --- Top Trumps: 007 Bond Girls Original Release: 2013 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game Top Trumps is a series of many different games. It contains cards that have stats. Players take turns picking stats and compares against their opponent’s card. The highest value wins. This pack is focused on Bond Girls. --- Young Bond (Browser) Original Release: 2014 Developer: Youniverse Publisher: Puffin Books Platform: Browser Not played: Website offline, requires a login. Young Bond is a collection of four minigames promoting the novel Shoot to Kill. It consists of four minigames, however as the website required an account, the games have not been archived. The first minigame requires you to remember instructions on how to hotwire a car and repeat them, the second has you navigating a maze in an ambulance, the third you pilot a zeppelin while avoiding obstacles and the final one is an endless car chase where you have to avoid the villains for as long as possible. As you complete these challenges, you unlocked downloadable posters for the Young Bond books.

GoldenEye 007 (2010) Original Release: 2010 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Activision Platform: Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 Version played: Wii With a big gap between Bond films, it was Activision’s time to cash in on the “GoldenEye” name. While this is based on the story of GoldenEye, it’s not a remake of the Nintendo 64 classic, but rather a game based on an imaginary Bond film where the story of GoldenEye was adapted as Daniel Craig’s third Bond film. It originally came out on the Wii before a remastered version on 360 and PS3. While those versions look better, it’s the same game and I picked the Wii version because of the ease of getting screenshots and not needing to drag consoles out of storage due to a lack of backwards compatibility. After a brief tutorial at MI6, Bond and 006 (who looks so young, it must be his first day on the job) are sent to investigate weapons trading at a dam. The first area of this heavily based on the N64 game, but that single area is the only similarity in terms of level design. 006 steals a truck and you have to shoot from the passenger seat before shooting your way through the rest of the level. The gameplay is heavily based on Call of Duty, but in GoldenEye, aiming and turning just feels stiff and awkward, it’s a massive step down form Quantum of Solace. We get a opening credits that actually uses the original GoldenEye song, but instead of Tina Tuner, we get a bad cover of it. I would have much preferred something different to suit Craig’s era more. The placement of the song is also odd, in the middle of the opening instead of its normal place. The facility serves as a tutorial for the stealth mechanics. You can hack objects to cause distractions and take enemies down with stealth attacks. However, stealth isn’t really important for any mission after this and it doesn’t work well anyway. I’ve had enemies say “I think I heard something” after shooting them with a silenced pistol, somehow unaware of the bullet wounds, while on the other side of things, if you hack turrets remotely, enemies will instantly shoot towards Bond’s location – when enemies are “alert” they simple know where Bond is, line of sight is irrelevant. After 006 gets shot, Bond blows up the facility immediately. If they hadn’t been caught, the deal they would have stopped would have still happened due to how long it takes for the place to slowly blow up in a chain reaction. There’s a colossal base outside the facility you have to fight through as things explore before reaching to a plane and escaping. The game teases you with a motorbike before control is taken away from you and you just aim. Bond’s investigation leads him to Zukovsky’s nightclub, where the gangster talks about Bond giving him a scar in the past. He reveals what information he gave to Ourumov before being assassinated by Xenia, who runs away claiming that Bond shot him. You have to fight your way out, but the setting and atmosphere make this the most best level in the game. Heading to an arms fair in Dubai, Bond tries to stop Ourumov and Xenia from stealing an EMP hardened helicopter. You chase them through a frigate before placing a tracker on the helicopter. This game has a big theme of really dark corridors. Heading to Siberia, the most notable part of surface is a really cool shot as the GoldenEye satellite hits. The snow in this level happens to form “corridors” for you to fight through as the Russian army takes out the guards of the facility. Bond kills as many people as he can on both sides as he makes his way into the bunker. Even right after playing this…I really can’t remember much about this level other than Natalya running away and it just being really dark. I thought I heard 006 setting explosives and was wondering if we would get an early reveal of Janus, as it’s not really going to be a surprise to anyone in this version, but it instead ends with Bond and Natalya getting arrested. This one follows the film a bit closer here, with Ourumov killing the defence minister and pins it on Bond, although the way he does it – shooting then running away crying “he shot the defence minister” – made me laugh, especially as the same thing happened in the nightclub level. This level was when I realised why I found the level design to be really off: it just feels like random rooms and corridors attached to each other, it doesn’t feel like any real building. Anyway, it’s time for the tank level. It’s…fine. This might work better if there were other vehicle segments, but with aspects like the lock-on, this feels oddly like an arcade style game, like we’ve just stepped into a tank level from Star Fox. While you do have full control of the tank, it just feels very on-rails. After chasing Ourumov, he makes it to his train, parked in the middle of a construction yard. The construction yard section is decent, with a few ways you can get through it, but he train itself is just a couple of carriages and not its own level. You end up meeting with Xenia and Ourumov (Janus hasn’t been revealed yet, so he’s not part of this bit), with Xenia killing Ourumov and setting the train on fire. Bond has to shoot a panel on the floor with a gun. I can understand trying to change the plot, but all the character of this moment has simply been removed. Natalya doesn’t even use her skills to discover where to head next – she just overheard Ourumov talking about a meeting with Janus at statue park. The first area of this level looks great, with plenty of statues of different sizes, but it slowly turns into a generic looking compound with some underground corridors joining different parts of it together. Here 006 reveals himself as Janus. His motivation in this game has been altered a lot: it’s no longer about revenge, it’s about “bankers and their bonuses”. Because the government is now corrupt and treat people poorly, he’s become a terrorist that plans on launching an EMP attack on London, killing thousands of innocent people in the process. He traps bond in a helicopter set to explode, but a quick time event lets him escape. Oh, and Natalya was told to sit in the car, but instead gets captured. Luckily Bond spotted a computer with a map to where 007 will control the GoldenEye satellite from: a solar energy station in Africa. After crashing in the Jungle, this is a level where you think you can be stealthy, but taking over the turrets simply turns stealth off (you can’t get past them if you don’t hack them). If stealth did work properly, then this would be a really good level, as there are sections where it semes like you can set off turrets as a distraction while taking a different route. It ends with a quicktime event fight against Xenia. Heading towards the solar facility, it looks fancy, but doesn’t make a lot of sense as the system isn’t designed to send signals to precise locations in space. You fight through an entire army before getting captured – luckily the final few guards were the only ones that were told to not kill Bond. In the tower, it’s revealed that they need Natalya to arm the satellite or something (Boris is nowhere to be seen), but Bond sets off an explosion elsewhere in the facility and the satellite will fire just fine, and Natalya is the only one that knows how to stop it. I’m not really sure why 006 brought her here. After you protect her for a bit, it’s time for the final encounter. There are three stages to the final fight, the first is a quick time event. The main part of the fight turns 006 into a bullet sponge enemy with ridiculously bad AI as 006 spends half his time hiding behind a cover while you stand behind him, repeatedly shooting him in the back. After a few hundred bullets, he flees for the final quick time event fight ending with a slow mo “quick” draw. This version of GoldenEye isn’t a bad game, it just isn’t a good one. It’s a pitifully average shooter, but its flaws are just highlighted more by Activision cashing in on the love for the N64 game. --- GoldenEye 007 (DS) Original Release: 2010 Developer: n-Space Publisher: Activision Platform: DS While the console games of Blood Stone and GoldenEye had different developers, n-Space were given the task of porting both games to the DS, both releasing on the same day. While Blood Stone on DS was a surprisingly good attempt at recreating a full experience on the DS, GoldenEye settles for fully accepting that it’s a simpler game. I didn’t get on with this version of the game at all, and I felt nauseous all the way though. I’m not sure what exactly caused it, but the movement of the game is extremely stiff (even just walking) and the field of view feels extremely claustrophobic. Couples with the DS’s control issues for shooting games like this (especially for left handed gamers), it wasn’t a nice experience at all. You can use the buttons to aim in this, but it’s very slow. The dam starts off with explosions going off straight away and you soon encounter one of the major annoyances of the game: the hand holding. It takes away control to give you long-drawn out tutorials on even the most basic stuff. The facility level slowly explains the stealth mechanics bit by bit, including major parts such as using a landline phone to ring another phone in the same room to cause a distraction. Towards the end, 006 and Ourumov have a Naked Gun style gunfight behind some bulletproof glass before Ourumov gets the upper hand. Bond sets off explosives and runs the facility, constantly falling off the conveyer belt due to the poor controls. The runway and nightclub levels are skipped in this version, so it’s straight to an incredibly short level of chasing Ourumov and Xenie through the frigate. It does try to pad this out by locking you in a room until you kill a wave of enemies, but it’s still only a couple of minutes. The cutscenes have multiple styles, either in game graphics with voices, voices over static art or cutscenes showing you what you need to do with just text. At the start of surface, you do get a nice cutscene of the GoldenEye satellite firing (you never get to see what it looks like in the Wii version), but this level feels extremely drawn out with nothing notable. The end does make a big deal about sneaking past some people, but you just walk forward slightly. The bunker is about walking back and forth collecting keycards, which brings us to the touch screen mingames. When using a keycard, you have to swipe the card and then very quickly input a code that appears. There’s also a hacking minigame where you wait for changing numbers to stop and just tap them. The just seem to exist for the sake of existing. At the end, Bond rally wants to get into a room that’s blocked by three doors. The first is opened by placing three mines and detonating them one at a time. For the second, you have to shoot a bunch of panels that look like they were placed randomly. For the third, you go up to it and tap action. The game gives you a hint making a deal of Bond’s arms being on the top screen but the game knows how lame the solution it so just tells you the answer within a few seconds: close the DS and open it again. They must have known how much people hated it in Phantom Hourglass, but still added it. I don’t have much to say about the archive level, so it’s on to the tank level and…it’s pretty good. It fits the game much better than the console version and the game’s stiff controls naturally feel like a tank anyway, so this is very much the highlight of this game. You take out the front of the train and get the cutscene, escaping by hacking a computer (it’s not like Natalya is a computer programmer or anything like that). The memorial park level ditches the “statue” style completely and just looks like a generic military compound. The end of this level was the hardest part for me: a serious of quick time events of swiping the screen, one part requiring a perfect circle (which is the reason why I’ve never beaten The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks). Heading to a jungle, you have to fight Xenia in a helicopter by activating missiles and defeating waves of enemies – the game is still explaining everything you need to do. The second part is a section where you can actually be stealthy. At the solar plant, it’s time for the forced stealth mission – get spotted and you fail the mission. You also have to slowly crawl past mines as you place charges. After you get captured, you have to fight waves of enemies until the game tells you to press a button. You then chase 006 through corridors, stopping at points to shoot him until he carries on. He’ll end up at a balcony for your final shot. Because of how awkward this game feels, gimmicks that just feel silly and a lack of ambition or trying to do anything actually unique, this is by far the worst Bond game on DS. --- GoldenEye Source Original Release: 2010 Developer: GE Source Team Publisher: Self-Published Platform: PC Officially released in 2010, GoldenEye source is a remake of the GoldenEye multiplayer using the source engine (best known for Half-Life 2). It brings us updates of some classic GoldenEye maps, mixed with some new ones. I’m not a fan of online multiplayer, but this does offer some bot options for me to give it a quick blast. The new maps can vary quite a lot. Archive is a faithful recreation of the full N64 level, with just a few additional routes. As the game supports a lot more players, it certainly helps al lot. Dam, on the other hand, is essentially a completely new layout designed for multiplayer, stitching different elements of the original for a less linear map. The game play homage to the original game in some areas, like weapon reloads, while doing its own thing in others. One big different movement, due to jumping and much quicker crouching, creating complexly new movement strategies. While the movement is nice, it does feel like you’re playing Half-Life 2 with a GoldenEye skin rather than an update of the original. There are a good selection of maps in the game – including one based on Casino Royale – and some of the original maps are available in their “classic” forms with graphics straight out of the N64. Some maps also add some really nice detail, Facility being a highlight, without altering the map that much. If you want to have a bit of fun with friends in levels based on GoldenEye, then this is a lot of fun and is east to set up and play, but if you’re looking for a faithful recreation, then this one isn’t it. That’s entirely down to design choices and the developers have done a great job with the levels themselves. --- 007: Licence to Drive Original Release: 2011 Developer: Gamelion Publisher: Glu Mobile Platform: Java Mobile By 2011, the smartphone ere of mobile phones was in full swing, so it’s surprising that a Java-only licensed James Bond games was made at the time, developed by Gamelion with the name “License to Drive”. While the name is obviously supposed to be based on the phrase “Licence to Kill”, it really doesn’t work well, it just sounds like a driving lesson app. That said, a driving lesson app would probably be a more entertaining game than this. This is a vertical scrolling driving game where you’ll be shooting enemies as you head to the end of a level. You’ll drive a few different vehicles, but other than the size, they’re all the same. You can fire weapons forwards and drop gadgets behind you. There are powerups on the track to give you different weapons, although these are usually more difficult to use than the standard weapons. In some levels, your weapons will be constantly changing as you accidentally collect power ups while battling enemies. One power up is a lock-on anti-air missile. This is the only way to attack helicopters. However, the lock-on doesn’t even work, and your missiles waggle from side to side as they move up the screen, so will often miss and it’s down to pure luck. Combined with the annoyances of losing this item if you drive over another, fighting helicopters are extremely frustrating. The healthbar makes no sense to me, parts change colours at different times. I did have to go out of my way to kill Bond to see if it was actually working, and other than resetting your score, there’s no actual punishment for dying, especially as you definitely wouldn’t want to play again to get a high score, the game is just mind-numbingly dull. Most of the levels consist of two types: get to the end of a level or kill a certain amount of enemies and then get to the end of a level. When you have to take out enemies, sections of the level will repeat until you kill enough – although the levels feel randomly generated so you might not notice. The penultimate mission is the only one that’s different, you have to defend a truck containing a bomb. This is magnitudes more difficult than any other mission in the game. There is a story to this game: Bond is investigating crime, someone that fishes for crabs is a secret weapons dealer that “never left Vietnam”, so to stop him you drive though multiple locations causing chaos (and killing lots of local police) and having to beat the CIA to him (because for some reason they won’t work with MI6 for international issues) so that he can’t start a war between India and Pakistan and sell weapons to both. The dialogue is extremely poor and uninteresting. Licence to Drive is a terrible game, the controls are wonky, the gameplay is both dull and tedious and I don’t think I can come up with anything positive about this one. --- Top Trumps 007: The Best of Bond (Java) Original Release: 2011 Developer: Connect2Media Publisher: Connect2Media Platform: Java Mobile This is a mobile version of the Top Trumps 007 game. However, the game is a demo that requires an unlock, which is no longer available, so I was only able to briefly test it out – that said, it’s just Top Trumps. You can’t just browse through the cards or order them, which means you have no idea what numbers are good for each category, making the game feel even more random than before. There’s also a party mode where you have to win rounds to spell out “Top Trumps”, in this you get given random cards, so it’s even more luck-based. The cards themselves look quite nice, so at least I can say one positive thing about it.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone Original Release: 2010 Developer: Bizarre Creations Publisher: Activision Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC Version played: PC Developed by Bizarre Creations, known for games like Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars (they also made one of my childhood favourite games, Wiz ‘n’ Liz), this is a brand new third person adventure starring Daniel Craig. Strangely, this was released on the same day as the Daniel Craig reimagining of GoldenEye on the Wii, which overshadowed Blood Stone due to its association with the Nintendo 64 classic. Starting off on a boat trying to prevent a terrorist attack in Athens, you get a short mission that serves as an effective way of showing you how the game controls. Using cover is a necessity as you’ll die a lot, however, melee is also important as Bond can dispatch foes with one attack – with lots of great animations that use the environment to make it very assisting. Mixing melee and shooting is very easy and flows great. The combat really nails Bond’s style. As the terrorist leader flees, you get the first of many vehicle sequences, all of which are set-piece heavy but very enjoyable, even if you fail a lot (restarting is very quick). They control extremely well and, while linear, are a great spectacle. After this, you chase him on land and get to use more of the combat features, including a “focus aim”. Each time you melee and enemy, you gain a “focus aim” (up to a maximum of 3), which lets you automatically line a precise shot for an instant kill when you pull the trigger. It’s very satisfying to use, and really helps with the flow of the combat. I never got tired of punching a few nearby enemies then dispatching a few far away enemies in a matter of seconds. A car chase ensues as you have to stop a car carrying a bomb. As this is based on the Daniel Craig films, Bond’s car has no weapons, but the sections are enjoyable enough (thanks to the developer’s driving game pedigree) that they aren’t needed. This intro sequence is its own little story, but serves as a great introduction to the game. We get a very nice opening titles, performed by Joss Stone (the Bond girl of this game) before moving onto the main story. A scientist has gone missing, and MI6 received an anonymous tip to his whereabouts at a dig site in Istanbul. Bond poses as a history museum professor but the goons there try to dispose of him, so you get another fun level through some catacombs as you try to find this scientist, with some great set pieces along the way (if you like Uncharted-style set pieces, you’ll enjoy this game). Bond’s phone is his only gadget in this, working in a similar way to Batman’s Detective Mode in the Arkham games, showing enemy positions. It can also be uses to hack cameras and doors, as well as scan optional pieces of intel for extra background information. The bad guys get a hold of the researcher’s password and flees with a briefcase containing his data on some nasty viruses, so Bond needs to pursue. His fancy new Aston Martin is too far away, but luckily there just happens to be a classic one just sitting there to take. You’ll have to dodge a lot of traffic in this intense chase, before the car ends up getting totalled. Continuing the chase on foot, the briefcase gets passed on, but Bond manages to stop the messenger, finding out the man behind it, a Russian named Stefan Pomerov. With Bond being assigned an assistant called Nicole Hunter, he sneaks into Pomerov’s casino in Monaco. Stealth is completely optional, and you have a bit of time when you get spotted to take them out before they call for backup. Your objective is Pomerov’s safe, and you discover that Pomerov wants to use the virus information to create new variants and then sell the vaccines. Following him to his facility in Siberia, Bond poses as Nicole’s bodyguard to investigate this facility, which has a few nice moments of being able to walk around without worrying about combat. Bond discovers a factory already making these viruses and sabotages it before fleeing. It’s a very enjoyable level with more cool moments. Pomerov flees in a train, so it’s time for another car chase as you dodge flaming debris before continuing the chase on a partly frozen river, it’s a lengthy chase, but still a ton of fun all the way though. You catch up with him, but he’s already boarded a cargo place. Luckily, there’s also a giant cargo hovercraft, which Nicole takes control of while Bond deals with the guards still on board. To help catch up to the plane, Bond needs to head into the cargo hold and eject the cargo, use a turret to defend against missiles and to damage the plane’s engines, jump onto the plane’s wing as you catch up, get inside then fight your way to the front, taking out Pomarov. This all happens with no loading screens, it’s all fluid form start to finish and is visually impressive as a result. Even 13 years later, my jaw dropped a few times in this segment. Everything seems to have tied up nicely, but Bond thinks something is up: nobody Bond has met makes sense as the anonymous caller, and he thinks the people behind it wanted MI6 to stop Pomarov. He gets in touch with a Chinese agent who wants to meet Bond in an aquarium in Bangkok, but ends up getting assassinated as he claims a man called Ruk is behind everything. A chase follows as Bong tries to get the assassin to pass on information on the whereabouts of Ruk, but would rather die. He does end up getting away in a vehicle for Bond to pursue. That vehicle being a colossal haul truck (moving much faster than one would realistically move to make it entertaining), causing a ton of collateral damage. It’s another very impressive chase sequence, with more wow moments. After crashing it off a bridge, Bond passes out and wakes up hours later, finding out that he’s wanted by the police, not just for the damage his chase caused, but he’s also been framed for murdering a Chinese agent. MI6 says that a sleazy contact of his is nearby, so Bond finds out the location of Ruk and heads over, but as Ruk was waned about him coming, gets the drop on Bond and captures him for information. Bond is taken to Rak’s camp in Burma, where he gets called away before he can torture Bond. Bond escapes and fights trough the camp, having to deal with a few APCs and chasing Ruk in a plane before crash landing – unfortunately, there’s no flying mission, which leads us to the last main level of the game. Crash landing near a dam that Rak’s group is taking over, Bond has to fight his way through to survive, taking out helicopters with cranes along the way. There’s a lot of combat, but the level is very well suited for good use of melee and the focus aim ability, so I enjoyed the whole things. Rak taunts Bon the entire time and it ends with a boss fight against him in a helicopter. Rak begs Bond to save him and he’ll reveal who is behind it – but Bond has already figured it out. The final mission is a car chase as you stop the villain from escaping – however it turns out that they’re still just another part of a puzzle, as a drone takes them out. The true villain will have to be discovered in the game’s sequel…which was never made. This is a hugely enjoyable game with fun combat and great driving sections, filled with movie-like set pieces. The ending is a bit of a downer, although people have retroactively linked it to SPECTRE as it (unintentionally) fits with that film really well. The poor sales of Blood Stone led to the end of Bizarre Creations, which is a shame as I think that this was a great game. --- James Bond 007: Blood Stone (DS) Original Release: 2010 Developer: n-Space Publisher: Activision Platform: DS While the home console releases of Blood Stone and GoldenEye were split between platform, the DS got ports of both games on the same day, and both developed by n-Space (who previously made the DS port of Rogue Agent). Like the home console version, Blood Stone on DS is a third person shooter with cover based mechanics and vehicle sections. The cutscenes in the DS version are adorable. Instead of using recordings or screenshots from the main game, the cutscenes are recreated using the in-game graphics, and I absolutely love them. They’re also fully voice acted, even with lines not in the original. That said, there are a couple of moments where Daniel Craig talks so fast that you can’t understand him. The boat level introduces you to the controls, starting with the aiming as Bond parachutes onto the boat. Unfortunately, there are no options to use the buttons to aim, the touch screen is the only option, which is a nightmare for left handed people like me that don’t get on with southpaw setups. Getting into cover uses the action button on the touch screen, so I found myself using cover without actually using the “cover” option. The boat chase has unfortunately been turned into a turret section, as the boat moves on its own and you just aim and shoot. The level on land has also been reduced, with a single shootout and then the first driving section replaced with Bond using a rocket launcher to destroy a truck full of explosives, although the acropolis looks like a model (Shh!). After the simplified intro (using the Bond theme rather than the song made for the game, which gets relegated to the credits), it skips past the catacombs to Bond finding the missing scientist. You never hear the password the tortured scientist whispers in the main version, but here he shouts out “it’s my phone number”, and you feel really sorry for the guy as it highlights that he’s just doing a regular job. The chase scene introduces objects you can hit to take out groups of nearby guards, and the game informs you one is nearby with a golden 007 – a lot like Bond Moments in previous games. Here we get the first car section. Bond is using his new car rather than randomly finding a classic Aston. The controls are a bit odd (but at least uses buttons) and the car never feels like its turning, but rather just sliding around. Without the action set pieces, you really miss the cars having weapons in this version. After dodging trains in a subway, You follow the guy escaping with the information a bit more on foot until a boss battle where he becomes a bullet sponge and you need to shoot him a lot. Sneaking into the casino, we now have the first stealth section. You can take guards out instantly by using the fire button up close. Bond automatically melees when close to enemies, although if an enemy is aware of Bond, you get a really annoying quick time event needed to finish them off. If you get spotted, enemies will call for backup, but luckily it means just a few more guards turning up. Interestingly, the silencer is more realistic than other games, as nearby enemies will still hear it if you use it. In this version, Bond actually speaks to Pomarov face to face (although I have no idea why Bond needed to sneak in when he was invites) and you get to play a simplified form of poker with him. Luckily, Pomarov is a terrible poker player with extremely obvious tells. Still, it’s a very nice addition, one missing from any of the Casino Royale segments of Quantum of Solace. After this, you have to make your way to Pomarov’s safe to find the information you need, with more optional stealth and a “Bond moment” using a crane. Then you need to get into the safe which is another touch screen addition. Unfortunately, this is not friendly to colourblind people, so I had a nightmare with it. Heading to Pomarov’s site in Serbia, you fight through his facility to find out what he’s up to. The level design of all the levels in this game are completely different to the main version, made much simpler and straightforward to suit the DS. You make your way through the roof and fight a helicopter, which then takes out his factory instead of Bond sabotaging it. The train chase is probably the most impressive vehicle section in the DS version, with debris and broken cars to avoid, and a helicopter shooting at you along the way. You fight trough the docks and make it onto Pomarov’s plane before he leaves. The stakes of this level are raised as the plane is on a collision cause to the coast to release the virus there, so you have a bullet sponge fight with Pomarov before Bond swerves out of the way and crashes the plane elsewhere. Now we get a section exclusive to the DS version. Bond investigates the initial call that led MI6 to the scientist, but instead of it going straight to a Chinese agent, he needs to do some actual investigation. You need to sneak past the guards (you can’t even knock them out) and use CCTV to analyse people in a meeting. A chase breaks out and in some parts of the game like this, I found it much easier to run past all the enemies. After killing loads of his bodyguards, Bond discovers tat they’re on the same side and their boss arranges a meeting in an aquarium in Bangkok. Story-wise, I like this little added bit as the jump straight to Bangkok was a bit jarring. The aquarium is a much more traditional design than in the main game, but you get to explore it a bit more and it’s really nice on the DS. You have to figure out where Ping is based on some clues by taking photos of secret markings on the glass. I looked at the map showing where the clues are and saw there were none in the shark tunnel, but Ping wasn’t there. After taking photos you have a surprisingly difficult tile jigsaw puzzle to reveal: a shark. He gets killed by a sniper two feet away and you get to chase Ruk himself, with Ruk escaping in a dump truck (much smaller than the colossal one in the main game) and Bond giving chase via car. Ruk flees to a small dock and you fight through his goons to continue the chase via boat, another turret section. You pump Ruk with enough bullets but he still escapes back onto land before he knocks Bond out and takes him to be tortured in Bolivia. Bond escapes with another annoying “safe cracking” minigame, with this level also encouraging stealth, but making it optional. You’ll sneak through flooded ditches and hide behind trees to avoid guards and trucks. The outdoor environment looks really good on the DS. Bond escapes in an aircraft before being shot down, fighting his way to Ruk’s aircraft for the final confrontation with him. This fight is really annoying as the pilot keeps knocking Bond backwards and it ends with a quick time event. The last mission has an on-foot section as you fight through the final villain’s massive house before they escape in a car, resulting in the final car chase and the final speech at the end being different to the main version – although it still has the same cliffhanger. Blood Stone on DS is a fascinating conversion. The gameplay itself isn’t very good (especially if you don’t get on with the control setup), but there’s something oddly charming about the whole bundle and how it was adapted to the graphics of the DS.

