Reviewing Every James Bond FPS

it although there's been Bond themed video games since back in the early 8s when most people myself included were still an itch in their dad's trousers it wasn't until the late '90s when these games really started to kick off I think and became worthy of taking note of can I help you with something so I thought it'd be cool to go back and take a look at all of the first person shooters we've had over the years that took place in the7 Universe starting with none other than golden eye on the Nintendo 64 now I realized that by focusing on the first person shooters it means that I'm missing out on games like everything or nothing which a lot of people consider to be one of the best Bond games of all time but when I realized how long this video was going to be just talking about the FPS ones covering every single Bond games seem to be a bit overzealous not to mention I mean it's been done man thank you I could have done this myself also I realized that for a lot of these games they're more well known for their multiplayer modes instead of the single player player but for a lot of these games those communities are pretty much dead and with the ones on the consoles it's not even possible to play them anymore so yeah don't take that a mission personally all right little [ __ ] this is going to be a long one too sunny Jim so put that Aston Martin into park grab a vodka martini and let's get into it it's funny to think that one of the best James Bond games is still one of the first with golden ey 64 released for the Nintendo 64 way back in 19 1997 I'm not even going to bother trying to review this or talk about it in any great depth but I will just say that this game is less about what it does and more about what it did it was the first console shooter I can remember playing that actually impressed me and it made a pretty compelling argument that console shooters were also worth keeping an eye on it's been a favorite of many gamers for decades for Nostalgia purposes but also in the speedrunning community and as recently as a couple of years ago you even had people breaking that world record sped time the multi play mode was the first time that I ever got introduced to the concept of screen cheating and kids these days might not understand this but this really was the kind of thing that could legitimately end friendships it also set a new standard for bad guns with the club submachine guns a weapon that is so weak that I think you'd actually be better off using it to try to bludge in your enemies to death instead gold and I was also the first Bond film that I ever saw in the cinema and I sure was pretty lucky that my first theater experience with the series was arguably one of the best films in the entire franchise if for no other reason than just seeing fam Jans and giving off the kind of performance that I think kick started puberty for every young boy that happened to see it and the game off the back of that is just a really good faithful adaptation of the film which was something that was pretty rare for movie times I mean look just 2 years prior to this we'd had the Batman Forever game and I don't think I need to tell you how that went there's the opening mission on the dam with 006 there's the level where you chasing after natala in that tank even down to that fight against zenya in the jungle she always did enjoy a good squeeze she always did enjoy a good squeeze clubs aside too the weapons were also pretty fun to use a generous auto aim system made it feel like you're actually a pretty decent shooter and mowing down a swarm of enemies with the kf7 felt really satisfying the gun playay also owes a lot of how solid it feels I think to some really good enemy animations combined with those funnyl looking faces where it looked like they were all suffering from extreme bowel discomfort I know how they feel I don't really look at golden eyes just a straight out shooter I mean look it's definitely got a lot of shooting but it's really more of a puzzle game with each level often having a solution you need to figure out shooting weapons willy-nilly might work for some levels but you're more likely to run out of ammo and it's also highly likely that you might accidentally shoot an innocent PC causing a mission failure in some of the stealth missions firing guns is a big no no because certain weapons would make more noise than others which in turn would attract more guards which in turn would make the mission harder depending on the difficulty mode you're playing on each level's going to have a bunch of objectives you've got to complete and some of these aren't really obvious either a perfect example of this is the levelin statue Park where you've got to meet up with 006 after you first make it to the spot you're supposed to meet him he'll then only show up if you've got your weapon Holsted and if you move too close to him at any point during his dialogue he'll freak out and then run off failing the objective during the mission where you're Escaping The Archives with Natalia if you use your fist instead of a gun you can get through the entire level without guards spawning in which makes the whole thing a lot easier these might be the kind of things that sound obvious when you hear it out loud but they're not always apparent the first time you play the game and it made it more than just shooting everything and finding your way to the exit this is also a very hard game golden eye becomes really challenging from about 3 or four missions in and it doesn't ever really let up I never managed to beat this thing on Double O agent as a kid but if you managed to do so it would unlock a secret level in an Aztec Temple ending in a boss fight against none other than Jaws Richard Keel himself definitely shows its age in a lot of ways and if someone was to play this thing for the first time in 2021 well you'd probably not leave with the best impression but there's one thing this also has which is something we lack in a lot of modern games and that's a soul even from its opening credit sequence which introduces all of these characters every aspect of this game feels lovingly crafted and it's so rare no pun intended to see this kind of thing in games all that much anymore there's been attempts at remasters with one of being leaked online recently there's fan remakes and even a proper remake by big developers which we'll talk a bit about later on but trying to catch that lightning in a bottle twice well it ain't no mean feet I do also genuinely believe that if it got released on the PC back in the '90s it would have gone down as one of the best games for the platform as such we just have to make do with it being a 64 game the main detractor with this one I think is that it's a game made in 1997 that feels like a game made in 1997 but I also feel that complaining about this thing for being old in a product of its time is like complaining about chests only having black and white pieces overall I'll just say it's a highly influential