For almost as long as I've been playing video games, I've been playing games based on one of my favorite fictional heroes of all time: James Bond. Goldeneye for the N64 was my very first introduction to both First Person Shooters and the world of James Bond. Since then I've seen all 24 Bond movies multiple times (yes, I count the unofficial Connery-starring "Never Say Never Again", as painful as it is) as well as played the majority of the video games that have come out over the years based on the character.
I recently got back into playing the updated version of "Goldeneye" released for the Wii a few years ago. And looking back on my small collection of Bond games, I decided I wanted to cement these games in order of preference. Time to resuscitate the old blog!
Note: There's a couple of notable exceptions from this list (most notably "007 Legends", the newest James Bond game that I haven't played yet, and "Agent Under Fire", the first Bond game for the Gamecube that I've had minimal playtime with). Also I realize that there are Bond games that existed before Goldeneye 64, but I never really played any of those. Basically, if I haven't played it it's not on this list.
Without further ado.....
007: From Russia With Love (2005--Gamecube/Xbox/PS2)
After the surprising success that was "Everything or Nothing" (more on that one later), EA decided to continue its third-person Bond game style that proved successful with that game. Unfortunately, Pierce Brosnan had stepped down from the role of 007 after "Die Another Day", and nobody was sure where the film series was going to go. So EA decided to take the games back into the past, and release a game based on one of the most beloved entries in the series: 1963's "From Russia With Love".
As a Bond fan I was ecstatic when I heard this news. Not only were we going to be able to play in the world of 60s Bond (THE best era of Bond of course), but none other than Sean Connery himself was coming back to voice his character in the game, becoming Bond again for the first time in over 20 years (that disastrous "Never Say Never Again" mentioned earlier.......yeah......). What could go wrong?
And while the game does a fantastic job of recapturing that early-Bond look and feel, and Connery gives a decent performance, the gameplay itself is just full of mediocrity. The AI is completely moronic, and it isn't helped by the fact that Bond is incredibly overpowered compared to the foes he faces (you can shoot grenades off of soldiers' belts for an instant kill with little effort). Even on the hardest difficulty the game is absurdly easy (except for some incredibly unfair difficulty spikes at a couple of moments in the campaign). The game also suffers from a lot of boring, repetitive missions. Split-screen multiplayer also makes an appearance, but the auto-targeting mechanic that works well in single player turns deathmatches into an exercise in "who can mash the trigger button the fastest". There are some cool things though--there are multiple missions that allow you to fly the jetpack from "Thunderball", and die-hard Bond fans will recognize a lot of the alternate suits you can pick up for Bond to wear. The game is worth playing just for the style and to see Connery portray Bond one last time, but it's hugely mediocre as a game.
And while the game does a fantastic job of recapturing that early-Bond look and feel, and Connery gives a decent performance, the gameplay itself is just full of mediocrity. The AI is completely moronic, and it isn't helped by the fact that Bond is incredibly overpowered compared to the foes he faces (you can shoot grenades off of soldiers' belts for an instant kill with little effort). Even on the hardest difficulty the game is absurdly easy (except for some incredibly unfair difficulty spikes at a couple of moments in the campaign). The game also suffers from a lot of boring, repetitive missions. Split-screen multiplayer also makes an appearance, but the auto-targeting mechanic that works well in single player turns deathmatches into an exercise in "who can mash the trigger button the fastest". There are some cool things though--there are multiple missions that allow you to fly the jetpack from "Thunderball", and die-hard Bond fans will recognize a lot of the alternate suits you can pick up for Bond to wear. The game is worth playing just for the style and to see Connery portray Bond one last time, but it's hugely mediocre as a game.
006: James Bond 007 (1998--Game Boy)
Take "The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening" and stick James Bond in it and you have a pretty good idea of what this game is about. This is a game much more focused on puzzle solving than action, though there is a surprising amount of that for a 2D overhead-perspective black-and-white game on a three-inch screen. While Bond does have his pistol that you can use to kill enemies, the best weapon to most efficiently clear out the room is the MACHETE, which can eliminate almost any foe pretty quickly (armed or not) with a few short button mashes. Overall a fun little RPG-lite game, even if it does turn the suave secret agent into a machete wielding psychopath.
