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Everybody, especially the ladies, loves James Bond. It could be that James Bond is the coolest person ever, but you’d never know it from most of the games we’ve been given.
Ok, so Rare’s
Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 is legendary, but what have we had since then?
Tomorrow Never Dies was ridiculous and buggy,
The World is Not Enough sold approximately nine copies, and most of the original Bond games like
Nightfire and
Agent Under Fire were only so-so. Let us not speak of
Goldeneye: Rouge Agent.
Electronic Arts, the company we’re soon to be referring to as “overlord”, seemed to hit all the right notes with last summer’s
Everything or Nothing. The story worked, the levels were pretty, the controls were solid, and the gadgets were cool. It wasn’t Goldeneye, but what ever will be? From Everything or Nothing’s slam dunk, EA Redwood is pushing the bar forward in quality and backwards in time to sort of “revisit” the classic Bond flick,
From Russia With Love.
As absolutely every movie you’ve seen in a theater this year has been a remake of an older movie, it’s only fair that the gaming world get a crack at cinema history, too. MGM Studios was kind enough to let EA license everything there was about the second Bond movie, which is interesting for film buffs because MGM has classically been rather staunch with the James Bond license. Ever wonder why you never had a James Bond sleeping bag?
Because they never made one. He’s licensed to kill; not licensed to swag.
All of the high points from Everything or Nothing are brought forward and kicked up a notch. The third-person perspective has been fine-tuned from the last game to provide even more visibility and versatility, the aiming system has been honed to allow for toggling between targeting specific body parts or items being carried by an enemy (shoot out their radios and they can’t call for backup while you pummel them, or shoot at the grenades on their belts and watch them go kaboom!) as well as allowing you to zoom in for a tight view with any weapon, and the intuitive puzzle-solving elements from EoN are matched with some interesting puzzles utilizing some of the electronic wizardry from Q-branch (laser watch, anyone?)
The game follows the movie’s story pretty much straight through, and as having seen the first 10 James Bond movies is a requisite for browsing this website, I needn’t elaborate. There are some missions that sort of drift off to the side of the story as well as a sort of prelude and epilogue mission too, so it isn’t as if you’re just watching the movie with an Xbox controller in your hand. If you closed your eyes you might think so, however, as none other than Sean Connery himself has done the voicework for his role in this game as well as (confusingly) some motion capture for the character.
Something that FRWL (writer’s tip: pronounce it “frowl”) has that many games claim to have is multiple routes to accomplish one task. In the game’s second level (the famous hedge maze scene) you have to make your way into a charming estate by sneaking through a elaborate hedge maze at night. You could of course go through the whole maze on your tippy-toes, avoiding the scattered and well-armed guards; you could also take a slightly more daring route and try to crawl over the hedge walls for a faster but possibly more revealing journey, or you could take out your machine gun and do that one thing that people like to do – you know, kill everyone in sight.
From Russia With Love sports over 12 weapons in the usual swing of games like this (pistols, silenced pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, regular looking things that blow up or throw knives at people, etc) and an array of gadgets from Q himself. The surprisingly addictive Q-Spider puzzles from Everything or Nothing are replicated here with a Q-Copter that, like pretty much everything else James Bond has ever touched, can explode for devastating effect. The famous jetpack from the movie is in the game too, and purportedly a good deal of the game is spent wearing one. Many of us were shocked and amazed to find out that the always-sucky and dreaded action-game-driving-missions were actually pretty fun in EoN (rather than waste time making a half-baked driving engine for one or two levels, EA just borrowed Need for Speed’s engine from themselves) and they should be even better in FRWL. Forward-mounted machine guns, missiles, side-facing rams – what else could you want in your classic Aston Martin?
We’ve taken a look at the split-screen multiplayer mode, but haven’t heard any word as to whether or not to expect any online play. The split-screen mode is pretty slick, featuring some unique power-ups that can be used to upgrade your health and armor or downgrade an opponents’. The Q-Copter can be used in multiplayer mode too, for recon and for deadly explosions or poison-gas attacks.
From Russia With Love has everything going for it: solid engine, great movie license, long development cycle, original voiceactor, title starting with a preposition – it’s almost a sure-fire hit. A lot of Bond games have come down the pike, all claiming to be the best one, but FRWL seems to be confident in itself to not need to make boastful claims. By starting off with one of the best-liked Bond stories and Bond actors, and sparing no expense in recreating the look and feel of the 1960s environment and still making sure that there’s a real game under all the fluff, From Russia With Love may be the Bond game we’ve been waiting for since Goldeneye.
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