James Bond has been not only a British icon but
a worldwide sensation since he first appeared on screen in 1962, uttering his instantly famous
introduction: “Yes, hello, my name is James Bond, how may I help you?” He was introduced
nine years earlier by author Ian Fleming, but that was in a book, so who cares?
The point is that James Bond was not only a phenomenon; he remains a phenomenon with films
still being released, only rarely with a break of more than two or three years between them. Because
of this, watching all of the Bond films provides a window into many eras of cinema history.
Similarly, playing each of the games allows you to see how this medium has changed and evolved over
the years. Okay, well, maybe not the last console generation; this thingsuccessfully killed off
all Bond games a decade ago. But prior to that, the point stands. The license is now firmly in
the hands of IO Interactive, developers of the great Hitman series and
clearly the right people to helm 007’s comeback. While we wait for that game, we thought it would
be fun to take a look at what has come before. And, in most cases, never look at them again.
The rules are simple. We will be ranking Every James Bond Game From Worst to Best. If that’s a
surprise to you, then you should start reading the titles of videos before you click on them. We
are going to exclude mobile games, crossovers with other franchises, and browser games. Sorry,
fans of 007 Ice Racer. Let me rephrase that: I’m sorry you are fans of 007 Ice Racer.
Also, we aren’t taking into account the quality of the films on which these games are
based. If we did, The Spy Who Loved Me would be #1 and everything else would be tied for a
distant second. And we’ll be dropping the “James Bond 007 colon” that precedes many of these
games’ titles for the sake of not repeating “James Bond 007” enough times to summon a demon.
And, finally, we used a variety of different sources and played many different versions
of what seemed to be the same titles in the hopes of making this list as comprehensive as we
could. It’s still possible we missed something; we do that sometimes, because we are humans. If we
did, let us know in the comments. All that we ask, please, is that you preface it with this.
With all of that out of the way, join us now for some serious Bondage. I…probably
could have phrased that differently. Let’s rank ‘em.
I’m Ben, and I’m Peter from TripleJump, and this is Every
James Bond Game Ranked From Worst to Best. #37: Shaken But Not Stirred! (1982)
ZX Spectrum Shaken But Not Stirred!is almost certainly
the earliest James Bond game, but what’s less certain is if it was licensed. There are
conflicting reports that. Dr. Death and Paws seem to be copyright-avoiding names for Dr. No
and Jaws,suggesting that the Fleming empire had nothing to do with this. Then again, they
didn’t bother to change James Bond to Jimes Bund or something, so who knows.
We’re covering it just to be safe, and we might as well because nobody else
has. We had to turn to our own Jenkins, James Jenkins – ol’ Thunderballs himself – to
capture footage, as we couldn’t find it anywhere. I suppose Shaken But Not Stirred! istruer to
Fleming’s original novels than most other games on this list, if only because you have to read it,
but I don’t recall Fleming writing in all caps. The story is about Bond thwarting Dr. Death, who
has threatened to destroy London unless he is paid a hefty ransom. Instead of agreeing to this
and quietly arresting Dr. Death when he comes to collect his money, Bond trots around the globe
trying desperately to get the text parser to recognize his inputs. Evidently there are some
actual graphics towards the end of the game. If the developers saw fit to bury them there, though,
I certainly don’t see any reason to dig them up. #36: A View to a Kill (1985)
PC Goldfinger (1986)
PC Did you think we were done with text adventures?
Maybe I should ask, “Did you hope we were done with text adventures?” Listen, me too. But
we’re going to get through these together. As text adventures, the main challenge of the
games comes from the combined facts that you can’t see anythingand you have to guess at what the text
parser might actually understand. That’s the case for any text adventure, butthe addition of timed
puzzles in these games doesn’t help matters. In neither case would we recommend these games
over the films as ways to experience the story, of course, but at least as a text adventure you
won’t be distracted throughout A View to a Kill by how much the character has aged since Octopussy.
Interestingly, both games had involvement from a young Raymond Benson, who would go on to write
official Bon-Bon-Bon-Bond novels a decade later. Was he granted such an honor due to the excellent
writing skills he demonstrated in these games? I’ve never read his books and I was only
able to play these for around 60 seconds before falling asleep, so you can take my
word for it when I say, “I have no idea.” #35: The Living Daylights (1987)
Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Atari 8-bit Family,BBC Master,BBC
Micro, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum If your favorite thing about James Bond is
the man’s ability to walk in a straight line, you will love The Living Daylights. If your
favorite thing is his ability to deviate from a straight line…you might wish to look elsewhere.
Released in 1987 on anything that had a screen, this is definitely one of 007’s most tedious
adventures, but it does allow you to murder a balloon vendor. We imagine Heavy Rain would have
gone much differently if that had been an option. The Living Daylights is tragically simple.
You move crosshairs around the screen, and either jump over or roll under obstacles. The
best strategy in the game is pretty much to play it as little as possible; as running quickly to
the right will usually end the level before the enemies can inflict enough damage to kill you. Is
it fun to play the game that way? Absolutely not, but it’s also not fun to wrestle crosshairs
around, trying in vain to shoot tiny enemies that blend into the background.