The original controls were bad enough when it game out and feel even worse now. There's a much better version with the game on Xbox. It's a shame Rare's games are going on NSO, they deserve a proper release with enchantments.

James Bond: Top Agent Original Release: 2006 Developer: Javaground Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment Platform: Java Mobile/iOS Trying something different, this Java mobile game is a turn-based strategy loosely retelling the stories of a few classic Bond films. Not doing a generic action game is an interesting idea, and there seems to be some good aspects of Top Agent. The graphics are very nice, with lovely pixel backgrounds and good animation. As you progress, you unlock more items and weapons to customise your character, as well as being able to upgrade your stats as you level up. Each match is a 1 on 1 battle, you choose your items and then select your five actions for your match, then you get to watch them unfold in the order you took place. This means you can’t react to what the enemy is doing, and even though the game tells you to look for patterns in enemy actions, there is none. Which is where the game falls apart: there’s no strategy. Winning or losing is just luck. Enemies can be focused on guns one time, then in the rematch, be all about punching and parrying. It’s a shame as there are some nice ideas, but the game is just fundamentally broken from a gameplay perspectice. The Java version got a couple more films via DLC (including Die Another Day), and the game was later ported to iOS with redrawn graphics, but with the exact same issues. --- The Shadow War Original Release: 2008 Developer: Six to Start Publisher: Puffin Books Platform: Browser Not played: Website offline, requires a login. This was an augmented reality game aimed at kids to promote the Young Bond series of books. Players had to solve 7 missions in order to get through the game. Most of this was done by finding clues in fake websites that were part of the game, you had to navigate the game’s internet to find hidden routes and ways that can be used to access or interact with other websites. Other parts needed you to do your own research or use things from the books themselves. It’s an interesting idea, but as everything was saved to an account, there’s no way to play it, even using archive tools like Wayback machine. --- GoldenEye 007 (XBLA) Original Release: Cancelled in 2008 Developer: Rare Publisher: Microsoft Platform: Xbox 360 In 2007, Rare were working on a remastered version of GoldenEye: it was going to be the same game, with new graphics, and updated control scheme and online multiplayer. There are lots of rumours about why this got cancelled, but nothing concrete. The game was almost finished when it was shut down and a version of release was leaked in 2021 – although based on screenshots form developers, this isn’t the latest build of the game. Some elements were unfinished – such as some missing skyboxes – but some of these issues have been patched by fans. One feature of this remaster is the option to swap between old and new graphics – like the Secret of Monkey Island and Halo remasters. The “old” graphics aren’t quite finished so don’t look quite as good as they did on the N64 – things like reflections are missing. Still. it’s a nice feature to look back and forth. The opening dam level is specifically striking – it’s much more snowy, with extra mountains and trees in the background. The level geometry has no to been altered, so the levels are still familair. The controls have also been properly updated for the Xbox 360, featuring dual analogue controls that feel great. Reload and changing weapons are now their own buttons, and crouching is much easier. Another addition is being able to swap between gadgets without going to the pause screen (which now features an Omega-style watch). While some levels are essentially updated versions that look more detailed, other levels have more significant changes. Surface moves the wall of carboard trees backwards and replaces it with a fence, making it feel much more natural. There’s even a gap in the trees at the start so you can see the radar dish. With the draw distance, you can see across the whole map – although Surface 2 you can’t see as much as it’s much darker. The Frigate levels also has some significant changes. Some textures that look like doors in the level have now been removed – so new players won’t be trying to open doors that don’t exist. You do occasionally come across some textures that haven’t been replaced, which stand out – it would be great to see a fully finished version of this game. Statue changes the looks of quite a few objects, and is also much, much darker (too dark, in my opinion). This level does have added paths and string lights to help guide your path through the levels. The Streets level is also another let down, as it looks somehow flatter and greyer than the original level. Jungle looks more open with the same tactic of moving the “wall of cardboard trees” backwards, however you just have an invisible wall instead. The roof of the trees is much busier and it gives the style of a jungle much better – expert for the bright purple untextured objects dotted about. One of the biggest changes in style, however, is cradle. The original was a sea of fog with no backgrounds, whereas here you have the actual giant radar dish and surrounding mountains. Its’s still made in a way that keeps the N64 aesthetic to it, and really makes the level stand out. Multiplayer has also had similar improvements, and even includes a couple of additional maps, such as Dam and Frigate. Some of the classic maps have had visual changes, with a few now featuring open roofs with foliage and sky visible. This unfinished port is a great version of the classic GoldenEye, and it’s a massive shame that we never got a finished version. --- Monopoly: Ultimate James Bond Collector’s Edition (2008) Original Release: 2008 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game Like the 2006 Collector’s Edition, this is another James Bond edition of Monopoly. --- Top Trumps: 007 The Best of Bond Original Release: 2008 Developer: Winning Moves Publisher: Winning Moves Platform: Board Game Top Trumps is a series of many different games. It contains cards that have stats. Players take turns picking stats and compares against their opponent’s card. The highest value wins. This one focuses on the James Bond franchise in general.