005: The World Is Not Enough (2000--Nintendo 64)
After the phenomenon that was Goldeneye 64, the rights to the Bond franchise were passed on to Electronic Arts. Their first Bond game, "Tomorrow Never Dies", was a Playstation third-person shooter that I unfortunately never got around to playing (judging by the reviews, I'm not missing out). But for their second Bond game, they brought Bond back onto the Nintendo 64 in the format he was best known for--the first person shooter. Developer Eurocom had the impossible job of trying to meet or beat the massive expectations set by "Goldeneye", and surprisingly they succeeded.
And while the second of Bond's N64 outings doesn't conjure up the same warm fuzzy feeling in people as Goldeneye, it's really an impressive game in its own right. The N64 was on its way out, and the next-gen was right around the corner. However, like many late-generation games, "The World Is Not Enough" really pushes the technology to the max. There's fully voice-acted cutscenes, some really impressive textures, weapon reload animations, and they even replaced that awkward karate chop thing from Goldeneye with actual punches! Bond can now jump, swim, stun foes, and even ski! The levels are varied, and there's plenty of neat weapons and gadgets to use that fit the Brosnan-era Bond well. The multiplayer deathmatches raise the bar in every way from Goldeneye--more modes, more weapon sets, AI bots to play against, and bigger, more varied levels. This really is an overlooked gem on the N64. Unfortunately, many gamers had moved on: the Playstation 2 was coming out in a matter of months, and its power would leave these last-gen systems in the dust.
004: Nightfire (2002--Gamecube/Xbox/PS2)
After having this generation's first Bond game developed by another studio (EA Redwood Studio's "Agent Under Fire"), Eurocom took back the reins to make this follow up. And just like their previous Bond game, "The World Is Not Enough", pushed the N64 as far as it could go, they really showed off some fantastic looking stuff on the new generation of hardware. My mind was blown away when I got my first look at the incredibly realistic Pierce Brosnan model they used in this game (though sadly he's being voiced by a soundalike, who honestly does a fairly good job).
And although this remained a First Person Shooter, the developers went really out of their way to make this one feel like a true Bond movie. For instance, the game starts with a high speed car chase in Paris on New Years eve, which segues directly into the game's credit sequence/theme song (a first for a Bond game), just like a true Bond movie would. The game also rewards players for thinking like Bond by awarding them "Bond moments" throughout the missions for tackling situations with out-of-the ordinary, "Bondish" techniques. There's a snowmobile chase, an underwater driving level, and an epic finale that takes place in outer space! (Yes they rip off Moonraker in more than a few places in this one).
This game also features one of the best split-screen deathmatch modes of any Bond game. You are able to play as plenty of heroes and villains from throughout Bond's movie history. There's also tons of modes to choose from, AI with customizable personality, drone helicopters and tanks, gun turrents, grapple points, and a ton of really really great maps and weapons. I probably spent more overall hours in the multiplayer modes of this game than any other Bond game.
003: Goldeneye 007 (2010--Wii [also known as Goldeneye: Reloaded on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3])
In 2000, developer Eurocom was given the impossible task of following up the already instant classic "Goldeneye" with a second James Bond game for the N64. Looking back, that task seems easy compared to what was put on their plate in 2010: remaking that now definitive classic that gamers everywhere had put on a pedestal as one of the greatest games of all time. Admittedly, there was a lot of things that had me worried about this one, other than the simple fact that remaking a classic seems to always end with mass disapproval (think Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"). The game was being made as an exclusive for the Wii, which was by far the most underpowered system of the generation and had yet to see a truly good first person shooter because of it. It was also being made using the Call of Duty engine, which didn't really seem like it was suited for a Bond game. And they were also re-writing Goldeneye's storyline to shoehorn in the current Bond, Daniel Craig, and make it feel more at home in the new Bond universe. I was cautious: it seemed like a game that was just trying to cash in on nostalgia.
That couldn't have been further from the truth. Eurocom surprised skeptics everywhere by crafting a game that paid homages to the N64 classic without ever feeling like nostalgia was its only reason for existing. Each level was brilliantly re-crafted to feel more modern and cinematic, and Daniel Craig himself even stepped in to voice Bond. And even though the game looks like Call of Duty at first glance, the emphasis on some really fantastic stealth mechanics in many of the missions kept it from ever feeling like a clone (there's nothing like sneaking up on and taking out a roomful of guys without them ever knowing what hit them). Although the Wii had had many FPS duds by this point, this game proved that a modern shooter could work well on the system with enough TLC. The game also featured online multiplayer deathmatches that could be played either solo or in teams. But even cooler is the fact that the game allowed up to four players to duke it out in split-screen multiplayer: a huge selling point of the original game that had been mostly left to the wayside in modern shooters.