Several sources claim that there was also an arcade version. We’re willing to
believe that, but we can’t find any evidence of it actually having been released. Let
us know if you’ve ever spotted a cabinet, because we can’t find so much as a photo,
and we’d like to give it an obscene gesture. #34: The Spy Who Loved Me (1990) Amiga,Amstrad CPC,Atari ST, Commodore
64, Master System, ZX Spectrum, PC The fact that The Spy Who Loved Me
is a significantly worse version of Spy Hunter is unfortunate. But the fact that
the developers didn’t lean into the similarity and call it The Spy Hunter Who Loved Me
is an embarrassment to king and country. The game is…well, you’re looking at it.
I’d love to say that you’re seeing one very specific driving level but, in reality,
you’re seeing the vast majority of the gameplay right here. Riveting stuff, eh? Sometimes
the background will look less like a road and more like water, but the video game version
of The Spy Who Loved Me seems to labor under the misapprehension that the film was about James
Bond on an all-night, uneventful road trip. Due it being released on so many platforms,
there are differences between them, but those are nearly all superficial.
Sometimes features were added or removed due to the capabilities of certain hardware.
Some versions of the game have boss fights, some have shooting gallery sequences, and so on.
Some of the games even have music! But none of this does much to recommend the game to non-fans,
or to people who enjoy things that are fun. #33: James Bond 007 (1983)
Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, SG-1000
James Bond 007 is the wrong way to design a James Bond game for the Atari 2600. Having said that,
I’m not entirely sure there was a right way. It was a limited console that handled
simple score-attack games well enough, but not much else. As such, the Bond
adventure designed for that console is…about a car that hops
around and shoots things. Okay. The player is limited to the left half of the
screen, making enemies difficult to avoid, and you fire at odd angles, making every attack
a crapshoot. And crapshoots have no place here; everyone knows Bond prefers baccarat.
The first level is based on Diamonds Are Forever, which explains only in the most literal possible
sense why Bond is shooting at diamonds in the sky. (No Lucy, though.)The other levels are
based on Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me, but some of the other versions of the game
add another based on For Your Eyes Only. In all of them you move slowly from left to
right and find it impossible to hit your targets. Other versions do look better and they
add short cutscenes between levels, but no version of the game is any good. On the
bright side, the graphical limitations meant we never had to wonder how Sean Connery
changed into Roger Moore between levels. #32: A View to a Kill: The Computer Game (1985) Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX,
Oric-1, OricAtmos, ZX Spectrum When a game is released for so many systems,
you’d think it must be pretty good. Unless you’ve watched our other Worst to Best videos,
in which case you’d know full well that it has nothing to do with quality, and just comes
down to a game being easy enough to port. Adding the subtitle “The Computer Game”
to distinguish itself from the other A View to a Kill, which was also a computer
game, this version had graphics. In 1985, you really couldn’t take that for granted.
A View to a Kill: The Computer Game is far from identical across the various platforms.
Levels are scrambled up or missing, for instance, and a few versions of the game look slightly
less like a dog ate them, but it’s close enough that the different versions share the same
strengths and weaknesses. Critics praised the variety of the gameplay, for instance, but
also acknowledged that a single, unified vision might have allowed for a stronger experience.
It’s admirable how much the developers tried to do with this game, but it’s disappointing that
nothing they tried to do ended up being any good. Rather, the arrival of each new level feels like
a reprieve from the frustrations of the last, right before introducing a wealth
of new frustrations of its own. #31: James Bond 007 Action Pack (1990)
ZX Spectrum So far as we can tell, the game portion of the
James Bond 007 Action Pack was never officially sold on its own. Rather, it was available as part
of a bundle – a Bondle? – with the rapidly aging ZX Spectrum. It was bound to be a losing battle,
as the Mega Drive and PC Engine had already established themselves in homes, and Nintendo’s
Game Boy and SNES were about to redefine even further what we expected from video games.
The bundle sold for 160 pounds. That was more expensive than most of its competitors,
and it translates to just over 377 pounds – or $523 American – today. Sinclair was, basically,
hoping that Bond could convince gamers to pay more for less. It came with the hardware,
a light-gun peripheral, and three games. Lord Bromley’s Estate sees you shooting clay
pigeons, until a SPECTRE helicopter shows up to let you shoot it instead. Q’s Armourytasks
you with shooting at paper targets. The main game is a light-gun enhanced version of The Living
Daylights, which was relabeled “Mission Zero” in promotional materials, possibly to trick people
into buying another copy of a game they already owned. Desmond Llewelyn does reprise his role as
Q for audio briefings on the included cassettes, which are nice collectibles for fans, but the
games certainly didn’t justify the investment. #30: Live and Let Die: The Computer Game (1988)
Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum
If this ever-changin' world in which we're livin' makes you give in and cry…play Live and Let Die.
Actually, don’t, it’s not very good. I just really wanted to start the entry that way and I know
you will agree that I made the correct decision. Live and Let Die is a James Bond game. That
is a fact with which we all must live. But it wasn’t always one. Elite Systems International was
producing a boat-racing game called Aquablast. (As long as we’re on the subject, if you are producing
aquablast, see a doctor immediately.) Then, some very clever person at Domark, the game’s
publisher, had the bright idea of tying it into the recently released Bond film Live and Let Die.
Wait…this was released in 1988. Live and Let Die was…let me check…1973?! There were eight other
Bond films that came out since then! Why tie it into that one? I mean, yes, there was a boat
in that film and there is a boat in this game, but you might as well have tied it into
Dr. No, on the grounds that both this game and that film were in color. Regardless,
Live and Let Die is a game about moving a boat back and forth, sometimes avoiding rocks
but usually not. It’s terrible. Leave me alone. #29: James Bond Jr. (1991)
NES We had to play through some rubbish for this
list, but the most miserable part of writing it was being reminded that James Bond Jr. existed.