Blood Fever: Sea Urchin Sprint Original Release: 2006 Developer: Puffin Books Publisher: Puffin Books Platform: Browser This flash game was made to celebrate the release of the second book in the Young Bond series. It depicts a scene from the book where James has to crawl past sea urchins in order to reach Casa Polipe. You rotate using the left and right arrows and move forward with the up arrow. The urchins sway back and forth, so you have to time your movements right to get past. The maze is very short, but you do have a (generous) time limit to content with. Once you reach the shore, you win. --- Monopoly: 007 Collector’s Edition (2006) Original Release: 2006 Developer: Hasbro Publisher: Hasbro Platform: Board Game A James Bond themed version of Monopoly. These versions of Monopoly don’t do anything with the actual theme, it’s just the basic game with different pictures and player pieces. If you’ve played one licences Monopoly, you’ve played them all (other a small amount of special ones). Monopoly is a terrible roll-and-move trading game. The mechanics were originally designed with a runaway winner in mind to demonstrate how bad landlords are, only for the game to be stolen by someone else and mass produced. The game is also often made worse by people incorporating “house rules”, such as putting fine/tax money under “free parking” – something that just makes the game drag even longer. Almost everything you do is determined by rolling two dice. For the first few turns round the board, there is property you can either buy or send to auction (a rule most people forget) and the it’s the case of trying not to land on ren, although as it’s all dice based, there’s to tactics for doing so, other than not paying to leave jail early (it’s actually beneficial to stay in jail). There’s also a lot of negotiating and trading properties with other players to try and create sets. In order to buy houses and hotels. --- Avenue of Death Original Release: 2006 Developer: TAMBA Internet Publisher: Ian Fleming Publications Platform: Browser This flash game was made to promote the release of the Young Bond novel Hurricane Gold, the fourth book in the series. It depicts a few scenes from the book as Bond has to make it though the Avenue of Death, getting past traps and Mayan gods. The game is mostly a simple platformer, jump past obstacles and collect coins and matches for bonus points. The of the levels are just about getting to the other side of the screen, while a few are slightly different. One has you leaping over a serpent god, you have to time the angle of the jump and charge up your jump power. One has you swimming in the dark to find a hidden fuse and the final one requires you to light a match and use it to light a fuse. It’s very short but enjoyable enough for a quick Flash game. --- 007 Spy Cards Original Release: 2007 Developer: G E Fabbri Publisher: G E Fabbri Platform: Board Game This is a sequel to 007 Spy Files, also coming with a series of Magazines. It’s another Top Trumps style game, but with a few differences. This version uses all cards rather than separating them out by category. Gadget card are now bonus abilities and you can only have two in your deck. Interestingly, there’s no “James Bond” card in the game. Instead, each actor has cards in their names, both a main one and multiple “costumes”. This one only supports two players, but you now have a hand of cards to choose from rather than being stuck to a list. One player picks a card and category, and their opponent may choose any card from their hand to combat it. The first set of 275 cards was called “Commander”, which suggests they were planning on making more, but these never came about. --- 007: Quantum of Solace Original Release: 2008 Developer: Treyarch, Beenox (PC, Wii Port) Publisher: Activision Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii Version played: PC With the Bond license now going to Activision, they gave Treyarch the task of creating a new film tie-in alongside making Call of Duty: World at War. Naturally, this involved using the Call of Duty game engine, focusing on shooting with very little in the way of gadgets – that said, Daniel Craig’s Bond was less about gadgets anyway. Starting out at the end of Casino Royale, with Bond trying to kidnap Mr. White and you get thrown straight into the action. It’s a first person shooter that feels a lot like Call of Duty 4, but also has a cover system that turns into a third person perspective. It’s a surprisingly intuitive system, and the core shooting mechanics are enjoyable. In this level, you have to get around the gardens to find another way into Mr. White’s house, gathering intel and then having to escape as a bomb sets the building on fire – this game has some good set pieces. After kidnapping Mr. White, the car chase that follows is unfortunately not a mission – it’s all shooting in this game. However, instead of using the opening credits from the film, the game has its own really good opening using that car chase – and it has a much better song than the film, too. When questioning Mr. White, M’s bodyguard betrays MI6 and you need to chase him through some ancient sewers and then above rooftops. If you didn’t figure it out yourself in the first level, this introduces the melee mechanic – run up to them, hit and then perform a quick time event to knock them out. This involves moving over a reticule and hitting the fire button, so it’s not as annoying as the random button kind. The boss fights, unfortunately, just use this mechanic. Tracking down Mr. White to the very impressive looking Bregenz Opera House. This is a fantastic level that has a wonderful atmosphere throughout due to the opera music accompanying the soundtrack. This level encourages you to be stealthy, making headshots, knocking out enemies and disabling cameras. There’s no game over for failing – but you will have to deal with armoured guards if you get spotted. In one section, you have to climb across part of the moving stage as you get a camera view from the point of the snipers, it looks very snazzy and these parts are stylish, even if they’re simple. After spying in on the meeting (finding out about a man called Greene and a British advisor called Haines), you have to do a bit of sniping (which is very satisfying) before escaping. This is a great level. From the best level to the worst – the game skips forward to a sinkhole, with Bond already teamed up with Camille (who has previously not been mentioned). It’s a very drab looking level, shooting enemies and helicopters then an extended stationary turret section. At the end of the level, Camille explains that she wants revenge on a general, and asks Bond why he’s invested, this brings us to the main part of the game. You see, this isn’t just a Quantum of Solace game – in fact, the Quantum of Solace parts make up less than a third of the game. This is mainly a Casino Royale game in disguise, the flashback starts off with the opening scene of Casino Royale with two levels of Bond chasing a bombmaker. The first level has the bomber being protected by waves of henchmen to fight through, but is still a lot of fun, while the second is a parkour chase through the construction site, which works surprisingly well for a game like this. After disposing of the bomber (off screen), Bond discovers a contact in Miami and tracks him down to the science centre. If you turn around here, you’ll see a massive billboard for some gum – this game has plenty of product placement (mainly Sony Ericsson phones and VAIO laptops). You have to take out some snipers before sneaking around the building. Once you get in, you have to make your way down from the roof before a large fight in the main hall, destroying the exhibits inside, including a replica of Da Vinci’s flying machine. Bond discovers a bomb threat intended for Miami Airport, and when he gets there finds out that it has been taken over by hostiles. This is another fun mission where you can be stealthy, or just go in all guns blazing if you prefer. There are plenty of objects that you can shoot to kill, blind or stun enemies, all highlighted with a slight glimmer. A train level – it’s always oddly satisfying to fight on a train. In this mission, a drug deal is happening as you need to take the dealer out, creating a great set piece with you jumping between trains – it’s not quite Uncharted 2’s train level, but that game wasn’t out yet. This is another really fun level. Unfortunately, you don’t get to play poker at Casino Royale (even a few rounds and an optional mini game would have been nice), so it skips forward to mid-game where Le Chiffre gets taken by Obanno. Bond chases them through the hotels – including through the stunning looking spa. Another nice thing about this game is the damage to the environment – chunks fall off pillars and other objects break apart, some cover can also get destroyed. Some objects can be shot to take out enemies – a bit like “Bond moments” in previous games, but they feel more natural. Next up is the shortest level in the game, but one that was a very nice inclusion and I would have liked to have seen some more non-combat moments. Bond gets poisoned and has to make his way to the car while dealing with the effects of it. After being rescued, we get told that Bond wins the game, but Vesper is kidnapped, and Bond also gets kidnapped on route to rescue her. As Bond frees himself, he heads to a barge and has to to a bit of sniping to protest Vesper, which is kind of annoying. After this, you assault the barge, setting off huge explosions along the way. I died a lot, but checkpoints are frequent and it’s quick to back in the action, so I didn’t mind much at all. The resolution with Le Chiffre pretty much happens off screen. In Venice – which still looks really nice – Bond has to tail Vesper as she heads to a meeting. There’s a few nice quiet parts of this level, which are mixed with plenty of action in between. You have to make your way up a house as it sinks before finding a trapped Vesper and using a nail gun to fight off the final enemy of this section. After Vesper dies, it’s time to head back to Quantum of Solace. We get a very brief rundown of the rest of the film before we start the final level – yes, there’s only one more level after the Casino Royale “flashback”. Fighting your way through the eco hotel, you end up saving Camille before a final confrontation with Greene and rushing out of the building before it collapses. The game ends with Bond outside of the room containing Mr White and Haines, saying that he’s going in, to kill Mr. White and capture Haines for information. This was the original ending for the film, before they removed it (the deleted scene wasn’t even included on the DVDs). I was really surprised by the Quantum of Solace game. It’s a lot of fun and the core gameplay is essentially the best era of Call of Duty, with third person cover that works really well. It would have been really nice to have some non-shooting parts, such as driving and poker segments. I also would have preferred a more linear story structure – having Casino Royale as a flashback when it’s so much of the game is just strange. Especially when, with the films, the end of Casino Royale flows straight into the start of Quantum of Solace (personally, I think the film works best as an “extended” version of Casino Royale). Other Versions Xbox 360 and PS3 The 360 and PS3 versions are the same as the PC version, just with slightly different graphics. Wii While most games from this game lumped the Wii and PS2 with the same alternate game, the Wii version of Quantum of Solace is actually the exact same game as the main version. The graphics have been toned down a lot, but the levels and graphics are exact the same – the only difference to the levels is one section on the opera house stage where the stage doesn’t move. The Wii version also has pointer controls, but doesn’t offer a Classic Controller as an alternative. Another thing that surprised me is that this came out before the Wii version of Call of Duty 4. --- 007: Quantum of Solace (PS2) Original Release: 2008 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Activision Platform: PS2 For the PS2 version of Quantum of Solace, Eurocom return to the Bond franchise. This one is entirely a third person shooter, but is not an extension on Everything or Nothing, with no lock-on at all. While the ability to shoot anywhere is nice, aiming feels extremely inaccurate in this game. The game, apart from a few areas, has different level design than the “next gen” versions. Starting in the same garden as the HD game, this mission has been transformed from instant action into a long, drawn out tutorial. It goes through the basic movement, the hacking minigame (which is the same as the main version, but a lot more difficult), stealth and shooting. The game doesn’t feature anything that needs such a long tutorial, and even here you can feel how wonky and broken the cover mechanics are – the game boasts that shots are more accurate form cover, but it’s much better to walk away from cover to shoot. The Mitchell chase is very much a chase – spend more than 5 seconds to figure out the way to go (due to the blurry dark textures) and you’ll fail the mission. It is a bit obvious when you take your time in the main game, but this is far too much in the other directions and makes this level feel like a trial and error game. You do get a boss fight at the end, which is nice, but you still have the quick time event after – and this is one of the worst examples of QTEs – a random button will pop up and you have to press it almost instantly or else you’ll fail. After this, we do get a new level as Bond investigates a general. This is the first section where stealth is required, but the stealth mechanics are awful, so it’s a case of keep trying until you get lucky. It would have been nice to have this level in the main game, as it’s the start of Camille’s journey, which was missing form that game. The opera house has more forced stealth, somehow even worse than the previous level as here you fail the instant someone sees you (in the previous level you had a chance before they set of an alarm). The atmosphere is completely gone, and the level itself feels tiny and static. The sinkhole level is actually ok – probably better than the main version. This also touches on the whole water plotline that was missing from the main game. It’s still not a good level, this version is just passable. With that, it’s time to jump back to Casino Royale again. The bomb chase sequence is less riveting, and I found that it was better to just ignore enemies and run past in order to not fail the mission. The chasing really doesn’t come across as well without the “spectacle” the other systems were capable of. Miami science centre skips the sniping section (which is good, the aiming is extremely stiff in this version), with Bond trying the front entrance before moving around the side. The final fight requires you to shoot the boss a lot and then complete a QTE, fail and he recovers his health. It’s a very frustrating end. There’s no Miami airport or train missions in this version, so it’s straight on to Casino Royale, trying to save Le Chiffre. This level is surprisingly similar to the main version, with a similar layout (but with the end cut off). It makes it more obvious how toned down the graphics are, even compared to the Wii version of the game – it shows how impressive the Wii port really is. When the level layout is so similar, it just highlights how this is lacking in the fun. Skipping straight to the barge, this level is a slog. You have to shoot through some corridors, then take a detour to turn some pipes. Then you have to solve a puzzle involving dials before shooing your way through more rooms. The level has a boss that is invincible, no matter how much you shoot him in the head. You have to shoot random pipes instead. Now onto the final mission. What about the Venice, the level that contains the main pivotal moment in these two films? Replaced with a line of dialogue “so that’s where the girl died”. We’re off to the eco hotel instead. Lots of shooting combined with the hardest part with the game: a hacking sequence. It took me a few dozen attempts to finally get past it. After that is a boss where you have to shoot Greene’s goons and them him – with his main henchmen, I wasn’t sure if you had to shoot him a lot or if he was invincible except for environmental stuff – turns out you just shoot him a lot. We haven’t dealt with the general yet. Instead of escaping like last time, we have to race to the roof to stop the General. Once you reach him (going slowly, because you’ll die from random explosions if you try going fast), you have a slow motion scene where you have to shoot him, except the animation on the general is so bad that he looks like a stop motion puppet – you can see each frame of his animation as his feet glide across the floor. (Have a look for yourself) Other than containing one important mission (and then skipping even more important ones), this a much worse version of Quantum of Solace, not nice to play and nowhere near as good as the other Bond games from this generation – even Rogue Agent is more fun to play. --- 007: Quantum of Solace (DS) Original Release: 2008 Developer: Vicarious Visions Publisher: Activision Platform: Nintendo DS Unlike the previous DS Bond game, Rogue Agent, this doesn’t attempt to replicate the console version of the game, instead it does its own thing. A bit like the Game Boy Bond game, this is also clearly inspired by the handheld’s Zelda game, utilising a similar control method to Phantom Hourglass with the game being controlled by the stylus. While the opening starts in the same place as the other games, you don’t get to play it, instead you’re whisked off to a tutorial at MI6. This is necessary because the controls, unlike Phantom Hourglass, are not intuitive. The DS is held sideways (either way to cater to left handed people) and moving works by holding down on the screen, crouching by tapping under Bond. Shooting is done by holding down a button (any button works) and tapping – but as you tap, the camera moves around. The zoomed in view also means that you can’t shoot far, while enemies hit you from off-screen. Get close to an enemy and hold down a button will enter melee mode (if they haven’t seen you, you’ll take them out automatically). This is a fiddly punch-out style system where you swipe left/right up for jabs, hold on a side of the screen to block and do a circle to perform a throw. It’s extremely awkward and the detection of moves isn’t very good. Due to not much ammo, you’ll be doing this a lot. The chase mission is walking around rooftops and shooting/punching guards. Moving onto the opera house and it’s not closed off like the other games, there’s an actual opera happening and you have to locate a wine bar to take a ticket off an enemy. You’ll collect objects like weapons, ammo, keys and health pickups, but you need to managing your inventory. You have limited space and each ammo clip uses up a space. Reloading is also a faff – you have to go to your menu and drag it to your gun as Bond will never reload on his own. Once you upgrade your quick slots, you can tap on there. Once you find Greene, the flashback to Casino Royale will start. Skipping the start of Casino Royale and going to the science centre, the main thing you need to do are clear: be stealthy (when needed), kill enemies, collect keys and proceed to the next door. In the forced stealth sections, getting spotted will instantly fail you, and this will often happen from enemies off-screen. Heading to the airport and you have to walk around activating servers to unlock doors. As you search levels, you’ll also find poker chips and playing cards for the game’s upgrade systems. Chips can be spend on upgrades to your strength and weapon use, while cards are moved in your inventory to create a “hand” of cards. Each cards boosts a stat, but forming poker hands will give you even more bonuses. It’s a really interesting system, but unfortunately doesn’t mean much in this game. The train level also returned and I somehow managed to get lost. Part way through the level, the map changes from an up/down to a left/right layout. You reach a door that needs a key so I went back and forth, one of the guards commented that I had found the key. Turned out the door that triggered the dialogue about needing the key is a dead end, you have to go back to the start of the level. The Casino Royale has you looking for keys to proceed until you need to reach the high roller’s room – which is something you needed to do in the Game Boy Bond game. You don’t partake in any gambling, though, instead you assault the innocent staff member with the pass to the room, before punching Obanno a lot (the bosses in the game have Body armour, so you can’t shoot them). On the barge, you have to hunt around for a way to unlock Vesper’s cell. You start with no items, so there’s lots more annoying punching to do until you track down your guns (even more punching if you’ve ran out ammo). I thought that there was going to be a puzzle at the start of this level as you’re stuck in a cell, but you just walk to the door twice and a guard will let you out. You do get the Venice level in this, but it’s more of what game before, you’ll reach a locked door and walk around killing enemies until one drops the key you need. The end of the level is comical, with Vesper being held in a cartoon-style cage suspended above the water. Turns out that the flashback in this version was Bond daydreaming while spying at the opera house, as now he needs to escape. This level is slightly different, as you can’t attack enemies. If you stand next to a civilian, the guards won’t pay any attention to you, so you have to walk between civilians to get out. As the main important person M wants to investigate is Haines, but recommends that you should speak to Felix, who is chilling in Bolivia. Felix doesn’t offer anything other than to Haines’ house in London. A group called the “Delta Force Squad” is out to get Bond for….reasons (Bond is still working for MI6). After Bond tells Felix “I owe you” for nothing, you fight your way out. The final mission is an infiltration and assault on Haines’ estate, the event teased at the end of the other versions of the game. You have to set bombs off before sneaking to an lift and then have a final boss against Mr. White, who keeps setting off a bomb on Haines so you have to constantly go back and disarm it. Mr. White escapes and you take Haines into custody. The DS version of Quantum of Solace would have been novel when it came out, but is just a pain to play. Both the shooting and punching mechanics are annoying, and the interesting RPG and upgrade systems buried in the game can’t save it. The most interesting thing is the very different ending, with the climax of Quantum of Solace simply missing. --- Quantum of Solace (Java) Original Release: 2008 Developer: Javaground Publisher: Sony Pictures Television International Platform: Java Mobile Following on from their Casino Royale game, Javaground developed another Java game, this time based on Quantum of Solace. While you would expect similar gameplay or some kind of improvement, this game goes backwards in almost every way. The one improvement is that the game has some very basic cutscenes and follows the story of the film a little bit more. The gameplay is now much more basic, melee combat is fairly useless with no finishers, larger enemies can’t even be punched. Half the time, shooting is hitting the shoot button as the enemy slowly rises above cover – one saving grace is you have infinite ammo, but reloading is slow, so you’ll end up emptying your clip after every enemy. Stealth is also much more basic, if you jump off the platform, the enemy forgets about you and you can’t takedown from behind, only from doors. This Java game is slow, tedious and, despite being short, manages to drag. The platforming controls also feel frustrating, especially running and jumping, which doesn’t work half of the time. --- Quantum of Solace (Java Basic) Original Release: 2008 Developer: Javaground Publisher: Sony Pictures Television International Platform: Java Mobile This is a much more basic version of the Quantum of Solace Java game. I can’t find any documentation as to why this exists, and Casino Royale didn’t have a version like this (from what I can find). While it follows the same rough structure and mechanics as the other version, it’s a completely different game. The game is much more basic, there’s no cover mechanics, stealth or hiding in doors, just simple run and gun gameplay. The levels are all the same dull grey, with the rooftop design of the first level the only one looking slightly different. The crazy thing is…this version is more enjoyable than the main one. While it’s still not a good game, the frustrating parts of the other version are no more, and this version is a good brainless distraction.

They're all pretty solid games, just not the best of the best. I do think it helps playing them without spending £50 on them. I think I would have been a bit disappointed when I was younger and I only had one new game every few months, but they're all enjoyable. I actually liked a couple of Activision's games, too (one I was really surprised I enjoyed so much, as you'll find out soon - don't worry, it's not 007 Legends).