No one could believe it: They remade Goldeneye, and it was actually pretty fantastic.
002: Goldeneye 007 (1997--Nintendo 64)
I can already hear large crowds with pitchforks and torches threatening to lynch me for blasphemy for not putting this game in the top spot. And while I realize that this game was an absolute revolution for its time and probably sucked years out of my childhood, I'm trying not to not look at these games through rose-colored glasses.
What can be said about this game that hasn't already been said tenfold in college dorms, online comments sections, and "Greatest Video Games of All Time" lists across the world? This game not only introduced a generation to the world of James Bond, it was also the first truly successful shooter that wasn't on the PC. To this day we all remember our favorite levels and guns from this game, as well as our favorite cheats from the extraordinarily extensive cheat menu (I had a special appreciation for turning on All Guns, Infinite Ammo, and Invincibility and running through a level duel-wielding rocket launchers the entire time). There is a good reason this game is still revered to this day.
If you really wanted to, there are faults in this game you could nitpick. Like many games of its time, it often tasks the player with incredibly vague objectives that can only be completed in a very specific way. For instance, there are often objectives that require you to use a very specific item from your inventory at a very specific point in the level without giving you any clues whatsoever to the location you need to use the item (it doesn't help that you could instantly fail a mission for choosing wrong). Like pretty much every other game of the era, a Player's Guide is almost required on the higher difficulties.
But no amount of nitpicking will stop an entire generation of children, teens, and young adults from raving at the very mention of this game. We all knew the game was something special then, and no one's opinion has changed one bit almost twenty years later.
001: Everything Or Nothing (2004--Gamecube/Xbox/PS2)
Like the game's theme song says, "Give me everything or nothing at all." Well this one gave us everything. You ever want to spend a day in the shoes of the world's most famous fictional secret agent? This is as close as you'll ever come.
Probably based on the realization that they could never top people's love for Goldeneye, developer EA Redwood Studios decided to take the franchise in a totally different direction. Switching from first-person to third-person may seem like a minor change, but it opened up a world of possibilities of what Bond could to do that just isn't feasible in first-person. Bond could now put his back to walls and target enemies around corners. He could summersault across the ground to various points of cover. He could punch, silently take down, and toss objects lying around the room at enemies with dedicated buttons. He could even leap off a building and automatically unleash a grappling hook to scale down while firing at enemies at the same time.
And that's only when Bond was on foot. At many moments throughout the game, you found yourself behind the wheel of Bond's Aston Martin or various other cars and vehicles for some really exciting chase levels. You can take control of cars, trucks, helicopters, motorcycles, and "Q-spiders": small arachnid gadgets that can sneak in through air vents and self destruct for some really impressive moments.
Every single level in this game felt like a major action sequence ripped right out of a James Bond movie; there's just a certain "Bondishness" to every aspect of the game. It also didn't hurt that the original storyline for this game would have worked perfectly as a Brosnan-era Bond movie (even if it does end with Bond stopping a villain whose goal is to destroy the levees of New Orleans and flood the city...a plot that would definitely not fly had this been released a year later). To increase the cinematic quality of the game, the developers hired an absolutely star-studded cast. Pierce Brosnan voiced himself for the first and only time in a Bond game (this was actually his last time ever playing Bond). Other cast members included none other than William Dafoe himself as main villain Nikolai Diavolo, and series staples Judi Dench as M, John Cleese as Q, and Richard Kiel as Jaws all make appearances. Heidi Klum, Shannon Elizabeth, and R&B singer Mya also made appearances in both voice and likeness throughout the game.
There is also multiplayer in this game. However, instead of the usual deathmatch modes found in every other Bond game, the focus here is on a two-player co-op campaign. And while short, the co-op mode was really, really fun. As generic MI6 agents, two players were tasked with infiltrating enemy compounds and gunning down waves of soldiers in the process. The levels were clearly built for two players: often there are moments where one player must focus on completing an objective while the other has to provide cover fire. Running and gunning usually lead to very quick deaths for both players: a strategy was essential to getting through this campaign.
This game is an absolute love letter to Bond fans. If you haven't checked this one out and you're a huge Bond fan, it's time to dust off the old Gamecube or Xbox or PS2 and give this one a go. It might make you reconsider the whole "lynching me for not putting Goldeneye on top" thing.