The success of Muppet Babies led a number of other IP holders to see if they, too, could slap
together a child-focused spinoff for some easy money. This brought us James Bond Jr., The
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and, of course, Scanners: The Kindergarten Years.
James Bond Jr. was actually James Bond’s nephew. While it’s very nice for someone in
your family to name their child after you, putting “junior” on the end is really only going to raise
uncomfortable suspicions about what you all get up to at reunions. Anyway, secret agent shenanigans
must run in James’ family. Or in James’ sister’s family? Let’s…let’s stop thinking about that.
The NES game is more frustrating than it is bad, but boy is it frustrating. Floaty controls
combined with tightly packed stage hazards do not make for a good mix. Toss in maze-like levels,
bullet-sponge enemies and pace-breaking minigame sequences, and the game gets even more tedious
than it should be. The soundtrack is great, however, meaning you can at least tap your
foot to the sounds of your own annoyance. #28: James Bond Jr. (1991)
SNES James Bond Jr. for the SNES is better
than James Bond Jr. for the NES in the same sense that swallowing a nail is better
than swallowing a screw. That is to say, by no metric that could possibly matter.
James Bond is known for his cunning and intelligence, but James Bond Jr. isn’t known for
anything at all, so it’s fair enough that his SNES game is boiled down to constant, mindless action.
It’s not good, of course, but it offers enough in the way of variety, particularly in the vehicle
stages, to keep boredom from setting in too quickly. The platforming is quite naff, however,
as is the animation and the level design. I suppose we shouldn’t have expected too much from
Grey Matter Inc., who brought us The Incredible Crash Test Dummies, Wayne’s World, and that
crossover we and Mikeydid with Ren&Stimpy. Leave it to this game to also backpedal on the
one truly redeeming aspect of the NES version. Whereas the soundtrack of that
game was genuinely excellent, the music here sounds like a series of overlapping
Windows crash notifications. If you absolutely must play a James Bond Jr. game, I recommend
closing your eyes and quietly passing away. #27: 007 Racing (2000)
PlayStation Surely if anyone can produce a great James Bond
game, it’s the development team that would go on to makeRide to Hell: Retribution. I mean,
I don’t think that, but somebody must have, because Eutechnyx got the license somehow.
The game features the likeness of Pierce Brosnan, but not his voice. Instead, we get an impression
of the actor that’s moderately less impressive than the one you can do yourself, right now. What
do we get beyond that? Well, polygons and…sorry, looks like the sentence ends there. Polygons.
There are certainly worse-looking games on the PS1, but 007 Racing seems to be making a
deliberate effort to be as ugly as possible. The design of the game is inconsistent, with
some missions feeling dull and others feeling impossibly harried. Combine this with quirks that
– among other things – allow you to fail a mission after you see the celebratory cutscene, and
you’ve got one traffic accident of a video game. And, of course, since we already featured
007 Racing on Worst Games Ever, and it’s managed to hit #27 on this list, that means we are
obligated to do 11 more Bond games on that show. I think that’s how it works. What’s more,
I think it’s legally binding.Oh, dear. #26: The Duel (1993)
Master System, Game Gear There are technically three versions of
The Duel, but we are lumping two of them together here as they are nearly identical.
Playing the Game Gear version, in other words, won’t mean that you’re missing out on
much of the Master System experience. The differences are slight. For instance,
the Master System version has better music, and by that I mean “the Master System version
has music.” The Game Gear version, for whatever reason, has none during actual gameplay. You
are, however, bombarded with bursts of static and electronic shrieks periodically, so that’s nice.
What is the game about? I would love to answer that question; really, I would. My best guess
is that it’s about a James Bond impersonator who snaps, starts shooting civilians
in the crotch, and kicks scantily clad women into the stratosphere. It’s a standard,
underwhelming platformer with a strangely bright collection of colors, making the entire
thing look like a child’s coloring book. The James Bond Wiki states that the game
has “a rudimentary physics system,” which I can only assume is just their way of saying
that things in this game do, indeed, move. #25: The Duel (1993)
Mega Drive The Mega Drive version ofThe Duel is better
than the Master System and Game Gear versions, but so is eating a sandwich and biting into
somebody else’s tooth. The game stars Timothy Dalton’s evil brother Hugo, who the Daltons
keep in the attic and feed fish heads. It’s about Bond being sent on a secret mission to
roam around aimlessly, shooting everyone he sees. There is actually a story in this version, involving a mad professor who
has invented a cloning device. This provides an in-game explanation for
the return of many of Bond’s previous foes, and also the fact that the developers did
not feel like designing many enemy types. At first glance, it looks identical to the
Master System and Game Gear versions. In truth, though, it just uses very similar assets and stage
themes. The design is completely different, there are new bosses and levels, and James Bond has his
signature weapon now: the hand grenade. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the films, I admit, but
I assume the developers got that detail correct. The game was released in Japan as 007: Shitō, and
as you’ve seen, that title is mostly accurate. #24: 007 Legends (2012)
PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox 360, PC Terrible controls, worse physics, and
mindless gunplay are not what one would hope for in a game intended to commemorate 50 years
since the release of Dr. No, the first of the proper Bond films, but here we are.