Casino Royale (Java) Original Release: 2006 Developer: Javaground Publisher: Sony Pictures Digital Platform: Java Mobile A 2D platforming/shooting game for Java Mobile phones, this loosely follows the story as you go through 14 short levels based on events in the film. For a Java game, the controls are surprisingly smooth, with Bond jumping, rolling and running across platforms, using special “Bond Moves” to cross large gaps and climbing up and along pipes. Moving around works really well, even with the limited controls. Combat is also simple, but effective. The same button activates shooting or – if you’re close to an enemy – punching. I focused a lot on punching and after a few hits, you can perform a quick time event for an instant takedown. You’ll find a few different kinds of guns, including a sniper rifle that can be used to activate buttons. You can also use “Bond move” in some places to kill a group of enemies using the environment, or sneak up behind them for an instant kill. A few levels are stealth-based, but the game is very lenient and gives you a 10 second window between a guard spotting you and failing the level – kill them and the timer is cancelled. I was able to run through the stealth levels, quickly punching my way through enemies. If you complete a level without dying, you can also upgrade your skills to be better at shooting, brawling, defence and stealth – although I focused on brawling and defence. This is a short but sweet platform game. While it’s easy, it’s also a lot of fun. This is definitely one of the better Java mobile games that I’ve played. --- Casino Royale Strategy Game Original Release: 2005 Developer: Big Spaceship Publisher: Sony Pictures Platform: Browser Not played: Servers down This flash game – made to promote Casino Royale – was a multiplayer turn-based strategy game where the objective was to capture a briefcase and return it to the base before the opposing team. Your team was made up of five classes named after playing cards: Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Joker. These had different weapons and abilities – the Queen was able to revive downed members, while the Joker can make himself invisible but can’t move, only attacking if an enemy comes close. Each turn, you have 45 seconds to spend your action points moving, attacking or using special abilities. The game is square-based, with your vision and movement based on a set amount of squares. If you don’t use all your action points within the timer, you lose the remaining ones and the next player takes their turn. Due to the online nature of this game, there is no way to play it now. --- Casino Royale: 180 Seconds Original Release: 2006 Developer: Sony Pictures Publisher: Sony Pictures Platform: Browser To market the release of Casino Royale, the official website released a series of Flash games. This one started off as “120 Seconds” before having the timer increased to “180 Seconds”. In this, you have to race to the Casino Royale in order to be seated at the Poker table in time. You use the arrow keys to steer, trying to avoid enemies, which leave oil slicks in front of you. It’s a very simple game, and even though you can finish in less than 2 minutes, it still manages to drag. --- Casino Royale: Line of Sight Original Release: 2006 Developer: Sony Pictures Publisher: Sony Pictures Platform: Browser The second of four Casino Royale flash games from the official website of the film. This one is incredibly basic, where Bond must avoid guards for as long as possible. You move around with the mouse, while the guards bounce around the edges of the screen. If you hit a guard or the edge of the game, it’s game over and you’re given a high score. There’s nothing else to this game. --- Casino Royale: M’s Assessment Original Release: 2006 Developer: Sony Pictures Publisher: Sony Pictures Platform: Browser This isn’t really a game, I’m only including it because it’s a part of the four Casino Royale website flash games. This is a simple personality quiz. Answer the questions and M will tell you which MI6 division you are suitable for. --- Casino Royale: Card Shark Original Release: 2006 Developer: Sony Pictures Publisher: Sony Pictures Platform: Browser The final flash game from the Casino Royale website. This one involves shooting cards. You have one minute and 200 bullets to fire, trying to hit as many cards as you can. Some cards will move behind others, allowing you to hit multiple in one shot. There’s surprisingly few card types in the game, so you’ll see lots of repeats. You’ll likely be playing by repeatedly clicking the mouse to get a decent score. --- Casino Royale (EA) Original Release: Cancelled in 2006 Developer: Electronic Arts Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Xbox 360/PS3 then Xbox/PS2 Before From Russia Was Love was finished, Electronic Arts started working on a Casino Royale game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. They got early access to the cast and sets so they could start development before filming had even begun. The game was planned to be a 3rd person shooter similar to Everything or Nothing. Early in 2006, development was only 15% complete and EA shifted to making the game for Xbox and PlayStation 2 to try and get it ready for release. Despite expanding the James Bond contract prior to this, MGM were unhappy that the game would not be ready alongside the film and ended up cancelling the game and signing a deal with Activision instead. MI6 HQ managed to obtain a few early renders of the final level. -- James Bond Trivia (Java) Original Release: 2006 Developer: 8-Bit Games Publisher: Sony Pictures Digital Platform: Java Mobile A simple trivia mobile game about the James Bond franchise. It includes films up to Die Another Day, however there are a lot more questions about the earlier Bond films. There are also quite a few questions about other media inspired by Bond – TV shows, films and music. Every five questions, you can earn extra points in a target shooting minigame, using a bullet for every question you get right. When you get a total of five wrong, you are given a score, although you can continue answering questions form the same point as the 100 questions are asked in order. --- SilverFin (Java) Original Release: 2006 Developer: Morpheme Publisher: PlayerOne Platform: Java Mobile SilverFin is a Young Bond novel - one of a series of young adult books about James Bond's time at Eton College. The Java game is a stealth/puzzle game that plays across 15 levels and three settings: Eton College, a Scottish castle and a secret laboratory. The game is in an isometric view with simple mechanics, mainly resolving around pushing blocks into holes or out of the way. Guards move around in set patterns and if you’re spotted, will raise the alert level (but won’t chase you): get spotted three times and you fail the level. Although most failures will be a result of making a mistake with the blocks, which, due to the view, can be easy to misalign, although you do get used to it. The game starts very simple and easy but ramps up towards the end, with some thoughtful and challenging levels. I ended up enjoying it a lot, especially in the laboratory section which mixes things up with a few new mechanics, including another enemy type. SilverFin is a great Java Mobile game, and is a great example of a game that works really well on the platform. It’s a shame they never made more games for the other books, but sadly these games died out for more online-focused mobile games.

From Russia With Love Original Release: 2005 Developer: EA Redwood Shores Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: GameCube, PS2, Xbox Version Played: GameCube After Everything or Nothing, EA still wanted to make James Bond games, but Pierce Brosnan was no longer James Bond, and the next Bond hadn’t been chosen. They decided on two things: one was a “Bond” game where you don’t play as James Bond (which ended up being the terrible Rogue Agent), the other: look into the past. They opted for From Russia With Love and even brought back Sean Connery to record new lines (although his Scottish accent is stronger than it used to be). The game doesn’t officially support widescreen, but I managed to find an Action Replay code that creates a proper widescreen, as well as improved framerate. Starting off with a brand new introduction, we get an unelated mini adventure as Bond protects the Prime Minister’s daughter from being kidnapped, fighting enemies from a criminal organisation around the Houses of Parliament, starting form the terrace (for me, it’s nice to see a place I’ve been to in a game – reminds me of the worst chips I’ve ever had, sat on the terrace). The aiming is similar to Everything or Nothing, however now there’s an extra button which activates the precision aiming, something that I think works extremely well. It zooms in and a few important points are highlighted – such as grenades. I found it very easy to pull off headshots due to this mechanic. The aiming still has some issues, though – you still can’t aim freely and targeting objects (like explosive barrels) is still a big pain. As the villains flee with the Prime Minster’s daughter in a helicopter, Bond stops a jetpack pilot and takes it for himself. The jetpack is loosely based on the Bell Rocket Belt seen in Thunderball (which was a real, functioning jetpack), and this one is equipped with a machine gun and rockets. The controls for it are extremely fluid and it’s a joy to use as you blast enemies around Clock Tower and save the Prime Minster’s daughter. You then get treated to a fantastic opening titles, with some really cool effects mixed with footage from the film (plus new live action footage of the new characters) and elements of the original opening titles. The names used are of the actors the likenesses are based on, rather than the voice actors (who all do a great job) We then get to where the film opened: you play as Bond sneaking (well, mostly fighting) through a hedge maze to infiltrate a mansion, until Red Grant kills him. As with the film, it was a fake Bond, with a very smooth transition of Grant throwing the fake Bond mask to the real Bond’s hat landing on the coatrack in Moneypenny’s office. You get to walk around MI6 and talk to Moneypenny, M and Q – this is exactly what I wanted from the “MI6 Interlude” sections in Everything or Nothing. From Russia With Love does a great job at capturing the style of the film and the period that it is set in, with a wonderful style throughout the entire film. The presentation of the game is outstanding from start to finish, and even though the models and textures don’t look the best for the GameCube, the damage done to the environment more than make up for it to make the levels feal more real. During the briefing, M explains that Russian defector Tatiana wants to help MI6 obtain a Lektor (a soviet encoding device), but specifically asking for James Bond. It’s deemed that it’s a trap but still worth the risk, so Bond heads to Station T in Istanbul. On the drive there, Red Grant blows up a Russian car, resulting in a horde of cars attacking Bond. The driving mechanics are good, but unfortunately you can’t use the shoulder buttons to accelerate or break. The map is a similar “small open world” type map. After a bit of driving, you’ll have to get past a tank by sneaking around to a turret on foot – again, it’s nice to transition between driving and on foot sections. As you get to Station T, it gets attacked. You’ll need to rescue hostages and diffuse bombs. Here you’ll get to test out one of the new gadgets: the miniature Q copter, which you can use to fly though vents and detonate to activate switches. Bond also has a rappel belt and laser watch, making their appearances slightly earlier than the films. At the end of the level, a helicopter enters the building for a brutal boss fight. After another car sequence where you have to obtain a disguise, you need to reach a secret underground tunnel to spy on the Russians, this involves a dreadful turret section as you get driven around in a boat, having to blast open doors. Once you spy on the Russians, you discover an attack on a Gypsy camp and that the Lektor has been moved to a secure vault, so your ally, Kerim, heads off to warn your friend while you make your way into the building to steal blueprints to the vault. You’ll encounter some large armoured guys with gatling guns, and you’ll need to shoot off the straps holding their armour to kill them. As you escape, you’ll discover a jetpack, the opening wasn’t the only appearance of it. You blast your way out of the building, although there are a few spots you can land on to find secrets. These secrets let you update Bond’s weapons and gadgets, giving you an incentive to explore the levels. After you escape, you help defend the Gypsy camp. Red Grant saves Bond and you then defend Kerim with a sniper rifle. Grant’s desire to kill Bond is expanded in this game as something he’s really looking forward to, and is his main motivation. After the KGB agent retreats, Krenim really wants to go after him, so it’s time for more sniping, although this level is much more fun to the really nice setup as Krenim makes his way though some buildings. Now it’s finally time to meet up with Tatiana and grab the Lektor form the Russian consulate. She doesn’t have a standard health bar, but a “threat” meter that goes up when enemies are targeting her, so escorting her isn’t too bad. You’ll have to make your way through gas to activate buttons to progress, as well as a go through some very long vents with the Q copter. As you flee, it’s a race to the train station to board the Orient Express as you leave. As you take control of the car…you have to randomly drive around and blow up 30 Russian vehicles before proceeding. It’s a really strange an unnecessary mission, simply having to deal with enemies as you rush to the train station would be enough. Now it’s time for the pivotal train section…which unfortunately is the weakest part of the game. Bond and Grant fight in a cutscene before Grant flees with the Lektor (and his new sidekick), telling his goons to sort Bond out. I’m not sure why they built up Grant’s desire to kill Bond in the right way only to have him run away like a coward. You fight through a train station (where the escort of Tatiana does become annoying as she sits out in the open for no reason) and then have to fight a retro sci-fi Octopus train – due to rights issues with the SPECTRE name, they got renamed, but Octopus just sounds a bit too silly for this game, surely something like GHOST or PHANTOM would be better? You finally get to fight Red Grant, and you just shoot him a lot across a train track. After shooting him with around 100 bullets (including targeting specific points on his body), he collapses and gets ran over by a train. However, his assistant has escaped, taking the Lektor with her. Following the new villain, Adara, to an Octopus factory, you once again don a jetpack as you blast through the first bit, before having to do the rest on food. This is a really nice villain lair, with secret underground portions and a boss fight against some kind of space rover-like machine. It’s a very enjoyable mission. Once you set some explosives and flee, Bond escapes trough a tunnel in a vehicle in a really fun car section, shooting your way through obstacles. After this, you regroup with Tatiana. Another fun car mission mixed with on foot sections. You have to find a key to the docks and then make your way back, fighting helicopters that blow up portions of the road. Once you make it to a boat, you need to flee the country and make it to the border. This is unfortunately a very long and dull turret section that feels like it never ends. After this, you get a cutscene recreating the end of the film as Klebb attacks Bond and Tatiana, before it abruptly jumps to the next scene. While the film has ended now, the game has an additional tacked on action scene. Story-wise, it comes from nowhere: it just cuts to Bond parachuting and M explaining that Octopus are launching a nuclear missile towards, demanding £100 million to cancel it. It’s completely unrelated to anything else, which is fine for the cold opening, but feel really out of place. That said, the mission is a fun one as you make your way through the secret Octopus base and sabotage their missile. You get a short jetpack section and you have to take out Adara, who is firing missiles form a jet on the ground, at the end of the mission she flies the jet into the hanger door, attempting to take Bond out with her, but missing. As you escape the building, Bond gets attacked by a large machine equipped with gatling guns and lasers, controlled by Red Grant. Turns out he didn’t die earlier. You blow it up and Red Grant still survives the explosion, getting shot by Bond in a cutscene. While the From Russia With Love has flaws, it’s a very enjoyable game. This smooths out the problems Everything or Nothing has and is a lot of fun to play. The missions also flow a lot better, with missions having multiple parts to them before you go back to the menu, including proper endings each time. While I have the handheld port to look at still, From Russia With Love ended up being the last James Bond game from Electronic Arts, which is a shame as they seemed to be figuring out their style of Bond games. Other Versions PS2 & Xbox The PS2 and Xbox versions are similar to the GameCube version, with slightly different graphics. --- SilverFin: Learn to Drive Original Release: 2005 Developer: Puffin Books Publisher: Puffin Books Platform: Browser Young Bond is a series of Young Adult books about Bond during his teenage years at Eton collage. To promote the books, the series had a few online and Java games, starting with this one, which is about a scene from the book where Bond’s uncle, Max, teaches him how to drive. The game was simple, do three laps around James’ uncle’s estate within the time limit. You can switch to high gear to faster. It’s also a lot more difficult than it looks. The car will bounce backwards whenever it hits a fence, wall or other objects, with a few very tight sections of road. The faster you go, the more you will bounce back. For a very short flash game, it’s quite good fun. -- 007 (Warp Spawn Games) Original Release: 2005 Developer: Lloyd Krassner Publisher: Warp Spawn Games Platform: Board Game This is an unlicensed free print-and-play game developed by Lloyd Krassner, based on James Bond. It’s a set of rules followed by a list of cards – I used this and screencaps from the films to create this Tabletop Simulator version of it. You take turns moving a pawn across a series of 10 cards. You have two action points per turn, which can be to move and/or activate a card. Allies, Action and Gadget cards are place in your “ready area” and can be used to defeat Enemy Agents and Traps, which are then place in your “Danger Pile”, you can then use these Danger cards to defeat villains and complete plots – these cards go into your Mission Pile – the person with the most cards in their mission pile when the cards run out wins the game. There are also “Woman” cards. These can be used to defeat dangers, but instead of being discarded, they get placed in the “Seduction Pile”. The player with the most women in their seduction pile wins a “minor victory”. The game is quite simple as you get going and flows very nicely. You need to be aware of other cards near you to avoid helping your opponents too much, and there’s some nice manipulation of the cards using powers. --- Guns & Gadgets 007 Original Release: 2005 Developer: Cartamundi Publisher: Cartamundi Platform: Board Game This is a pack of playing cards that contains a stats for playing a version of Top Trumps. It has imagery from all the films up to Die Another Day. --- Heroes & Villains 007 Original Release: 2005 Developer: Cartamundi Publisher: Cartamundi Platform: Board Game This is a pack of playing cards that contains a stats for playing a version of Top Trumps. It has imagery from all the films up to Die Another Day. --- From Russia With Love (PSP) Original Release: 2006 Developer: Rebellion Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PSP The handheld version of From Russia With Love went to the PSP instead of the DS – and was the only Bond game to do so. It’s essentially a highly compromised version of the home console game, so I’ll be going through the things that are different in this version – the graphics are an obvious point, with Sean Connery’s dead, unblinking eyes staring at you whenever he faces the camera. The game opens and you get the exact same level layout as the home console version, it’s initially very impressive how it captures the lighting and style of the home console version. However, Bond’s movement is incredibly stiff (partly due to only having one analogue stick), and he often gets stuck on objects. Bond’s targeting is much more accurate though, which was useful as I had no idea how to activate the Bond focus mode at this point. The jetpack is back and also feels very clunky. It does the job somewhat, but is nowhere near the fun as the main version, and turning is not nice at all – it isn’t a problem in this mission, but is later on. Strangely, you can blast away the clock faces around Big Ben. Another thing about the level is that sections are broken up, with loading scenes in between them. It’s not too bad here, but the game feels a lot more disjointed. Reaching the start of the film, I was impressed with regards to the flow of the game between missions: choose to save then the next mission starts, a big improvement over the many more button presses due to returning to the menu of the home console games. As the sections of the hedge maze is small, the camera issues start to become evident. I eventually worked out that Circle and Square rotate the camera, but it still likes to get stuck on things and is very slow to move, especially when enemies are behind you. I found myself just constantly tapping the lock on button to help with moving the camera. Another thing is that vaulting is also removed, although I can’t see any reason why. After the section at MI6, it’s now onto the Gypsy camp. The four missions in Istanbul have been reduced to a few clips of cutscenes (partly because the vehicle sections have been removed completely). The cutscenes are from the home console version, to remind you about how toned down the graphics are. Incidentally, I got the most enjoyment from the game by crouching because the animation for it is so bad. In this level you’ll encounter more frustrations: the gas mask is something Bond puts on straight away, with the short timespans it lasts depleting from that point. It’s also very difficult to see the gas itself. You’ll reach the sniper sections and the aiming is horrendous, just completely stiff and not easy to adjust. The one saving grace in these levels is that the enemies spend most of the time ignoring Krenim and instead just sit down and take wile pot shots at Bond instead. In terms of weapons, some of them just appear in your inventory at the start of levels. You can also upgrade them – a little bar in the weapon icon shows your progress to the next unlock and when it’s full, you can do one upgrade. In the Russian consulate, I actually figured out how to use Bond focus – it’s the same button as turning the camera left. This was useful for long distance targets, but headshots don’t seem as deadly and due to how slow it is, you’re better off mindlessly blasting people up close (which is most of the game). The train level is mostly the same, although in one part it just throw multiple waves of enemies at you for padding. The armour piercing rifle is in your inventory early, which makes dealing with the train a lot easier. After dealing with Red Grant, we get one of my favourite levels from the main version, but this one is no fun at all. The outside section is removed completely and the level feels so disjointed due to skipping large chunks. The level again tries to compensate for its length by throwing a few waves of enemies at you for no reason. After you finish this, the rest of the film portions become a cutscene, missing some fun vehicle missions but also avoiding the awful boat level. It does feel a bit strange that the main parts removed are sections based on the actual film. In terms of matching the home console version, the Octopus base is one of the best conversions. The route through the mission is partially streamlined (which is an improvement), but the whole level is there. One issue is that the camera and aiming is your main enemy in the central room, with enemies appearing from all sides. You sabotage the nuke and defeat both villains in the same way. While this version is lacking multiple levels (including all the bonus levels), it does have something new: challenge missions. These are simple objectives (kill enemies as quickly as possible, survive for x time, finish a section quickly) that take place in parts of the levels. From Russia With Love shows how the PSP can somewhat replicate a home console experience, but at the same time, this game is incredibly compromised that its also an example of why it shouldn’t be done.

I love the amount of effort put into random games like Volleyball https://www.nintendo.com/jp/famicom/software/fmc-vbw/index.html

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent Original Release: 2004 Developer: EA Los Angeles Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: GameCube, PS2, Xbox Version Played: GameCube A blatant cash-in trying to use the name to bring up memories of the N64 game, this certainly had a lot of competition in the first person shooter genre. Not only does the name invite comparisons to the classic GoldenEye, but Rogue Agent also came out two weeks atter Halo 2 and one week after Half-Life 2. In this, you don’t play as Bond, but another 00 Agent that became unreliable and brutal after getting shot in the head by Dr. No. The game prided itself on letting you play and evil and brutal character. Rogue Agent starts off on a simulated mission to getting into Fort Knox and stopping Goldfinger from setting off a bomb. Your helicopter goes down and Bond is killed. You get introduced to the main mechanics, which focus heavily on dual wielding: you can mix and match any of the single-handed guns in the game, firing them independently. This system works well, and would be good in a better game. You fail this mission and M blames you for the death of virtual Bond (who is somehow the best spy even though all his villains are still alive) and for the bomb going off – even though you’re not actually responsible for either, and you did nothing particularly “evil” that slowed you down. You then accept an invitation from Goldfinger to join him, because we know an organisation like MI6 would just let a violent, dangerous person that knows all sorts of secrets just leave with no issues. Joining the organisation (the game wants to use SPECTRE but the licensing was still strange, so avoided the name itself), Scaramanga, who is surprisingly voiced by Christopher Lee, has created a special replacement eye that is equipped with features, such as seeing enemies though walls. Obviously, Scaramanga loves the colour gold, so your fancy new eye is gold in colour….a golden eye. Yup, the name “GoldenEye” is the nickname of the character you play as, that’s the weak justification they went with. Goldfinger reveals his new creation: the OMEN, a weapon that can dissolve anything biological. Dr No launches an attack so you need to fight your way though waves of men, blow up the base and escape. You’ll notice an arrow on screen at all times showing where you need to go, because the level design is so bad that it needs it, with lots of copy and pasted corridors and no sense of direction. Next you get sent to Hong Kong to assassinate Dr No. As Goldfinger doesn’t own a single sniper rifle, he relies on someone placing one next to the firing spot. This turns out to be a trap and you need to run across rooftops to escape – well, walk across rooftops. This feels like a game that where your should be speedy, brutally moving between enemies, but movement is really stiff. You get blocked by low walls and just walk slowly. Other attempts at making you feel “evil” are using environmental hazards to kill enemies and taking hostages, neither of which feel particularly different from other shooting games . When you’ve finished with a hostage, you just throw them forward slightly and they die – no neck snapping like other games where you take hostages. You also only ever fight other baddies – MI6 never get involved. Goldfinger has moved the OMEN to his casino and it gets attaceked by Xenia. No idea why she’s working with Dr No, but at least she’s from GoldenEye. Each level has a nice setting, but you never really do anything different in them, and the levels repeat so often that you’re tired of them by the end. You’ll also encounter some generic goons that have names when you hover over them, these take more hits than standard enemies. You reach the vault and set off the OMEN as you leave, although it must be a small blast as Xenia is unharmed. By this point, you’ll have likely finished experimenting with combinations of guns as there aren’t many at all. A pistol, SMG and shotgun along a few guns with specific uses, like one that shoots little remote control bomb and a poison one that stuns enemies (on you, it slows you down and is very annoying). While the dual wielding is the game’s defining feature, I found myself sticking to double handed guns as much as possible. Oh look, it’s a dam. Specifically Hoover Dam, Dr No has a secret base inside (why? because they needed a reason to have a level involving a dam). He has a bomb inside so that the US government doesn’t attack him. You’ll blow up a lot of vehicles in this level, but it’s mostly the same as everything before it. Your objective is to get inside and blow up the bomb yourself – probably the most evil thing you do, and it’s in a cutscene. After you send the bomb down a put to blow it up, Goldfinger’s right hand man (Oddjob) comes running at you and you throw him down the pit (all in a cutscene). I looked online to find out what just happened, and it turns out nobody else really knows. As you escape, Xenia knocks you out and it jumps back you you being in control and she’s in a aircraft shooting at you. I have no idea why. In order to find the location of Crab Key, Dr No’s hideout, you need to attack “The Octopus”, a secret underwater base where members of not-legally-SPECTRE buy their weapons and make deals. The level starts with a hologram accepting you, while enemies suddenly start shooting you. The AI is quite decent, and they’ll use environmental hazards against you, but form this level onwards I noticed they quite often took each other hostage, and I have no idea what that’s supposed to achieve. This level looks the nicest, with the evil lair them in overdrive and an octopus motif, but unfortunately has the same copy and pasted bland corridors as all the other levels. You do get to spend Goldfinger’s money, which is somewhat amusing. Time to take on Crab Key. You’ll have to use your eye’s hacking ability in this level to activate bridges. You set up some bombs than disable Dr. No’s satellite, before defeating Dr. No himself in boss fight where you have to hack a bunch of buttons and then shoot him. As you head off to escape, Goldfinger says he doesn’t trust you and say he’s going to kill you. Luckily, you’re right next to Dr. No’s hanger bay. After this, Goldfinger takes control of the organisation’s volcano lair by vaporising everyone with the OMEN. Scaramanga has a plan: first, you must free the prisoners in the detention centre (even though a second ago, it was stated that everyone was wiped out), then fight your way to Goldfinger. It’s very hard to distinguish between allies and enemies, but there’s no consequences for killing them and they aren’t helpful anyway. You also encounter a new weapon based on the OMEN: a weapon that an vapourise enemies in one hit (other than the stronger enemies, who require multiple hits). While this sounds good, enemies have these and can also fire them repeatedly (much faster than you can) and you also die in one hit, so most deaths will be a shot from somewhere you haven’t seen. Once you reach Goldfinger, he dies in a cutscene and the game is over. No final confrontation or anything. For a game about you being a brutal, violent bad guy, it’s just a very generic shooting game with no blood or anything more violent than any other. You only ever fight other villains, and there are no innocent civilians in the game. The “dark and gritty” attempt at gameplay just doesn’t do either properly, and it at odds with the cheesy and silly story. This is a very poor game where the only enjoyment is how bad some parts are. The game also ahs a basic multiplayer mode, which has a level based on the end of GoldenEye (the actual GoldenEye). It’s uses the same tedious gameplay, but catching each other out on the death traps provides some entertainment. --- Scene It? 007 Original Release: 2002 Developer: Mattel Publisher: Mattel Platform: Board Game Scene It? is a series of DVD games that use a mixture of trivia cards and a DVD for asking questions. You move around the board and roll a dice to select category, which can be an answer from a card, or a DVD question that is either for all players or exclusive to you. The DVD is nicely produced, with some good effects and well designed menus that make it look a lot more than it actually is. You select different options form the menu, but the questions themselves are from the same video files, regardless of what options you pick. These involve imagery appearing, sound clips or questions based on movie scenes, although these questions can range from being unrelated to the scene to asking for a tiny detail from it. The big problem with Scene it? games – like most themed trivia games – is that you really need a group of fans who know a lot about the franchise. While some questions are about the other roles of the actors, it’s not enough to allow others to have fun. I think it says a lot that it’s easier to find a copy of Scene it? still in shrink-wrap than it is opened. -- GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (DS) Original Release: 2004 Developer: n-Space Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Nintendo DS While this game isn’t being helped for being based on a console game that wasn’t very good, Rogue Agent on the DS is a great early example at what the DS can do. This is a full first person shooter that recreates the full game surprisingly well. That said, it also shows the downsides of the DS, too, particularly in the controls. There are a few options: you can use the thumb stylus on the DS for something similar to dual analogue, but it feels awkward, especially pushing the buttons to activate powers and change weapons. Using a stylus is even worse and stops you form being able to fire weapons independently. Finally, you can use the ABXY buttons to look around, although there’s no analogue movement at all. However, the level design is very impressive. A lot of the main elements from the levels of the main game are here. While levels have been shortened and some parts removed, a lot of this was boring copy and pasted corridors, so these versions of levels flow nicer. On top of that, there’s no loading screens between areas, it’s just one smooth run from beginning to end. All the gameplay mechanics are here, with dual wielding being a focus, and taking hostages. Abilities make use of the select button, while your eye powers are activated from the touch screen. It captures the feeling of the full game extremely well, which is impressive for the DS…but unfortunately the original game wasn’t a good one. There is one new gameplay feature in this version – buttons that you have to decode. This is a colour-based “Simon says” activity, which I found extremely difficult due to being colourblind. With the use of save states, I was able to get through these, but with if I was playing on the original cart, I would have been unable to get past these points. In the hotel level, we start getting some deviancy from the main game. I realised that I hadn’t unlocked any extra eye powers yet, which was odd. This level features multiple simon says locks in a row, and when you escaped and set of the omen, Xenia is killed in the cutscene. And that’s because the game skips the next few levels – the dam and the Octopus (so missing the best looking level of the game). I still hasn’t unlocked any other eye powers, but still encountered a bridge that requires the remote hacking, so I was stuck and had to look up what I needed to do. It turns out that the “virtual missions” I had been unlocking and I was saving for the end are how you unlock the eye powers. The one for the hacking owner is a fun recreation of the final fight form The Man with the Golden Gun. After this, I was able to go back in the game and defeat Dr No, time for the final mission. This skips out the pointless rescue of prisoners, so you can focus on Goldfinger. His death isn’t entirely a cutscene, as you get to use a “Simon says” minigame to take him out. You then have to escape by running back through the level, encountering Oddjob at the end (as we skipped the Dam mission, he didn’t have his random death), so it’s nice to have an actual final boss. While this version of Rogue Agent doesn’t help it become a good game, it’s a good example of what the DS itself can do.

Hopefully Rockstar can go back to being about fun. It's been over a decade since I last enjoyed one of their games.

Sorry to disappoint you all, but no James Pond. James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing Original Release: 2004 Developer: EA Redwood Shores Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: GameCube, PS2, Xbox Version Played: GameCube EA went all out with the story and presentation of Everything or Nothing, using writers that worked on the Brosnan Bond films as well as getting Pierce Brosnan to actually provide the voice of James Bond, and Willem Dafoe playing the main villain. It also moves to a third person view, which thankfully works well for this game. Even though I played the GBA version first, the story was so weak that this was practically brand new. It starts off with a cold opening of Bond stopping the sale of a briefcase nuclear missile, which provides a way to get used to the aiming mechanics. You can’t just shoot where you want, you need to lock-on to enemies. While locked-on you can make fine adjustments to go for headshots. The system takes a bit to get used to. After the epic cold opening, we get a great Bond opening credit, with a great song to go with it. After a brief tutorial showing you the other main aspects of the game, Bond gets sent to investigate a building, but you skip to Bond setting off a bomb and escaping, using the rappel mechanic, which lets you navigate up and down walls with ease. It’s an epic set piece and it’s moments like this where this game feels like an early Uncharted game. When the game flows, it flows really well. Once you reach the ground, you get a vehicle section. One little thing I appreciated about this is that you start out on foot and get into a car. While you can only get out of cars at certain points, it does help with the feeling of controlling Bond and not just a car -it merges the two gameplay styles well. The car handling doesn’t feel quite a smooth as Nightfire, but is still enjoyable, especially the more open stages later on. Catching up to a train, you then board it and take out Jaws. While this game has a lot of levels, many are short, which really messes up the pacing of the game – going through the stats and saving takes ages. It doesn’t help that some levels just seem to end abruptly, sometimes in the middle of a room with no cutscene. The game would be a lot better if you could paly from start to finish without having to return to the save/mission select menu. With your target fleeing on foot, you give chase in a helicopter. It’s a Star Fox-style on rails segment, but is a lot of fun and has some very impressive moments as you shoot through Egypt, causing a mass amount of damage to culture in the process. It ends in a nifty boss battle. You save the nanobots and give them to your partner, who hands them over to Dafoe of the film, a student of Max Zorin. The next mission is “MI6 Interlude”, which is just a cutscene briefing you on the next part of the mission followed by Q explaining your gadgets – although oddly, he already explains them in the menu at the end of the previous mission. This kind of “interlude” pops up multiple times and it’s disappointing that you don’t get to walk around or test out your new toys. Investigating the disappearance of 003, Bond heads to Peru, having to sneak by corrupt police using the stealth mode of his car. This map is fairly open, and there are multiple routes you can take. Bond tracks down a geologist that can help direct him to the Platinum mine he needs to find. These mine missions are probably the weakest part of the game, with some tedious level design. The gunplay mechanics still make it enjoyable. Though a few levels, you’ll find 003 but fail to save him. In your escape you’ll encounter one of the few sections where you need your thermal imaging, which is handy for highlighting enemies. This section is also when my frustration with the targeting system surfaces, as shooting things like explosive barrels is a massive pain. You have to use “bond sense”, but it doesn’t like to target what you point at half the time. As you escape, the villains throw the Bond girl, Serena, off a cliff. This is a very cinematic segment, but is by far the most difficult part of the game, requiring perfect moment and timing. You really need to start moving forward before the cutscene ends to have a chance of succeeding. Aftet this you take control of a tank – but unfortunately just the guns. After this an impressive motorbike chase as you board an MI6 plane as it takes off. Off to New Orleans and there’s a new little open world driving section. You have to steal a truck to sneak into their warehouse to investigate. You then discover that your ally in the area, Mya (played by the singer Mya, who performed the song for the game) is in danger, and you have to race to save her. I was impressed that the game let me fail in the way it did: I didn’t think of stashing Bond’s car in the truck, so I couldn’t defeat the cars I needed. I had to quit the mission and start again to do it correctly, but I like that it doesn’t spell it out to you. The next few levels are a bit of a detour as you chase Mya and eventually rescue her in a boss fight, having to flee in a limo with a bomb attached to it. You go get to use a remote control car to blow up a huge warehouse and then investigate the secret base where you discover what is actually happening: these nanomachines are programmed to dissolve metals. The villains plan to weaponize it and attack cities (a bit more ambitious than “shields” from the GBA version). After destroying the manufacturing plant, you need to catch up to Jaws, who has escaped with a truck full of these nanobots, leading to a great chase scene as you rush down a highway in a motorbike, using the bike’s sliding gadget to dodge under tankers and then its flamethrower to melt the truck’s tires. With the full plan discovered, it’s time to head back to Peru. Bond wants to meet the villain, Diavolo, face to face. Luckily for Bond, he has a policy of meeting winners of a rally face-to-face and there is one happening soon, so Bond stealthily murders an entire hotel to take the driver’s racing suit and proceeds to win the race, which is a lot of fun, then heads to the meeting. Diavolo knows that something is up right away (possible due to all the deaths, or the fact that he knows what Bond looks like) and both fail to kill the other. Bond does learn that Diavolo wants to take Russia first. After Bond escapes in another car chase, he heads to the secret facility in Peru, but ends up getting knocked out by a dartgun. We wakes up strapped to a wall, with a giant drill in front of him. You get to perform the escape yourself, which is nice, before you sabotage the facility and escape. Time to head over to Russia, where Bond steals a “platinum tank”, equipped with shells and metal-eating nanomachines. And this time, you get full control of it. This is a very enjoyable mission as you disable a bomb, destroy some supports holding up a road and then proceed to melt a helicopter. The helicopter is holding a giant statue of Diavolo, which smashes through the wall, creating a sinkhole that takes out all of the tanks. M contacts Bond to let him know that Diavolo has fled to a disabled nuclear missile facility. Another cool repelling sequence as you dodge lasers and then fight Jaws for the final time. You make your way through the facility to the control room, where Bond discovered that the disarmed nukes have now been equipped with more nanomachines. You shut down the launch and blow up Diavolo in a rather anticlimactic way. But he’s not dead yet! As you take the lift back up, Diavolo comes up in a fighter jet in a very difficult battle (especially due to the limited amount of rockets and the difficulty of aiming them). You blow up a payload of nanomachines and the jet crashes and explodes. But Diavolo isn’t quite done yet. He escapes and sets off a final missile, directed at London. You fire a few rockets at him in his tower (so his final death is once again anticlimactic) and take out the missile, saving the world. Everything or Nothing is a very fun game, but does feel disjointed to how the missions are cut up into small chunks. I personally prefer Nightfire, but they’re both great games. Everything or Nothing is a great early example of a game trying to be more cinematic feel, and it pulled that off really well, making this game feel like an adaptation of a film that never existed. Everything or Nothing doesn’t have a normal multiplayer mode, but it does have co-op, where you play through four missions. These are mostly fighting through enemies until you reach a section where you both press a button, but they are enjoyable. One small feature I haven’t touched upon is that this game works with the GBA version: link it up to the GameCube and you can get some hints and view your stats mid-mission. A very minor use. Other versions PS2 and Xbox The PS2 and Xbox versions are the same game with slightly different graphic settings. These versions do have a benefit in that the thermal view can be toggled with a single button. The PS2 version also had online coop instead of just split screen. --- James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing: Agent Attack Original Release: 2004 Developer: Electronic Arts Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Browser A flash game made to market Everything or Nothing. This is a very short lightgun-style shooting game. James Bond stands out in the open and enemies pop up, click on them to kill them. You can switch between a pistol and SMG. After you run out of time or health, you could submit the score. The game takes place during the game’s “Nanotech Facility” mission, which has the description “Descriptive text about mission, very brief but similar to Everything or Nothing game to be placed here”. -- 007 Ice Race (Flash) Original Release: 2004 Developer: EON Publisher: EON Platform: Browser A simple flash game to celebrate the launch of the James Bond DVD Collection “Buy Bond Get Bond Free” offer and the release of Die Another Day on DVD. You can choose between the Aston Martin Vanquish, Lotus Esprit or Aston Martin DBS, but this has no impact on the gameplay. You move up the screen avoiding ice domes and other cars (which consist of copies of Bond’s cars and Zao’s Jaguar XKR) and see how long you can last before losing three lives. Despite its simplicity, the game is buggy – the AI cars will often bounce off obstacles and quickly warp side to side, taking away most of hour health while being unavoidable.