Missions are pulled from films starring each incarnation of Bond: Sean Connery
gets Goldfinger, Roger Moore gets Moonraker, Timothy Dalton gets License to Kill,
Pierce Brosnan gets Die Another Day, Daniel Craig gets Skyfall, and George Lazenby
gets…actually, I forget which of Lazenby’s films is included here. I’ll check later.
007 Legends not only had the unique opportunity to offer a variety of gameplay styles, tones, and
pacing, but it practically had an obligation to do so. Boiling down so many different sources of
inspiration until all that was left was one uniform, flavorless broth was a disservice
to Bond fans, cinema fans, and gamers alike. I’d quote some of the reviews here, but all
critics were able to do was howl with dismay. 007 Legends was such a failure that Eurocom fired
150 of its 200 employees and declared that they would only focus on mobile titles. Just two weeks
later, they laid off the rest of their staff and closed their doors. 007 Legends has scorched the
earth for Bond games since 2012. It was intended to celebrate 50 years since the first film, but
instead it buried the games for at least a decade. #23: Nightfire (2002)
PC The Venn diagram of people who enjoyed Nightfire
and people who played the PC version of Nightfire is two circles that are in no danger of
overlapping. Whereas the console version of the game – which, trust me, you won’t be hearing
about for a while – was well-received and rightly beloved by fans, the PC version probably
should have been rechristened Trashfire. It was developed by Gearbox Software – yes,
that Gearbox Software – using the Half-Life GoldSrcengine – yes, that Half-Life – so you’d
be forgiven for expecting a competent experience. Forgiven, but wrong. The mindless AI
stands still while you shoot it to death, and yet it doesn’t so much as flinch
when taking a shotgun blast to the face. The environments are large, but empty and
lacking detail. And the highlights of the console versions – the vehicle sequences –
are missing here, presumably because Gearbox thought that shooting endless waves of ugly
polygons would carry the experience on its own. This version follows the overall plot of the
console game, but features unique levels. It’s nice, in theory, that this game gives us
something new, but it won’t take long before you’re pleading with it to stop giving you
something new and start giving you something good. Sadly, the game won’t listen. Either that
or the voice recognition on my copy didn’t work. #22: The Stealth Affair (1990)
PC The Stealth Affair was a James Bond game, as
long as you lived in the United States, that is. They took a game we got as Operation Stealth and
gracelessly slapped the James Bond license onto it. The hasty rebranding of this game resulted in
clear inconsistencies, such as the fact that 007 is employed by the CIA. That’s fair, though;
we’re sure it would have taken far too much work to change two of those letters to M and 6.
Even stranger is the fact that developer Delphine Software did make a number of changes to the James
Bond version; it’s just that those changes had nothing to do with James Bond. They fixed some
glitches, added the ability to skip cutscenes, and removed some of the more tedious maze
sequences. Overall, though, both versions of the game suffered from the same issues of
confusing puzzles and pixel hunting that plagued many point-and-click adventures of the era. The
Stealth Affair had a big name attached to it, but paled in comparison to similar games released
around the same time byLucasArts and Sierra. On the bright side, Delphine would
go on to releaseAnother World in 1991 and Flashback in 1992. On the less-bright side,
Delphine would decide in 1994 to release Shaq Fu. #21: The World is Not Enough (2001)
Game Boy Color One year after the PlayStation and Nintendo
64 versions of The World is Not Enough duked it out over which was the better
game, a Game Boy Color version appeared, ensuring that neither of them would be the worst.
The World is Not Enough is a joyless affair, and I doubt many people have bothered making it to
the end. But enough about the film! Oh, we do have fun. Anyway, the game probably doesn’t qualify
as terrible, but it even less qualifies as good. Puzzle solving is too simple to be engaging, often
being reduced to wandering from switch to switch. Combat doesn’t fare much better, not least
because Bond has the bizarre habit of pulling his gun out, leveling it, firing it, lowering
it, and putting it away every time you attack. It’s carefully designed to ensure that action
sequences never accidentally become exciting. Collision detection should not be an issue in
games this graphically simple, but items will, at times, be extremely picky about what counts
as “touching” them. And while simple graphics make up the bulk of the game, they are weirdly
detailed at other times, such as when they make the likenesses of the actors look like digitized
versions of their last known photographs. Its soundtrack is okay overall,
at least, though it does sometimes seem like it was composed by cats
having an orgy on somebody’s keytar. #20: GoldenEye 007 (2010)
DS When n-Space was tapped to produce a version of
GoldenEye 007 for the DS, it must have been on the strength of their previous releases, such
as Bug Riders: The Race of Kings, Mary-Kate and Ashley: Magical Mystery Mall, and the firmly
worse-than-most Rugrats: Studio Tour. Or maybe it was on the strength of those Call of Duty DS games
they also did. Really, it’s impossible to know. The result is a first-person shooter that
works well for the hardware; not surprising, considering the developer’s experience in
that area. Beyond working well, though, GoldenEye 007 for the DS doesn’t do much of
anything. It’s even less varied than the Wii game, which was already a bit too heavy on the
mindless action. Here you move from place to place, engage in decent but forgettable
firefights, and then move along to the next. Touchscreen sequences do attempt to bring some
variety into the game, but operating keypads and swiping to open doors don’t enhance the
experience so much as they do prolong it. There are also framerate issues and areas so
dark that it’s difficult to parse the action on such a small screen. It’s far from a disaster,
but it’s equally far from being worth your time. #19: The World is Not Enough (2000)
PlayStation It’s obvious why a James Bond game released
after the enormous success of GoldenEye 007 would want to take as much inspiration from
that game as possible. It’s less obvious why the PlayStation version of The World is Not
Enough decided only to take inspiration from that game’s single-player campaign, ditching
multiplayer modes entirely. They were aware of why people liked GoldenEye, right? …right?
This version of The World is Not Enough was developed by Black Ops Entertainment, best known
for not making any of the games that come to mind when you hear “Black Ops.” It pales in comparison
to the Nintendo 64 version, having fewer missions, control issues, less-interesting levels,
and,often,the frame rate of an art gallery. Gamespot reported that every enemy was motion
captured, with “more than 30 different captured motions and reactions per character.”
All 30 of those motions, though, seem to have been the actors’ impression of a cactus.
The fact that it runs on a CD means you do get actual clips from the movie,
which must have been great for people who enjoy watching films in 10-second
chunks through their neighbor’s screen door. #18: James Bond 007 (1998)
Game Boy James Bond’s video games often reduce the role
of the super spy to shooting loads of people and then scampering off before the police show up.
That seems less heroic the more often it happens, and makes 007 seem like a massacre on legs. We
know you’ve got a license to kill, James, but, frankly, we think you’re overdoing it.
James Bond 007 for the Game Boy at least tries to implement a kind of intellectual
resourcefulness and situational awareness that we don’t always see in Bond games. Unfortunately,
though, that translates to Bond receiving one-line exposition from NPCs and judo-chopping
everything in every room until he finds some invisible item that is needed to progress. Bond
is less of a mass murderer here, certainly, but it also feels like he’s been reduced
from saving the world to wandering around, doing odd jobs. NOT THAT ONE. We also learn
that Bond is such a relentless womanizer that he will even flirt with pixels. And what pixels!
Let’s just see who published this…Nintendo?!Yes, this was actually part of a planned
trilogy, as they also published GoldenEye007 for the Nintendo 64, and had planned
on publishinganother game for the Virtual Boy. The only thing that would have looked good in that
game would be the blood dripping in the opening #17: License to Kill (1989)
Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Master System, MSX, ZX Spectrum, PC
Based on what is easily one of the two best Timothy Dalton films, License to Kill should
have made for an excellent game. Actually, you could say that about any James Bond film,
so never mind. Point is, a revenge story is a perfect foundation for a video game, what with
there being a built-in final boss and a reason to pursue him through however many levels.
And, truth be told, the game is not half bad. It’s simple, certainly, but it’s challenging and
it offers a good deal of variety, with driving, swimming, and assault levels, all of which adapt
different film sequences in a way that keeps any of the ideas from becoming boring. It was lauded
by critics as being the best Bond game which, in 1989, was saying precious little.
Still, the reception was positive, with particular praise for its controls and
inventive approach to the source material. It was released for a number of systems, with the
BBC Micro getting a slightly upgraded version with improved AI and reduced sprite flicker. An NES
port was even developed and was largely complete, but the game was scrapped before release.
That’s okay; Nintendo fans would eventually get a Bond game with…let me just check…James
Bond Jr.?! Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. #16: Quantum of Solace (2008)
PlayStation 2 Both the PS2 and the PS3 got games called Quantum
of Solace, but they are entirely different releases. This version is a third-person shooter
in the vein of Resident Evil 4, as every game was for several years after the release of Resident
Evil 4. It’s also, oddly, more directly faithful to the events of the films upon which it’s based.
And that is indeed films, plural, as a few of its missions come from Casino Royale. NOT THAT ONE.
The game looks pretty bad when compared to its PS3 counterpart, but that’s understandable.
More disappointing is how poorly it controls, how glitchy it is, and how horribly its
levels are designed. Playing through the PS2 version of Quantum of Solace is a worse
use of your day than simply not waking up. Critics overall were divided over which version
of the game was better. Or, to be more accurate, which version was slightly less bad.
The PS2 version does have a higher average on Metracritic – 73% as compared to 65% – but
we’re ranking this one lower on the grounds that it is terrible and not even slightly good
at any point. I know, I’m harsh, what can I say? #15: Tomorrow Never Dies (1999)
PlayStation The first Bond game EA released after nabbing the
license, Tomorrow Never Dies is a third-person shooter, which is a departure from its immediate
predecessor, GoldenEye 007. That in itself is not a bad idea. With that game’s stellar reception
and the adoration it received from fans, it might indeed be wise to chart new territory
and not set yourself up for direct comparison. Less understandable yet again was the
decision to include no kind of multiplayer mode. That would be less of a problem if the
single-player campaign were engaging enough, but reviewers were quick to conclude that, without
the Bond license, Tomorrow Never Dies would offer nothing more than what gamers were already getting
from dozens of disposable action games each year. EA originally wanted the game to be a stand-alone
experience following on from the film, taking the Brosnan incarnation of Bond on his
own interactive adventures. There was even a promo for the game in which Q explains that this
was the premise. That plan was scuppered when focus groups expressed more interest in playing
through the events they’d already seen in a film. Say what you will about EA, but they did at
least consider charting new territory with their first Bond game. And, to their
credit, they’d get there eventually. #14: Nightfire (2003)
Game Boy Advance Any time you see a first-person shooter
running on a Game Boy Advance, it’s impressive. It’s like seeing Mass Effect running
on a bowl of fruit. But that doesn’t mean the GBA’s small selection of first-person shooters
are any good. Actually, let’s not mince words: First-person shooters on the GBA are pretty awful.