007 Ice Racer (ExEn) Original Release: 2002 Developer: In-Fusio Publisher: Vodafone Platform: ExEn Mobile 007 Ice Racer is a mobile game published by Vodafone that had two different versions. This one was developed by In-Fusio for the Execution Engine, a special Java-based engine specifically developed for mobile phones, although it was only available on certain handsets. Luckily, an emulator for this engine exists – while it’s extremely laggy on menus, the game itself runs really well. Ice Racer is a Rad Racer-style driving game. The objective is to reach the end of the level before the time runs out, avoiding obstacles and collecting bonuses (points, speed or time) along the way. It’s loosely based on Die Another Day, with you driving the Vanquish. Before each of the four levels, you can buy power-ups from the Q Store, which requires sending an SMS. Luckily, the game is so incredibly easy that none of this is needed. Each level starts with a blurb of text which has nothing to do with the level. For example the third level mentions following Jinx, but this level is different to the others: in this, you have to battle Zao by collecting rockets and firing one at him. Instead of a timer, you have limited fuel and can collect more by picking up cannisters. The final level seems to have the superweapon from the end of the film blasting down (or it could be a waterfall), yet is the least icy level of the game. You get to the end and you win – it takes about 6 minutes to complete the game. It plays quite smoothly, but there isn’t much to it. --- 007 Ice Racer (Java) Original Release: 2002 Developer: Handy Games Publisher: Vodafone Platform: Java Mobile As the Execution Engine was only available on select mobile phones, Vodafone commissioned a second, more basic, Ice Racer game for the phones that couldn’t run the main game. This version does actually resemble the film more – it depicts a battle on the ice between Bond and Zao, using the weapons on their cars to combat each other. You can play as either Bond or Zao. Within the time limit, you have to blast apart the opponent without taking too much damage yourself. Each “level” has the same background, but you just have different bonus weapons to use. In the second Bond level, you have a strange shunt attack which seems to damage Bond more than Zao, and doesn’t seem possible to defeat, meanwhile playing as Zao is incredibly easy. This is a very basic game, just move up and down and shoot. --- 007 Spy Files Original Release: 2002 Developer: G E Fabbri Publisher: G E Fabbri Platform: Board Game Spy Files was a partworks 32 issue magazine that was released as a lead-in to Die Another Day. Each issue came with a pack of random cards for their Spy Files game, with subscribers also being able to get tins to keep the cards in. The cards game in four types: Allies, Location, Q Branch, Vehicles and Villains. You choose one of these categories to play and shuffle that deck of cards between each player. The game is a Top Trumps style game – one person picks a category and whoever has the highest number on their current card wins. There are also two joker cards, which players can use to take all cards in a round when they don’t win. There aren’t that many cards in each deck, so games don’t last long. --- James Bond 007: Nightfire (GBA) Original Release: 2003 Developer: JV Games Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Game Boy Advance For the Game Boy Advance, this is a very ambitious game, attempting to recreate Nightfire on the GBA and keeping it as a first person shooter. The controls are similar to the PlayStation Bond games, using the shoulder buttons for strafing, so I was able to remap them into a more comfortable setup similar to dual analogue. Some things, like jumping and changing weapons, use multiple button presses, which takes time to get used to, but makes sense with the GBA’s limited buttons. Similar to the PC version, this skips the intro and has no vehicle sections. It starts with the castle and you can’t even stay on the truck this time – but it’s more understandable this time. You can use it as cover as you navigate the impressive-for-GBA 3D environment and shoot the sprite enemies. Sneaking inside and there’s some curious things about the cutscenes. They’re comprised of screenshots of cutscenes that look similar to the other versions and text. The rooms in the screenshots look like the PC cutscenes, however, Bond is the Agent Under Fire design and not Pierce Brosnan (even though he’s on the box). The inside of this is just a corridor and a door you have to shoot with the watch laser. Escaping, this time the cable car doesn’t move as you fight the helicopter, although there’s no homing rockets. The levels are linear but, again, you expect that more on the GBA. This section of the game ends right here, not using the awful airfield mission from the PC game. At the end of the mission you’ll get a store based on kills, accuracy and Bond style. You also lose a lot of points if you take your time with the level. If you don’t get a bronze score, you can’t progress to the next level. I thought this was ridiculous and used a mission select cheat for the few times I didn’t get a bronze. The Japanese house is more straightforward, but still enjoyable. I did get stuck on one part, turned out a few blobs of pixels was a target for the grapple hook. Ammo also seems limited in this version, so you’ll often be using the same weapons as the enemies. The enemies, incidentally, will roll and crouch to dodge your shots, meaning that the enemy AI in this version is much better than the PC version. Stealth in a GBA FPS is…actually not that bad. You have the dart pen from the PC version, but enemy sight isn’t as superb, which makes it more playable. Climbing up the window also makes an appearance again, but is thankfully just a cutscene. After collecting the data, it’s time to investigate how they disarm missiles. Surprisingly, we have the console version of this level, and it features some very impressive recreations of the open areas. Considering the previous missions have been closer to the PC version, it’s great as to how well this recreates a console level, although this version has some more platforming instead of using wires to cross the level. This then flows into the training facility level from the PC version. It skips the boring start and goes straight to being in a space suit underwater. You have full space controls, letting you move freely. It’s a fun level and shows how the two levels expand upon each other: the first has you investigating test jetpacks and lasers, the second has you testing out the spacesuit in underwater training. Back to being closer to the PC version when Bond gets captured, this starts at the end of the lift segment, which I was grateful for. This mission isn’t as tediously long, so is quite enjoyable. I did notice enemies ducking a lot more here, so it’s nice that they don’t rely on just more health to make enemies more challenging. Onto a much more condensed version of the beach level. Alura is with you from the start to help you take out enemies – no off-screen kidnapping. Due to its length, I enjoyed this more than the PC version of the level. The same is true of the penultimate level, which is based on the console version, but is less frustrating. The final mission is, surprisingly, a recreation of the cinematic final mission from the console version, and a really good way to finish the game. Apart form the annoying mission advancement requirement, this is a surprisingly good handheld port of the game. It’s fascinating that it uses elements from both versions of the game. While it would never happen, I would love to see an updated version of Nightfire that is mainly based on the console version, but also includes the best parts of the other two. -- James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (GBA) Original Release: 2003 Developer: Griptonite Games Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Game Boy Advance While the Game Boy Advance version of Nightfire came out after the home console version, the GBA’s version of Everything or Nothing came out a few months earlier than the main version. This time, it’s an isometric third person shooter. The game throws you into a level after Bond has set up a bomb, he needs to escape, shooting some enemies and grappling down a wall (which doesn’t play any differently to moving on solid ground). No context is ever provided for this level, and after the around 40 seconds of running and mashing A, it’s over. Bond has to investigate someone at a Casino event. This level serves as the game’s tutorial, explaining the shooting and stealth mechanics. You have to get very close to behind an enemy to do a stealth takedown. Quite often I thought I was close enough only for Bond to pathetically kick nothing but air. The screen space from the isometric view gives you very little room to actually be stealthy. The stealth is optional, though, usually being a bonus objective for points to buy extra upgrades. The shooting is mainly just run around and mash A. There are three guns, but they don’t feel any different. You can crouch behind tables to lessen damage, but it’s far less effective than just shooting enemies. After you infiltrate the casino, the guy you need has to go, so Bond may as well have just waited outside the door. You get a car chase, which is a lot like the classic Spy Hunter. In these, you have to destroy a boss vehicle while being attacked by other cards. Like stealth killing, it’s fun for about 30 seconds, but then it’s just the same thing over and over. After this it’s time to scan things to get information in an old trainyard. You start to realise at this point that there isn’t much variety to the game. Here you stealth kill/shoot enemies and press B to do your scans. You get access to a hologram to make a decoy, but the limited screen space means it isn’t very useful – there’s very little actual gadget use in this game. At the end of the level you’ll face off against Jaws, where he throws barrels at you. You’ll need to lure him over to the barrels he throws and blow them up. The story in this version very much takes a back seat. You’ll occasionally get some dialogue on missions, but most of it is a tiny bit of exposition given by M and Q. Next you’ll team up with 003 (and then immediately split up) to attack a base in a jungle. There’s one section where you need to press three buttons within a time limit and the rappelling sections start up again. Other than that, it’s more aimlessly running around and shooting enemies. The levels are split up into small segments with checkpoints, and your health is restored at these moments. This level ends with a car segment that’s the same as the first. Discovering their secret base, we roam a graveyard until we find the door, and then have to sneak in when someone enters, which is the only required stealth in the game. You discover that the villain has created nanobots that can eat through any metal (except platinum). These are then used as shields that stop bullets, so you have to punch these enemies. The plan is for his army to take over the world using these shields. Ascending down into the secret underground levels of the secret base, this level is the nicest looking, as it’s built inside an ancient hidden temple. You just move down, shoot and then get ready for the most annoying mission of the game. In the secret base, you get told that you can’t kill “civilians”, which are the guys in white suits. Unlike most games with objectives like this, these civilians are far from innocent. They’ll help the enemies out by firing darts at you. These reverse your controls, which is one of the laziest and most annoying things that video games do. You can punch the scientists and it doesn’t count as a kill. Another car chase follows and it’s time for the final mission. This is just one long corridor. You do get given a cloaking device, but this is very useless as enemies are positioned in a way where you can’t go past them (they see through the cloak if you get close enough). At the end you get two boss fights. The first is Jaws again as you lure him into broken computers, the second is against the main villain who is immune to all of your attacks for seemingly no reason. You have to kill waves of enemies then shoot flashing laser towers that zap him for some reason. And you’re done. The game is around 2 and a half hours long if you’re taking your time. The game is more suited to the GBA than Nightfire, but is far less interesting as a result. --- 007 Hover Chase Original Release: 2003 Developer: IOMO Publisher: Vodafone Platform: Java Mobile Not played: Not compatible with Java emulators Another Java game for Vodafone mobile games based on Die Another Day – this time from the hovercraft chase at the start of the film. Unfortunately, this uses specific Vodafone Live! Java components, which are currently not part of any J2ME emulator. In this game, you try to see how far you can last in an unending level, shooting enemies, avoiding obstacles and collecting powerups. There were some additional unlockable game modes, such as racing round a set track and battling another hovercraft in a small arena.

James Bond in…Phoenix Rising Original Release: Announced in 2002 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PS2, GameCube, Xbox I found conflicting reports about Phoenix Rising, such as claims that this was a Bond Game in the style of Everything or Nothing, but a sequel to Nightfire, and that it was dropped and replaced with From Russia With Love because Pierce Bronsan was no longer James Bond. The truth seems much, much simpler. An IGN article from 2002 talks about the announcement of Project Rising as a working title for the next James Bond game. Project Rising isn’t a lost and cancelled James Bond game – it’s simply a working title for Nightfire. I wanted to include this in this write-up due to it being mentioned in a few places as a cancelled James Bond game, to clarify what it actually is. --- James Bond 007: Nightfire Original Release: 2002 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2 Version Played: GameCube Returning after the N64 version of The World is Not Enough, Eurocom make the next EA Bond game with another unique story. This time, it stars Pierce Brosnan’s face (but still not his voice), although is still a sequel to Agent Under Fire, with some returning characters. The game starts with a cold opening, going straight into the game (which is a good idea, but you can’t access the game’s settings until you reach the main menu) where you have to rescue a French spy, who is in the middle of a car chase. It starts off with a turret section where you’re shooting from a helicopter, which I usually find annoying but this has a good spectacle and is fine to introduce the game. Before long, you get to transition into the Vanquish, driving through the streets of Paris. It doesn’t have the cloaking device from Die Another Day, but will have its own surprises later on. The driving missions are more linear than Agent Under Fire, but still a ton of fun. This one is very short, though, which is a shame. This is followed by the first unique Bond Opening Credits with a new song, which very much sets the tone for the game: This is definitely a Bond adventure. A space defence station has been stolen by an unknown organisation. MI6 have a suspect: a company that deals with disarming nuclear missiles. They’re having a party in a remote castle and it’s up to Bond to infiltrate it and meet up with other secret agents. You have a few ways to get into the courtyard, stealth or full on assault. There’s a handy truck that you can use to get past a few of the guards. The shooting in the game is solid and enjoyable, and a good amount of the game has a few options for proceeding. As Bond gets rid of his snow gear to infiltrate a party in his tux, we get a good look at his face – which his is very well detailed – so much it has an uncanny valley effect as it looks so much better than his body or any other face in the game. You get to sneak around the party and sit in on a secret meeting until one of the other spies are discovered, you have to shoot though enemies to get to her (there’s more alternative routes) – although she’s already saved herself and stolen important documents. Escaping via a cable car, you get attacked by a helicopter, which you need to defeat. The next section is an alright turret section, but is again followed by a car section I love this mission, it captures the spirit of a Bond car chase very well, having to combat enemies as well as slowing down police without harming them. As you swap between weapons, you get to see them come out of secret compartments and there’s even a proper first person view if you prefer. You can also unlock a race version of the level – so not only are the vehicle sections massively better than 007 Racing, but it even has an actual race. Gadgets are done in a very simple way: in different parts of the level it changes to what you need, such as a smokescreen when the police are nearby. It’s a bit too basic and lacks player choice, but it helps keep the pace of the driving. Off to Japan to pick up someone defecting with information on operation “Nightfire”. His house gets attacked, so you need to protect him – he’s actually pretty good at staying out of the way. It’s a fun level with plenty of hidden secrets, and the rain makes a nice atmosphere. At the end, your informant gets killed by a ninja that you have to deal with, but he tells you where you need to go to get the information with his dying breaths. Time for a stealth level. Unlike stealth levels in previous games, I enjoyed this. You have a dartgun, but ammo is scarce so it’s only for emergencies, but it’s definitely enough. Some areas have detection lasers (which you can see with one of the modes of your glasses), but exploration rewards you with ways to disable these. One you get the data, you have to fight your way to the roof, fight another helicopter and jump off the building. Time to find out what this organisation is really up do, infiltrating one of the facilities that they are “disarming”. This level comprises of two warehouses connected by a fairly open area, you discover a jetpack and a laser turret that you use to blow upon a door. It’s a solid level that uses Bond’s grapple more, along with climbing over wires. Bond gets double crossed and captured by the enemy. You’re back in the phoenix level from earlier, but you get to blast your way through everyone this time. It’s simple, but it’s nice to revisit the stealth level in this way. At the end, Bond is rescued by an Australian agent, but Bond isn’t flirty due to a death at the start of this level, which is a nice moment for Bond. Time to return to the Vanquish….underwater! This is what I wanted from the underwater base level of 007 Racing. The controls work very well and you have a remote controlled torpedo. It’s a very fun level although is let down at the end: you encounter an enemy sub that can take you out in seconds. Trying to figure out how to defeat is isn’t an issue – the problem is that you start from the very beginning of the level when you die. Onto the island and you take on of their weaponised cars, blasting through their turrets. This is fun, but also has the same problem as the previous level: there’s a section at the end where you can die very quickly, with no checkpoints. The second part of this level is some decent turret sections. Infiltrating the hidden base…I really hated this level. The first part is a fake chase – the progress of the enemy is based on when you hit certain locations. You then have to blow up some panels. I kept dying when this happened so had to look it up. Turns out there are red and green parts (I’m colourblind) and if you shoot the red, you die. Someone you blew up in a helicopter returns, announcing he’ll deal with Bond himself to pay him back for his injuries. The level is mainly shooting through lots of enemies in really boring looking corridors. You do get access to a neat laser and have to escape the blast pit of a space shuttle (with an anti-climatic fight against the guy vowing revenge). Bond is now in space. You have to break the launch mechanism of nuclear warheads and deal with waves of enemies. You can move around quite freely and a handy HUD display helps you keep track of which missiles are launching and when new enemies appear. It’s very cinematic and is a great spectacle to finish on. Nightfire is a great Bond game. This story captures the films really well, with really fun combat, nice use of gadgets to find secret and alternative routes and very enjoyable driving missions. Other Versions PS2 & Xbox The game itself is mostly identical to the GameCube version, just with minor changes in graphics settings. The Xbox version has the highest quality textures, but the GameCube version ran the smoothest, running at 60fps. --- James Bond 007: Nightfire (PC) Original Release: 2002 Developer: Gearbox Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PC In the 2000s, you would seemingly expect that the PC version of a game like this would be a port of a console version. However, the PC version of Nightfire was developed separately by Gearbox. While they had access to some of the same resources of the console version, the differences are rather interesting. The biggest difference is how the game feels. The PC version is built using the “GoldSrc” engine that was built for the original Half-Life (and Gearbox-developed Counter Strike). While this may sound like a positive thing, in Nightfire it just feels floaty and dethatched. Its limitations are very clear in this game and you can see why Valve created Source for Half-Life 2. This version completely skips the opening section – it skips all vehicle sections. It opens up at the castle where M tells you to get into the truck (in the console version, they let you figure this out). The problem is…this is a closed top truck. There’s no way to get in it. You can get on top of it and crouch, but enemies still stop you. You get a “Bond move” jingle but it really doesn’t feel deserved. Inside the castle walls and the game feels a lot more linear. Gadgets are used to find extra ammo and armour, but not for alternative routes. It’s very straightforward and just feels restrictive. Upon getting inside the party, I was surprised to find that the cutscenes, while pre-rendered, actually reflect the different level design of this version. You also have an extra objective here: take photos of all the women. The game has a reason for it (which doesn’t affect the story in any way) and it just feels a bit strange and creepy. On that note – the X-ray glasses show skeletons for men, but reveals underwear for women. Escaping this castle and everything just feels less detailed than the console version, and this section once again is just a single path. Instead of the car chase escape, we have to sneak into an airfield to disable backup and get a plane to escape. Get spotted before a certain point and it’s game over (on the plus side, this game does let you save mid-mission). You get asked to deal with searchlights, but they make no difference: enemies in this game have amazing eyesight and you’ll find yourself randomly failing the mission often, having no idea who spotted you. Also, while this level looks open, there’s still only one way to progress. Half way through the mission and it becomes an escort mission as you use a sniper to protect your ally, Zoe. At least in this, the enemy’s extreme eyesight means they often take pot shots at you instead of their target. The enemy AI is pretty non-existent, they never look for cover or dodge. On multiple occasions, they lost track of Bond and just shot at nothing for eternity. The Japanese house level is more of the same feeling: this is a toned down and linear version. There are some nice secret routes in the console version which are just gone here. That said, even though it feels linear, it’s oddly also easy to get lost. The lack of enemy AI also makes the ninja fight extremely easy. Back to stealth. One positive change is that your dart gun is now a pen, which suits Bond more. The problem is that the level design is still terrible and the enemies can see you from astounding distances (the game, knowing this, puts enemies on walkways you can’t get to). I also had to look up how to progress – turns out a keycard wasn’t being rendered. Half way though this level you get to climb up the wall. This is very cool…to start with. This section goes on for what feels forever as you wait under windows for enemies to turn around. There’s more tedious stealth but on the roof, you get to enter a penthouse, which is a nice change to jumping straight to the helicopter fight. Next up is the game’s best level – and one that wasn’t in the console version. You have to infiltrate an astronaut training facility. You also get a cutscene that happened in the second to last level of the console version, as one of the villains vows revenge on Bond. The first part of this isn’t anything special, but then you get into a space suit and enter the training – cleverly done by being underwater. You don’t get full underwater or space controls, though, it’s more of a low gravity with Bond jumping higher and slower. It does end with a good battle with the villain, so he has a better moment in this. Bond gets captured in the same way, but this level is different. Bond is trapped in a lift and enemies take out huge chunks of their building to take pot shots. It’s incredibly tedious and ends with a really hard to see grapple point (the first time you have to use it) and if you don’t use it quickly enough, you die. The rest of the level is an extremely long slog. It felt like it would never end. Time for another vehicle-replacement mission. As you start, your objectives pop up saying “Agent McCall has been taken hostage by Phoenix Commandos. Find and rescue Alura”. This capture doesn’t happen in a cutscene (even though this cutscene is exclusive to this version) and isn’t mentioned in dialogue, that objective is all you get, after she was just introduced saving Bond a few seconds earlier. This mission is fine, there’s some surprisingly open sections – although inly in terms of empty spaces, the level progression is still extremely linear. This mission is decent. While I hated the penultimate mission in the console version, this one is just very, very tedious and boring. Difficulty in this game is all over the place, and done entirely by just throwing a ton of enemies at you. Enemies on the island also take a lot more hits than previous missions, because bullet sponges and more enemies are all the game can do for difficulty. The final mission is extremely anti-climatic. You have an annoying jumping section (using a similar jetpack mechanic as Agent Under Fire where you get one burst upwards, although it likes to just not work sometimes) and disarm the nuclear missiles in a small room, before shooting the big bad as he stands around. The first time this level loaded for me, I didn’t have the spacesuit or laser, which was quite confusing as I couldn’t progress. The PC version of Nightfire is just strange, and comes across in many ways like a PS1 title. It does have one mission which would have been nice to see in the console version, and a few interesting ideas, but ultimately, it’s not fun to play.