Nightfire makes a commendable enough attempt at shrinking the broad strokes of the main
Nightfire games into such a tiny cartridge, but we’re applauding the effort more than
the actual result. The small number of buttons makes the control feel cluttered; stealth
sequences now carry the risk of instant failure, presumably because the developers couldn’t get
the AI to do much on such limited hardware; and the game looks hideous. The island level in
particular looks like it was built in Minecraft. Having said that, there are quite a few
Bond gadgets to keep things interesting, the frame rate is pretty smooth, and if you
achieve a gold rating in one stage you’re rewarded with a golden Wolfram P2K for the next. That’s
a neat touch. Neat enough to justify a spin? I wouldn’t say so, but the developers were
at least trying to give us a good game. That’s more than we can say for
many of the previous entries. #13: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (2005)
DS So far as we can tell, GoldenEye:
Rogue Agent was the very first full first-person shooter released for the DS.
We say “full” because Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt came out the year prior, but that
was just a demo for a game that wouldn’t release until 2006. For a full-length FPS experience,
DS early adopters really only had Rogue Agent. And, honestly, they could have had things
far worse. Yes, it’s a scaled-down version of a console game that wasn’t all that great
to begin with, but it controls well enough, especially considering the experimental hardware.
And it retains the console version’s penchant for digging up Bond characters from previous
generations, such as Dr. No, Auric Goldfinger, and Xenia Onatopp, which at some
point was a name that sounded clever. Reviewers praised the controls and the smooth
frame rate, but they were critical of Rogue Agent’s simplicity and AI that was far more
artificial than it was intelligent. As an extremely simple FPS experience, it’s not bad, but
it’s hardly worth seeking out on its own merits. Interestingly, this game’s engine was
used in a demonstration of how Halo could work on the DS. It’s unclear who, exactly,
pitched this version to Microsoft and Nintendo, but it’s more clear why neither company
was interested in bringing it to life. #12: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (2004)
GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox Should we have even counted this game? You
tell us, preferably with misspellings and either too much or not enough punctuation.
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent doesn’t star Bond, and yet, clearly, it takes place within Bond’s
universe…however you’d like to define that. 007 himself shows up for a bit – a little
bit – and an assortment of characters from previous films put in appearances here. They
aren’t all voiced by their original actors, but some of them are, including Christopher
Lee as The Man With the Golden Gun himself. The main gimmick of the game is attempting to
trick you into thinking it has anything to do with either the film or the game known as GoldenEye.
The secondary gimmick is the literal golden eye, a cybernetic implant that allows your character
to star in a game with a heads-up display. We say “character”; for all his personality, he
might as well be a pair of disembodied hands. Critics were not impressed, and few fans would
have said that it was anywhere near as good as its inspiration. Even so, EA claimed that Rogue
Agent had been – by their standards– a success. That’s…unlikely, as the company quickly
cancelled the sequel that was already in development. You can’t fool me, EA!
I know you’d never turn money down! #11: Quantum of Solace (2008)
PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC It probably shouldn’t be a surprise that
Quantum of Solace is fairly generic. Production of both the movie and the game
happened concurrently, meaning there was no opportunity for developer Treyarch to take
inspiration from the final product. Instead, it took inspiration from its own
work on the Call of Duty series. That leaves us with a perfectly competent game,
but it’s one that feels very much like a Call of Duty reskin rather than anything that captures the
James Bond spirit. What’s more, because Quantum of Solace hadn’t been completed, the vast majority
of this game’s missions are actually based on events from Casino Royale. NOT THAT ONE.
The game is largely a first-person shooter, but it does shift into third-person action for
cover sequences, quick-time events, and just to get nice, glorious looks at the perfect face of
Daniel Craig. Critics were not hugely impressed, awarding it scores within the 50% and 60% range,
depending on the platform. They cited issues with its visual presentation and its QTE-heavy boss
fights. The Wii version performed the worst, being as its visuals were even less impressive and the
boss fights now required motion inputs, something marginally less responsive thanthinking quietly
about what you’d like your character to do. #10: GoldenEye 007 (2010)
Wii The Nintendo 64 version of GoldenEye 007 became an
unexpectedly complicated licensing nightmare. In addition to the obvious Bond license, the game was
published by Nintendo, yet was developed by Rare, a company that is now owned by Microsoft. Making
all of these companies happy enough to allow for a port or a Virtual Console release proved to be
impossible, but there was a left-field solution: Just make a different game with the same name.
Points for thinking outside the box, Eurocom. As such, GoldenEye 007 has far more differences
to than similarities with the previous game. And unlike GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, this one does
actually draw direct inspiration from the film. It does so, however, in a way that
mixes two different eras of Bond, replacing Pierce Brosnan with Daniel
Craigand reworking it to fit the grittier, more grounded films that had been released since.
Critics and fans enjoyed it well enough. It scored 81% on Metacritic, which
is certainly good, but was a notable step down from the Nintendo 64 game’s 96%.