The pretty damn good PS3/360 Ghostbusters game (that is essentially the third film) is getting a remaster, and Switch is included in consoles.

The World Is Not Enough (PS2) Original Release: Cancelled in 2001 Developer: Unknown Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PlayStation 2, PC Not Played: No leaked prototypes On top of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation versions of The World is Not Enough, another version was planned for PlayStation 2. It was going to feature 11 large environments, 30 weapons and gadgets, motion capture, dialogue from the film and 20 minutes of film footage. A short trailer was released, but the game was cancelled half way through development, opting to make a unique adventure instead. --- James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire Original Release: 2001 Developer: EA Redwood Shores Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2 Version Played: GameCube with Reloaded Mod A first person shooter with an all-new storyline. This one doesn’t license the likeness of Pierce Bronson, so at least we don’t have the issue of someone else’s voice coming from his face. The default controls are dreadful, but the options provide a modern style shooter setup. I played using the “Reloaded” mod, which adds widescreen, some nicer textures and removes the screen turning white every time you get shot. The game starts off in a really nifty offshore biodome facility, straight away you have the option of hacking the front door or using a grappling hook to sneak in through the roof. When you perform “Bond moves” you get a flashing golden 007 and a Bond jingle. This level serves as a good introduction to the mechanics. You’re trying to locate a box containing a virus and rescue a CIA spy, Zoe Nightshade. You find her strapped to a submarine, with sharks circling in the water. After escaping the facility, you get a vehicle section…but unfortunately it’s an on rails turret mission. There are some cool set pieces (and probably hundreds of civilian casualties), such as blowing up a petrol station to take out multiple cars and a helicopter. After recovering the case of viruses for the second time, R pops up to advertise Bond’s new car. Considering they have a new Bond, I have no idea why the went with “R”, especially as that name for John Cleese was a joke from Bond, not his official title. A few earlier games had John Cleese as “R”, but in this, he’s an old man and the voice actor chose a voice much more like Desmond Llewelyn. After Nightshade gets a rocket to the face from the villain’s super assassin, we get to control the car this time. The driving feels great, and the level has lots of branching paths. Like 007 Racing, the power ups are dotted across the paths, but you can overlook it more as this is very enjoyable to play. You need to get a pulse and knock out an armoured van. Time for a stealth mission as you infiltrate a British embassy, you have a dart gun with limited ammo, but you can also knock out enemies via punching. There are a few alternate routes through the level using gadgets, which is common across the game. Bond nearly breaks his cover by spending too long ogling a woman. Bond comes across a bit like a clumsy oaf in this game, getting distracted by women instead of seducing them. After discovering the use of clones, it’s time to pose as a journalist and speak to the CEO behind them. As Bond is told to wait in the CEO’s office, he realises that his cover has been blown immediately – the CEO is the woman he got caught perving on in the previous mission. This mission offers a bit of optional stealth as you go through grates and take photos of evidence, before hacking the computers and escaping through an underground lair. This level is actually a lot of fun, although I don’t think it needs a timer (apparently it’s a timer until you get sealed in the base, but that happens later on anyway). There’s some hidden routes and a fancy weapon through a secret door – or you can smash through a window and set an alarm off to get it. You found out that the super assassin from earlier is attacking a different British embassy to find someone who has stolen information from their group. I found this part confusing as you get told to go to “R’s” safehouse on the other side of the embassy, but its down a few other streets. You rescue hostages as you go though, get given a puzzle to find a hidden door (I worked it out and opened the door before M finished the clue, it’s very obvious) and fight the super assassin, who takes a lot of damage. You then have to take our a helicopter, which is easier to deal with. Time for another driving section in a classic Aston Martin. You have to locate a few objects in the city, and I enjoyed this mission a lot – it shows that something like 007 Racing could be a really good game. If you perform well enough, you can even unlock a Lotus Esprit. Having to jump over a river, Bond ends up crashing his car into a warehouse. Luckily for Bond, there just happens to be a fully armed tank right where he crashed. Sadly, this tank part is very disappointing, as it’s another turret section and you spend almost all of it using a minigun (you have very limited tank shells). It goes on for far too long. The final part is also very confusing, two tanks turn up near a bridge and if you start shooting them, you’ll fail the mission. You have to carefully aim for fuel tanks on a train passing on top of a bridge. If the game was good with checkpoints, this would be a mild annoyance, but you go back to the very start of a tank section. Mess up two or three times (depending on difficulty), and you’ll end up at the start of the car mission. The lives system is just annoying, especially as the only checkpoints are when a new section of the level is loaded. Now we have to investigate an oil rig using a jetpack, which sounds a lot cooler than it is. When fully fuelled up, you get a single burst upwards. The level itself is enjoyable, with some fun hidden routes and a few ways to climb up the tower at the end. Bond gets distracted by a woman and the main henchman pushed him off the tower. Luckily for Bond, diving off the tower into a pool is actually the entrance to the villain’s secret base. Unfortunately for Bond, this is another tedious and overly long turret section. The henchman climbs into a large machine at the end for a boss fight. If you don’t figure out what to do quick enough it’s back to the last checkpoint…which is the start of the level. Now it’s time to take care of the cloning lab. While in the previous mission, M said that this facility was too shielded to talk to Bond, she tells Bond that he’ll have to figure out how to take out the place without explosive, then straight away tells him how to do it. This mission introduces the elite guards, which take more damage and are more aggressive. There are also two possible endings to this, depending on if you find a hidden keycard, which alters the start of the next mission. As Bond tries to escape in a submarine, he meets the CIA agent he saw get killed before, who is freely wondering around the submarine. She claims that the person that was killed was the clone, who was supposed to infiltrate the secret services before the super assassin accidentally killed her instead of Bond. Bond finds none of this suspicious. Now on a aircraft carrier, either escaping from the ship’s brig or infiltrating from a boat (depending on the ending of the previous mission), M contacts Bond to tell him that he needs to get to the ship’s communications room so she can inform him about the current situation (couldn’t they have Bond do some of these briefings so they made sense?). You get to take out the clones of the world leaders and foil the plans of this group using them to replace the real ones from taking over the world (it probably would have been cheaper to bribe them). With the clones taken care of, it’s time to rescue the real world leader in the final mission…which is probably the most boring mission of the game. While the outside view is nice, the base is really boring internally, as you go between missile silos killing enemies that are holding the world leaders hostage. The CEO sets off a self destruct timer and the main henchman returns (you killed his clone earlier) and you shoot him a lot before he flees into the CEO’s office. Your first instinct is to strafe to dodge rockets, however if you do, you’ll die due to the rest of the floor blowing up (and having to do the whole fight again). If you manage to resist this urge you’ll shoot him a bit more then escape on a jet piloted by Nightshade. The game then fades to black. And…that’s it. There’s no actual ending cutscene. We have no idea if the main villain or world leaders escaped, or if they all blew up. If you complete the game on the highest difficulty you do unlock a bonus video…which is just a clip show of the Bond moves in the game. Agent Under Fire has really fun gameplay. The main missions are enjoyable and the car missions are great. The turret missions are tedious and something about the game makes it feel like a parody of James Bond instead of an actual Bond game. It feels like a decent starting point to expand on. Other Versions PS2 and Xbox The game itself is mostly identical to the GameCube version, just with minor changes in graphics settings. The PS2 version has the least compressed textures.

I enjoyed doing the Sonic one so much that I wanted to do more! These are the voyages of the starship Cube. My continuing mission: To explore strange new games. To seek out new fun and new gameplay. To boldly play where noone has played before. This is my challenge of trying to play through all Star Trek games, both video games and board games. On top of all the official games, I will also be playing a few select home-made games, such as the original text-based Star Trek game from 1971 (no mods of other games will be counted, though). Star Trek Game (1967) Original Release: 1967 Developer: Julie Cooper Publisher: Ideal Toys Platform: Board Game The first Star Trek boardgame, which I have recreated in Tabletop Simulator. If it wasn’t from the box design and the name on the board, you probably wouldn’t even guess that it’s Star Trek related, as the ships are just regular pawns and the design of the fuel ship art is a very strange design. There’s a Starfleet delta on the mission cards, but that’s about it. The game is set in a solar system that consists of Earth and six planets names after Greek letters. Your mission is to visit three planets (a card will tell you which ones and the order) then return to Earth, first one to do so wins. Each turn you will play a fuel card and move that amount of spaces either horizontally and vertically. You start off with cards numbered 1-10 but as you refuel you can pick our of what everyone has discarded, so you need to carefully plan your route. Your target is the “Orbit entrance point”, which you need to and on exactly to start landing – once you land on a planet, you can refuel by picking three cards. After you’ve made a movement, you roll the dice and move one of the two fuel ships that many spaces. If you manage to get it to land next to you, you can draw a fuel card. This is rare, though, as players are constantly fighting to move it closer to them. If you run our of fuel, you move one space per turn, making it very slow progress. It’s existence of the game is interesting, but it’s ultimately quite boring to play. Star Trek (1971, Mike Mayfield) Original Release: 1971 Developer: Mike Mayfield Publisher: Self-Published Platform: HP Basic Version Played: Direct C# Port by Michael Birken (No enhancements) The first Star Trek video game, made for the Sigma 7 and then ported to the HP 2000C minicomputer. These were devices that had no screens, but were instead connected to a printer and printed the new game game as you played. This game was ported to many different systems, under a lot of different names such as Apple Trek, Tari Trek and Dragon Trek. I have chosen a couple that I will go through with significant changes, as the vast majority run the same, just ported to different systems, with the latest major version being released in 2023. In this game, you need to destroy a set amount of Klingons in a few days. You need to explore the area, as well as dock at stations to repair yourself. Here is one of my complete failure attempts: ENTER SEED NUMBER 12 INITIALIZING... YOU MUST DESTROY 19 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 6 STARBASES COMBAT AREA CONDITION RED SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- <*> +++ STARDATE 2900 CONDITION RED QUADRANT 4,2 SECTOR 5,1 * ENERGY 3000 SHIELDS 0 PHOTON TORPEDOES 10 -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- COMMAND 2 LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,2 ------------------- | 008 | 001 | 003 | ------------------- | 007 | 101 | 008 | ------------------- | 114 | 003 | 008 | ------------------- COMMAND 0 COURSE (1-9) 8 WARP FACTOR (0-8) 5 118 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 2,2 (0 LEFT) THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED THERE ARE STILL 19 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS YOU MUST DESTROY 13 KINGONS IN 30 STARDATES WITH 5 STARBASES COMBAT AREA CONDITION RED SHIELDS DANGEROUSLY LOW -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- * STARDATE 3200 * +++ CONDITION RED <*> QUADRANT 4,4 * SECTOR 6,4 * ENERGY 3000 SHIELDS 0 * * PHOTON TORPEDOES 10 -=--=--=--=--=--=--=--=- COMMAND 2 LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN FOR QUADRANT 4,4 ------------------- | 006 | 001 | 007 | ------------------- | 008 | 106 | 002 | ------------------- | 002 | 016 | 007 | ------------------- COMMAND 0 COURSE (1-9) 5 WARP FACTOR (0-8) 3 273 UNIT HIT ON ENTERPRISE FROM SECTOR 5,3 (0 LEFT) THE ENTERPRISE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. THE FEDERATION WILL BE CONQUERED THERE ARE STILL 13 KLINGON BATTLE CRUISERS This game is very difficult, as you need to hunt for Klingons, navigate around and so lots of actual calculations to work out how to navigate as well as aim torpedoes. For such an old game, there is a surprising amount of detail in it, with enemies that attack you, systems that break, scanning and even a built-in calculator for torpedoes. Your systems breaking are completely random, though, and something like your warp drive breaking can render a playthrough unwinnable as you won’t be able to find a starbase in time. Even without any damage, navigating around is very difficult as you need to set a direction and speed, and take into account both sector and quadrant locations. Despite all this, there’s just something that’s a lot of fun about trying to do all this with such basic input, having to figure it all out yourself. It’s a fascinating game and it’s definitely impressive for what it was originally made for. Star Trek (1971, Bill Peterson) Original Release: 1971 Developer: Bill Peterson Publisher: Self-Published Version Played: Version 32-9, modified by Don Daglow & James Underwood A much lesser known Star Trek mainframe game, written in a form of BASIC used by the CDC 6000. Wikipedia credits Don Daglow with this. While he did revise it in 1972, the credits in the code say that it was originally made by Bill Peterson from Cal Tech. This Star Trek game describes what it happening through dialogue with Spock, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov, with you entering commands to defeat enemies. Each time you play, you get a slightly different story, all of them will lead to a battle against single enemy. You have to give commands (by typing numbers from a list of options) to position yourself, fire phasers/torpedoes and try to defeat the enemy. By moving and using sensors, you’ll be given the position and bearings for both you and the enemy. It’s extremely difficult to use the coordinates to figure out where you are in relation to the enemy, as well as which direction you’re pointing and which weapons you can use. If you sustain enough damage, Spock will mutiny and flee the area. I’ve seen this section of text a lot. The only time I won was by not fighting, but instead boarding the enemy ship. There are a lot of ship names that are generated by the speed, I like that the seed number 47 gives you the Enterprise – a complete coincidence as the use of the number came about much later. Star Trek (1972, For-Play) Original Release: 1972 Developer: For-Play Publisher: For-Play Platform: Arcade Version Played: PC port of Computer Space The first commercially released Star Trek game. Not only was this not officially licensed, but it’s also a clone of another arcade game called Computer Space. The only difference is that the controls are slightly reworked to use a joystick instead of buttons. As there’s no way for me to play the Star Trek version, I played a PC port of Computer Space as it’s the same game. The game works exactly the same as the later and much more popular game Asteroids. Spin the ship around, use thrust to move and shoot. The aim is to destroy the two enemy ships more times than they destroy you. The game only lasts a couple of minutes. Super Star Trek Original Release: 1973-1975 Developer: Mary Cole, David Ahl, Bob Leedom Publisher: Self-Published Platform: Basic-Plus Version Played: Direct LUA port by Emanuele Bolognesi Super Star Trek is the first major enhancement of the 1971 Star Trek game. This makes the game much easier to decipher, with some information given via dialogue from the crew, and generally making everything much easier to visualise and making actions easier to perform. Permission was even supposedly given by Paramount to use the name Star Trek. The regions are given names, and the icons for the Enterprise and Klingons use letters to help distinguish them better. That said, the game is still difficult, losing access to some functions is still a major hazard – I even lost access to damage control in one playthrough. Super Star Trek is a really nice version of the original Star Trek game.

007 Racing Original Release: 2000 Developer: Eutechnyx Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PlayStation The must surprising thing about 007 Racing is the complete lack of one thing: Racing. This is a vehicle combat game with missions you need to complete. With the game utilising multiple famous Bond cars, you might then expect to be a “greatest hits” of Bond car movements, but this is a new story (a very dull one, mostly in told via walls of texts in briefings) that doesn’t even attempt to justify why these cars are being used. Developed by Eutechnyx, who are now best known for the infamous Ride to Hell: Retribution, this takes an interesting concept (a vehicle-based Bond game) and butchers it in every way possible. Starting off with a mission where you have to cancel the Bond Girl from a courtyard and escape, I was able to adapt the controls – as this lets you use the right analogue stick for acceleration/breaking, I was able to map it to the analogue triggers. You start the level off with a machine gun, all the other weapons and gadgets (mainly health and shields) are scattered across the map. Your main weapons for stronger targets (like tanks) are hellfire missiles, but these damage your car whenever you fire them, and aiming them is a pain (they alternate what side of your car they fire from, which changes their aiming). Special missiles are required to take down a helicopter – use it wrong and you need to restart. Next, Bond is in New York and there’s a bomb on his car! You can’t to too slow or else it will blow up, you need to rush around following the Crazy Taxi arrow to collect…things to increase your time, then drive the car into a river. Incidentally, the simplicity of this mission makes it the most enjoyable in the game. The handling isn’t atrocious, but it doesn’t feel very natural or reliable. This BMW also seems to handle exactly the same as the Austin Martin from the first, and as all weapons are pickups, none of the cars have any identity or special abilities, so the one thing this game might have going for it – the Bond cars – just strips away what makes them Bond cars. The next level is one where you get ambushed and is in three parts. The first is simple: kill all enemies in a small arena. One thing to note is that foot soldiers never count as important targets, they just whittle down your health. You also can’t run them over, removing another potentially satisfying element from the game. The second part of this level has forklifts driving at high speed and ramming into you. R (played by John Cleese) tells you to look for a weak point in their armour to exploit – this is a lie. This game has immensely unclear instructions, and you’ll fail many objectives simply because the game never makes it clear what you are supposed to do. The third part has you using an EMP to destroy “computers”. This is a weapon that shoots a little bit our of the right side of your car. I’ll be honest: this mission was so frustrating that I just started using cheats. The next level has you shooting tires on a truck using lasers that fire out of the sides of the car. The next three levels are set in the Mexican jungle. The first is fine, trying to keep ahead of a helicopter then hiding the car in a truck. The second has Bond taking on an enemy compound from within, using a device to blow up mines (which the enemy has oddly placed right next to all their artillery – the device to blow them up is just lying around), setting up a laser and escaping (although you have 10 seconds and no direction). The third is almost a race – Xenia pops up out of nowhere. You need to race her while collecting objects, although the game doesn’t make this clear, so you’ll probably be fighting and then get a cutscene of Xenia escaping with a British parachute attached to her car. If you do beat her, make sure to pick up and use the parachute, or else you’ll just die. When you succeed, Xenia falls to the bottom of the pit and explodes, but obviously is fine by the time of GoldenEye. The most annoying level is up next: you control a car remotely from warehouse cameras, planting mines. To make it more annoying, the cameras are low quality and fizz every now and then, and there are some tiny thing driving around. Then you have to collect missiles and destroy a boat driven by Jaws, go close to limos in New York to collect data. The next mission sounds intriguing: take out an underwater base in the Lotus Esprit. But then the level starts with Bond driving out of water. Using it is the same as all of the rest, and we have another tedious level that doesn’t utilise the car’s unique abilities in any way. R even clumsily explains that many of the underwater features were removed for weapons – but then the weapons are on the map, not on the car, so it still makes no sense. The final mission is then horrendously designed. It sounds simple: destroy a plane’s engines, destroy the plane and escape off a cliff. The execution, however, is atrocious. You can’t use the car’s gun at this point (no idea why), so you have to ram the engines. The engines are only vulnerable when they flash (there’s no shielding or reasoning for this), and there’s no consistency when you ram them. If it doesn’t work first time, the plane flies off and you have to start again. You have to do this with all four engines. After this, the plane turns around (very quickly) and rams you. This is where you use the car’s gun, except that instead of the usual method, you have a first person view to manually aim. Where you start aiming seems completely random, it’s not ahead of you so you have a 50/50 chance of turning to the right direction. You have a few seconds to aim and shoot a little box hovering under the plane, and then very quickly dodge the plane and drive off a cliff (thankfully, you get an arrow for this). It’s by far the worst designed level in the game, and it’s the climax! There’s also a multiplayer mode for two players. There ate two modes: shoot each other or ram into each other to pass a bomb over. These take place in small areas and aren’t much fun at all. Again, I’m completely baffled by the complete lack of racing. A vehicle combat James Bond game isn’t a bad idea, even a racing game with classic Bond cars can be done well. This game, however, is just a complete mess that throws away everything unique about Bond’s cars. --- The World Is Not Enough (GBC) Original Release: 2001 Developer: 2n Productions Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Game Boy Color After the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation version of The World Is Not Enough comes the Game Boy Color version, which is very obviously different. It takes a top down view with Bond shooting, punching and sneaking his way though levels. Graphically, the game looks quite nice on the GBC, with the simple sprites and detailed backgrounds working well together. Starting with the bank level, you wander around the large, empty level, there are no staff working for the bank, so you start wandering around empty rooms. Eventually you’ll find a lift and find Lachaise’s office and trigger a cutscene, you then get into your first fight and punch a few guards. The first time playing I missed the briefcase and the game lets you walk to nearly the end of the level before encountering a locked door. The lift you used no longer works, so you have to move through the nonsensical winding corridors to reach stairs, killing guards along the way. I tried using a pistol, but Bond takes so long to fire that I kept getting punched in the face, so running towards them and punching is much more effective – although even easier is just running past the guards and ignoring them. You’ll eventually reach the exit and find the next level. MI6 is under attack, taking cues from the N64 level, you have to defend the building and get to Q’s lab. However, you need to undo the lockdown to progress. To do this, you need to find hidden buttons and activate them – although they don’t sometimes don’t seem to work. I found myself pressing both buttons on a floor, going to the doors and finding them shut, and going back and forth multiple times, pressing the buttons, until they actually worked. I did manage to skip some backtracking in this level: you’re supposed to find a secret code to unlock Q’s lab, but it’s very easy to just work out the combination anyway. The Themes Chase level is also clearly inspired by the N64 game, as this goes through some docks, a warehouse and the London Underground. The fist part is straightforward, but the other two sections are extremely tedious maze-like sections. The odd thing is, the mazes are incredibly simple. You walk to a blocked path, then go down a side path to press a button. The problem is that these winding paths are extremely long, and most of the game is just boring padding like this, especially as you usually encounter enemies one at a time where they aren’t a problem (in some select locations, fights are extremely difficult). In the Undergrown, you have to blow up a wall because some turnstiles only move in a certain direction. Electra’s House is up next, with this level having three distinct parts. You can’t be spotted by enemies here, and punching doesn’t stun them for long enough, so you can’t do that, either. You have to navigate the level collecting keycards, perfectly moving through laser traps (they don’t hurt you, they just alert the guards and you instantly fail the level) and avoiding cameras. Then you go through the hedge maze in the garden. You can kill enemies here, and you can find a hedge trimmer that is slow, but timed right can kill enemies in one hit. Some paths to ammo/health pickups will cause the ground to collapse, so when you return you have to fall down the hole and get transported to a random shed. I found a dead end and had the idea of using the hedge trimmer on it, but it didn’t work, after lots of aimless wondering around, I ended up looking up a guide. It turns out I had the right idea: you do need to destroy the bit of hedge to progress, but you need to shoot it three times. In the third section, you have to chase Davidoff through a forest. If he spots you, you fail. He’ll randomly run and turn around, making this part incredibly annoying. You’ll eventually reach a part where you get to kill him, and the game takes control away from you and does it. After this, you have to find the Bomb that Renard is after. This borrows more from the PlayStation game: even tough you’re authorised to be there, you have to sneak around. This combines the stealth of Elektra’s house with the back and forth nature of the Thames level, making it both tedious and annoying. You’ll eventually reach the bomb and have to chase Renard. However, the game is now a 2D side scrolling platformer. The shoot button now makes Bond jump, where he has a very specific jumping arc with zero control once you hit the jump button. If you take any amount of time to get used to the controls, you’ll fail, as this is actually a timed section (the game doesn’t let you know about this). Once you make it to the end, you have to make it all the way back, collecting mines and blowing up doors along the way. The next level is fairly basic, more back and forth finding keys and unlocking doors, with plenty of backtracking. At the end of the level, you have to face the buzz saw helicopter. This is another platforming section as you use ladders and jumping to navigate, like a badly made copy of the original Donkey Kong. You’ll need to find the rocket launcher (but if you take too long it gets destroyed) or grenade launcher to fight it. It’s quite neat that the higher platforms get destroyed as the fight progresses. Skipping straight to Bond getting captured, you get to play the torture scene in this game, using the A and B buttons to regain health – a bit like Metal Gear Solid. Do it well and you get full health, do poorly and the torture will end just before Bond dies. Elektra than locks herself away, and actually survives this version of the game. It’s another back and forth maze level as you trudge through to find a watch laser to use on a cell door to save M, then rush out to the submarine. On the submarine, instead of trudging back and forth to navigate a linear path, you have to trudge back and forth to find bombs to blow up each part of the control room. What makes this even more “fun” is that enemies respawn in this level. You need to press a button to open every single door, for absolutely no good reason. Once you blow up the control room, you head to the reactor. Back to 2D platforming as you have to make your way up a very long room. As said before, Bond’s jumping arc is terrible, and with the moving platforms (some that become electrified), this section is utterly horrible. Some of the platforms look like background objects, and some of the background objects look like obstacles. Bond doesn’t take any fall damage at least, which is handy, especially when you land on an edge of a platform where Bond stays for a second and then falls down. Once you reach the top, you’ll find Christmas Jones tied up and Renard – yet again, this is oddly reminiscent of Donkey Kong. As Renard and Bond are face you face, you expect a boss fight, but not. The game takes control away as Bond strangles Renard for half a second and Christmas Jones goes form being tied up to just jumping around. You get the final screen of a hole in the submarine and then the game cuts straight to the title screen. The Game Boy Colour version of The World Is Not Enough is terrible. The game is difficult in the wrong ways, and most of the game is just padding in the form of walking back and forth through very basic mazes.

The World Is Not Enough (N64) Original Release: 2000 Developer: Eurocom Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: Nintendo 64 While Tomorrow Never Dies skipped out on the Nintendo 64, The World Is Not Enough made a return, developed completely separately from the PlayStation version of the game. The N64 version of TWINE is heavily inspired by GoldenEye, following the same style of missions and level structure, but also tries to make the game more cinematic. Eurocom managed to fit a lot onto the N64 controller. Jumping is now an option, and crouch is just one button. Through button combinations, you can switch between items and gadgets separately, as well as activate alternative fire modes for the guns. Looking up and down is a bit awkward as you either have to hold down the aim button, or use the D-pad (which is a little bit out of the way on an N64 controller) – but this means that it’s quite easy to reconfigure the game to fit a dual analogue controller. Starting off with a nice simple tutorial level in a bank, this serves as a good introduction of the game’s mechanics, using gadgets and (on harder difficulties) erasing camera footage – this had a few extra objectives for harder difficulties, just like GoldenEye. The cutscenes in this have voice overs (but not the actors from the films) and are recreated in the game engine, with the story being rewritten so that the game itself makes sense without having to have seen the film. I much prefer this way of doing things, as it helps keep the game’s identity throughout the whole thing. Back at MI6 headquarters, not only does a bomb go off, but it gets invaded by goons, you have to fight them off, as well as putting out fires, protecting staff and enabling the security systems. It’s a really fun level, and is a great example of how the game expands upon scenes of the film. After the boat chase (which you don’t get to play), you chase the assassin through docks along the Themes, a straightforward level that introduces the grapple function of the watch, which can be used in certain spaces to climb upwards, adding some verticality to some levels. Taking advantage of the London setting, the assassin then proceeds into the Underground, having her goons take hostages and setting up a Bomb to try to slow Bond down. The trains are a bit crazy as you have to dodge them, but it’s very enjoyable, and you have to reach the assassin’s hot air balloon before she escapes. The levels in The World Is Not Enough to a good job of feeling alive and like real locations. I would have liked a few that are less linear, but they’re still enjoyable. Next up is a skiing mission, which is done in quite a simple way, feeling a bit like a light gun shooter. You can move left/right a bit and can speed up and slow down. There are a few targets that you need to hit, which can be a bit difficult and require restating the mission, which can be a bit annoying. Next up is the main stealth mission – in most other missions, stealth is optional, but works quite well. Your watch has a “stun” function which, really, is utterly useless – it just makes enemies wiggle and it stops right after you stop firing it at them. Luckily, your watch has a dart which does knock enemies out – or you can punch them to sleep. Here, you sneak around the grounds of Elektra’s house (and a little bit inside), tapping phones and taking photos of evidence. There are are few villains you need to avoid completely. I remember as a kid taking ages on this level, but once you have the guard patterns down, it isn’t too difficult. The following two levels are probably the weakest, but still not bad. One has you chasing after a henchman to replace him, you can be stealthy or as loud as you want (just be prepared for a lot of enemies). Then you try to stop Renard from stealing a bomb, meeting up with Christmas Jones and escaping from an explosion. The “cities of walkways” mission is split into two levels. The first is a fairly typical level as you fight some enemies to reach a computer containing evidence, while the second has you dodging helicopters with buzzsaws and is a great level, as you jump around on platforms that are being sliced then grab a fancy rocket launcher and guide missiles into an attacking chopper. A few more decent levels follow as you chase a traitor though Istanbul, then you get captured and have to rescue M and kill Elektra, then it’s on to infiltrating Renard’s submarine. You start off on the docks and have to kill the guards efficiently enough to avoid them setting off the alarm. Then you climb into the submarine – with no loading screen, which I thought was impressive when the game came out in order to rescue Dr. Jones and disable the submarine controls. The final level has a lot of swimming as you navigate the damaged submarine. The controls take some time to get used to, but it’s not so bad once you do – although as you had limited time in this mission, I think the game could have done with some swimming in an earlier mission. You need to navigate through the submarine, kill Renard (which is similar to the film, they don’t force a boss encounter) and then escape, finishing the game. The N64 version also has a multiplayer mode which is a lot of fun, complete with bots (although, strangely, you can’t play against bots on your own without cheats). Beating the main game on higher difficulties will unlock more characters to play as. While it doesn’t reach the heights of GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough is an extremely solid game and is a ton of fun. --- The World Is Not Enough (PS) Original Release: 2000 Developer: Black Ops Publisher: Electronic Arts Platform: PlayStation While Eurocom made the N64 version of The World Is Not Enough, Black Ops – the developers of Tomorrow Never Dies – still made the PlayStation version. From playing the games, it doesn’t seem like there was any cross development or sharing resources, both games were developed completely independnatly. While TWINE on PlayStation is a first person shooter, it still feels a lot like Tomorrow Never Dies. The HUD (which I still can’t see properly) and controls from the previous game are still here, with the developers still not taking advantage of the PlayStation’s analogue sticks. I could create an dual stick FPS-like setup, but without the ability to look up and down (without manual aiming). The game stars off in the bank but the layout is very different. You go up a lift and then down an oddly long corridor with a lot of cameras – these are a massive pain to shoot due to the game’s shoddy controls and I just gave up and accepted the extra guards. One thing also evident is that the levels in this games are small “rooms” with short loading screens when going through doors, which make the levels feel disjoined. After this, you get some long clips from the film, as it skips through the attack on MI6 headquarters and we go and chase the assassin down some short, narrow London streets. At the end of this level, the game automatically selects the grapple watch to fire at the hot air balloon. This watch isn’t used to help level design, but instead just triggers cutscenes. Next up is the game’s skiing level which is just really odd. You have full control of Bond’s movement, but his acceleration has been altered. You awkwardly shoot some enemies and start going own a slope – for around 4 seconds. Due to the game being made of lots of tiny areas, you need to go through a pipe and load the next area, so you get the awkward controls and none of the fun of actually going downhill for a decent amount of time. Next up is a level that the N64 game skipped, as Bond infiltrate’s Zukovsky’s laughably small casino. This is both the best and worst level. There’s only a few room and your mission is to win money at blackjack, which is more enjoyable than the actual game. I did nearly have to restart this mission due to an NPC blocking a path. You also have to use Bond’s credit card lockpick to open a door, which is neat the first time but is used far too much and the animations for it are far too long. Next up is this game’s stealth level. This takes place entirely inside Elektra’s house, as you “stealth” by running and punching guards. There are a few items you can turn on to distract them. The level design for this mission is just bizarre, as the house doesn’t feel like a house due to its nonsensical layout and completely lacking a front door. You skip from here right to infiltrating Renard’s men, who are trying to steal a nuke. This level feels really strange as you have to sneak past guards (having to punch some out) as you sneak into an area where you were invited into. Another mission that wasn’t in the N64 game (apart from a multiplayer level) is Elektra’s pipeline, as you try to reach a bomb. You have to shut off the oil and rescue hostages to reach another part of the facility, then protect Christmas Jones as she fixes an oil pipeline maintenance vehicle. The “City of Walkways” is a single level in this game, and feels far less dynamic, with the helicopter fight being extremely dull and then it’s onto another chase level, which coincidentally involves a bomb being placed in a train station (this time in Istanbul instead of London). After Bond gets captured, you get to see a lovey, large room with big windows transform into a tiny room in a dungeon. The film footage and game design don’t match in any way whatsoever and I don’t know why they included the torture chair – they could have omitted it and it would have seem like Bond had moved to the next room instead. You need to go back and forth then fight a few bosses. The first requires you to unload a few rounds from your assault rifle, the second is immune to all of your weapons due to “special armour” (he’s wearing a suit) and you’re told that you need to throw his explosives back at him. Headshots don’t do anything and the game gives you a grenade launcher, which also does nothing. You can only kill him by throwing his own pipe bombs. It’s just odd. The final mission is on the submarine as you chase Renard. You have to navigate a really strange room filled with toxic barrels. When you reach Renard, you have a boss fight – but not against him, but against a reactor instead. There’s no flooding, and then you run back through the level. The ending to the level isn’t locked away this time, however there is a secret video if you complete the game on the highest difficulty – which is just the sex scene from the end of the film. There are a few cheats to unlock, but there’s no multiplayer. It’s amazing just how different these two games are, with the N64 version of the game being a much better game all around. The PlayStation version is stiff and disjointed.