The game was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 one year later as GoldenEye 007:
Reloaded. It’s essentially the same game, but with better visuals as it was running on
hardware more advanced than an electric blanket. #9: Quantum of Solace (2008)
DS When console games get concurrent handheld
releases, things can go one of two ways: Developers can either reimagine the experience
as something that plays to the strengths of the hardware, or they can rip pieces off
the console version until it fits on a smaller cart and then wonder why nobody likes it.
Quantum of Solace does the former, thankfully, and it also does it quite well. It’s almost as though
developer Vicarious Visions had seen a DS before and knew how it worked. What a concept.
It’s far from the best DS game, but it’s well designed. You hold the DS
open like a book, with nearly all of the action being controlled on the touchscreen. It
takes some getting used to but, fortunately, this version of Quantum of Solace isn’t as
action-focused as its console counterparts. It’s paced slowly, with an emphasis on stealth and
exploration. There is combat – and that combat is terrible – but that ends up being an unfortunate
hiccup in an otherwise solid game. The soundtrack is excellent, and there’s even a surprising
amount of voice acting. Put aside some difficulty with the camera and the fact that it’s probably
more fun to engage in armed combat in real life, and you’ve got the one Quantum of Solace game
that deserved more attention than it got. #8: Agent Under Fire (2001)
GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox Agent Under Fire was originally meant to
be…well, anything other than Agent Under Fire. It began life as an upgraded PlayStation
2 version of The World is Not Enough, which would also then be ported to PC. However,
due to EA being EA, the project was scrapped, despite the fact that the game was almost
complete. To avoid all of the development going to waste, the team started work on another
James Bond game, which at various points was meant to be either a direct successor to Rare’s
GoldenEye or a retro throwback to the tone of Bond’s earlier adventures, which would have
seen Sir Roger Moore reprising his role as 007. With all of that in mind, it’s something
of a miracle that Agent Under Fire is as good as it is. Not that it’s great,
but with so many hiccups in development, the game could have been far more disjointed
and ramshackle. Instead, it’s a competent if unremarkable shooter, and its troubled
development is really only reflected in the game’s short length of around three or four hours.
It does have its moments of genuine charm, such as the fun driving sections and surprisingly
intense rail-shooter sequences, but it’s let down by dull gunplay and completely pointless
stealth mechanics. You could do far worse, but nearly all of the original plans for
this game sound better than what we got. #7: Everything or Nothing (2003)
Game Boy Advance There is a list of things that must be avoided
if you are going to release a successful James Bond game on the Game Boy Advance. Number one:
Don’t make a first-person shooter. That’s it; I didn’t say it was a long list.
Everything or Nothing beat its console counterpart to market, and it does an excellent
job of providing fun action on the go. Does it feel much like a James Bond game? Errrm…sort of?
At times? I mean, it clearly is a James Bond game; it doesn’t play as though some obscure Japanese
mascot got subbed out in the localization process. It’s just that it’s missing a lot
of the suave, smooth Bond spirit. What we do get is a difficult but usually fair
game that mixes gunplay with stealth, and tosses in a few vehicle sequences to boot. It’s a varied
package that critics complained was a bit too short, but I honestly think it’s more accurate to
say that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. Also, it’s the sort of game that feels more satisfying
to play multiple times, as you go from fumbling your way through a level to achieving a kind of
graceful mastery, something that is reinforced by the game’s smooth animations.This one is
often ignored, but it is worth a second glance. #6: From Russia with Love (2005)
GameCube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox
32 years after the release of the film – and 22 years since Sean Connery last played
the character, and that’s if you count Never Say Never Again – the venerable Scotsman returned
as Bond. In a video game. Which he clearly did not care about. And which he almost certainly
did because he needed money. And which…you know what? Let’s stop there. I’m depressed already.
There is a certain thrill in playing as the young and spry Connery, but it’s offset by the fact
that he’s voiced by the old and tired Connery. To be clear, people age; we certainly aren’t
shaming the man for growing older with time. But his performance here seems hollow and
disengaged, as nice as it is to have him back. If it sounds strange that developer
EA wouldn’t base the character on the current incarnation of Bond…well, there was
no current incarnation of Bond. This game was developed after Pierce Brosnan relinquished
the role and before Daniel Craig took up the mantle in 2006 with Casino Royale. NOT THAT ONE.
The gameplay itself is pedestrian, but passable. The real draw is the ability to play through
the different world of the 1960s films, roaming the environments and meeting with
characters drawn from Connery’s entire tenure. It’s a good time, but there are glimmers of true
brilliance here that aren’t fully realized. As it stands, it’s a worthy experience, but
it was so close to being a must play. #5: Blood Stone (2010)
DS, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC The only Daniel Craig-era Bond game
with a completely unique story, Blood Stone is helped along by a solid performance
by Craig and a story by Bruce Feirstein, who wrote three Bond films and…that’s
about it. But still, three Bond films, eh? Blood Stone is not going to scratch your
itch for innovative third-person action, but it honestly might scratch your itch for
a perfectly serviceable original adventure. Craig’s Bond lends himself well to traditional
duck-and-cover gunplay, and outside of some unfortunate cutscenes in which Judi Dench is
played by this potato, it looks fantastic. What’s more, Blood Stone is our first indication
on this list that the games havea better success rate when it comes to theme songs than the movies
do. Here it’s “I’ll Take it All” by Joss Stone. Wait, Joss Stone. Blood Stone.
Is this…are you being clever, video game? You’ve seen the other stuff on this
list. You know that being clever is frowned upon. The DS version does a great job of translating
the bulk of the experience to a less-powerful handheld. It looks substantially worse,
but the touchscreen aiming works great. Critics actually preferred this
version by a surprising margin, awarding it 75% on Metacritic, whereas it scored
between 63% and 66% on its main platforms. #4: The World is Not Enough (2000)
Nintendo 64 We wouldn’t have guessed family-friendly Nintendo
consoles to be the right home for drinkin’, shootin’, STI-spreadin’protagonists but, for a
decent run of titles, they were indeed where you’d find the best James Bond games. Case in point,
The World is Not Enough, which…okay, it’s not the best James Bond game, but it is the best James
Bond game with the name The World is Not Enough. Developed by Eurocom, who would go on to helm
the GoldenEye 007 remake ten years later, the Nintendo 64 version of The World is Not Enough is
far superior to the PlayStation version, because it…runs. Yes, it looks nicer and plays better,
but the fact that it’s functional and not a buggy, stuttery mess is worth spotlighting on its own.
Also, it doesn’t just have a multiplayer mode; it has a huge number of multiplayer
modes with a ton of varied maps, seemingly only so it could kick PlayStation
owners while they were down. It isn’t perfect; the character models, for instance, look like
somebody glued the actors’ flesh to some pool toys. Also, the AI wasn’t great and the mission
objectives didn’t leave much room for creativity. But if you like Bond games, this
is one of the worthier entries. If you don’t like Bond games, why on Earth
have you watched this much of the video? #3: Everything or Nothing (2004)
GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox Want a fun fact? Of course you do! Who doesn’t
want a fun fact!? Ready? Eon Productions, the film company that still produces the James
Bond films to this day? Their name is an acronym, standing for “Everything or Nothing.” Pretty
classy of this game to reference it as its title. And it’s appropriate that it’s also regarded as
one of the better Bond games since…well, ever. We get another great original theme song,
this time by Mýa, who also voices a character. She’s joined by an excellent cast
featuring not only Pierce Brosnan as Bond, but Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, and even
Richard Kiel, reprising his role as Jaws. Everything or Nothing is a third-person
shooter with stealth elements, and it works and controls well. Lock-on keeps
the combat from ever getting frustrating – and it suits a character like James Bond more than
fiddling with thumbsticks ever would – and the give-and-take nature of the shootouts is
incredibly fitting for cinematic setpieces. The game also looks excellent, and it might
actually do the best job of playing like a genuine, interactive Bond film. Sure,
the melee combat isn’t great, the map during the driving sequences gives
you the choice between useless and useless for a different reason, and the
difficulty spikes are a bit too spiky. Even so, the game brilliantly captures the Brosnan
era of Bond, and we couldn’t be happier with it.Unless it were one of the next two
games, of course. That’s how these lists work. #2: Nightfire (2002)
GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox Did you know that there were six distinct
James Bond games on the PlayStation 2? You might think that’s plenty, but,
personally, I feel that there should have been one more. That way there would be 007 games. Thank
you. Oh, thank you. No, you are breathtaking! Nightfire is more than a great Bond game; it gets
shockingly close to being a great game in general. Is it dumb? Yes. Is it derivative? Yes. Are the
twists so clearly telegraphed that you can see them from space? Oh yes. And yet it’s so much fun
that none of this matters. Nightfire is a direct sequel to Agent Under Fire, which had plenty to
recommend it, but this is better in every way. It looks better, the gunplay is better, even the
vehicle segments are better. Bond takes to the air and the sea in his relentless quest to shoot loads
of people, and that’s just the way we like it. Nightfire again has its very own theme
song: “Nearly Civilized” byEsthero. And, again, it’s not half bad, meaning that it’s
superior to two-thirds of the theme songs from the actual movies! Criticisms were
mainly levied at the game’s short length. Fair enough, but it says something that
the one thing reviewers complained about was that there wasn’t more of it. Also, the
splitscreen multiplayer was chef’s kiss. #1: GoldenEye 007 (1997)
Nintendo 64 A small peek into the TripleJump Sausage Factory,
if you like: Making these lists, we put ourselves in an impossible position. If we rank retro games
highly due to their legacy, we receive pushback that the games haven’t aged well. If we rank them
low because they haven’t aged well, we receive pushback for not focusing on their legacy.
And here’s the thing: We get it! We absolutely understand. Different people value
different things in video games. For some, it’s how well the games play today, picking them
up for the first time. For others, it’s the way those games made them feel as children or young
adults, gathered around a console with friends on long nights, munching on snacks and enjoying
time together without a single care in the world. That is the dilemma we face when ranking older
games. But surely we can at least all agree that, as far as James Bond games specifically go,
and as far as multiplayer games in general go, few have been as beloved as GoldenEye 007.
Maybe it’s aged poorly. Maybe it’s nowhere near as fun to play today. Maybe
it’s mainly notable for the better, more polished games in other franchises that
it inspired. I can’t say that I much care, to be honest. Video games are intended to
bring us joy. Of the games on this list, I can’t say that any other has brought me
nearly so much. It’s a great Bond game and, appropriately, it’s a great bond-ing experience.
What, you didn’t think we’d end this list on sincerity instead of a bad pun, did you?
GoldenEye 007: Baby, you’re the best. Yes, I know that’s a song from a different film;
I don’t remember the lyrics to GoldenEye.