title lovingly based off one of the best Bond films on one of the best consoles ever released and as a starting point for this video well it's raised that bar pretty high but there's no point in living if you can't feel alive right well the next game we got is the World is Not Enough in the year 200000 developed for the Nintendo 64 and the PlayStation and both of these games were actually pretty interesting because a lot like with what happened later on with NightFire you've got two completely different versions here and while both of these do follow the film somewhat Faithfully they're still completely different games from one another the Nintendo 64 version was developed by eurocom who we're going to be talking a lot about in this video and then meanwhile the PlayStation version was developed by Black Ops entertainment and if I had to pick a better one out of the two of these I think I'd say the Nintendo 64 one edges out as the better one but that's like really asking if you'd rather be kicked in the nuts with a desert boot or a wing tip it looks that way overall both of these games kind of remind me of golden eye just with the problem that neither of them were really able to capture the same magic and it follows along some pretty familiar mechanics and missions so you can expect the return of those various escort quests long try to make sure you don't harm innocent civilians in the crossfire there's no checkpoints no healing items maybe one or two pieces of armor per level if you're lucky and if you fail The crucial Mission objective you have to manually restart the mission yourself there's no game overc screen here just an obnoxious Mission failed message that lingers on the screen again like golden ey it's done its best in most cases to recreate the scenes from the movie can't you just say hello like any normal person can't you just say hello like a normal person head for the gy I'll lead them away go head for the gy I'll lead them into the trees go go I'm looking for a submarine it's big black and the driver is a very good friend all of these scenes recreated in Engine 2 is also pretty damn funny they've used the likeness of all of the actors but pasted it onto these blocky chunky looking character models Robbie Crain though still somehow looks exactly like he did in the film though which I don't know if that's an insult to Robbie colron or a compliment to the game's artist me too you've got that cool shootout inside the mines the ski Chase which is now a mostly onreal sequence and a shootout inside a subway station that reminds me a lot of the opening level from Soldier of Fortune you've even got a very similar looking shotgun and a silenced Mac 10 it's kind of dope being able to use all of Bon's gadgets is a lot of fun too and they can actually be equipped now you've got his multi-purpose watch which works as a laser a tranquilizer dart gun grappling HW and even a birth control device the shooting is semi smooth and responsive with a handy lock on system making it feel less clunky still though let's not forget that this is a fifth generation video game and that also comes with some fifth generation video game [ __ ] starters some of the missions in this game are just downright sadistic and I think to even beat some of these on the high difficulty modes you need to get through them without making a single mistake there's outright traps in some of the missions aimed at first time plays which you honestly can't see coming for the first time the boss fight against a chopper later in the game is honestly one of the worst things I've ever experienced and I say this after also experiencing explosive bowels brought on by eating bad Seafood putting the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 version next to each other it's pretty easy to see the differences visually but that's really only scratching the surface for starters the PlayStation version runs on an entirely different engine because of the increased storage space of a CD compared to the 64 cartridge this this version is also able to use actual clips from the film interspersed at the beginning and the end of each Mission compared to the 64 version which has 14 missions though this version only has 11 and they can also be finished in a fraction of the time again it mostly follows through the plot of the film skipping a few bits here and there but on the plus side it adds in some new missions of its own so there's now one inside zovsky Casino we can even play Blackjack which is actually pretty cool well played Mr B the stealth Mission sneaking around Electra's Mansion returns but this one I think is way worse because now for some reason regardless of what method you use to knock out these guards they literally wake up like 5 seconds later also suffering from Amnesia as well I think the major problem this version has though is the controls they are just [ __ ] awful this comes before that time where using both thumb sticks to move an aim was common place so instead what you do here is only use the left thumb stick to move forward backward along with using it to aim left or right with L2 and R2 used for strafing and overall that really ain't the best control scheme this version also loads in the rooms one by one instead of an entire level at once which is also kind of weird environments also seem to be a lot more flat than the Nintendo 64 version and by that I mean that the level design lacks any kind of verticality at the most you might have to aim slightly up or down to shoot at someone but most of the time the enemies are just going to be on the same height as you are making it seem even more basic still though this version does have some some clever levels and utilizing Bond's gadgets to get the job done still works pretty well ah good afternoon Dr arov you even get these briefing screens at the start of each mission where you can hear John C giving you these Awkward rundowns on your equipment the only drawback is that it can hold only a few rockets at a time but not to worry I put a case with more rockets in the trunk of your car along with money Penny giving you some absolutely useless information James maybe you can bring me back some cavar that is if you don't destroy the whole Factory first yeah that was really good money Penny short but pointless overall though I think both of these games for the time they came out aren't too bad and they can both be finished in about 4 or 5 hours that short campaign time is a bit of a running theme with a lot of these games starting with the next one we're going to be talking about which is Agent Under Fire agent Under Fire was the first Bond game to be developed for the sixth generation of consoles and it's the first in a bunch of games to also be developed by Electronic Arts nice form what's also kind of interesting about this one is that unlike the last couple of games which used P brossman's likeness agent Under Fire uses a bond that's kind of like a mix of all of them bunched up together it reminds me more of Sterling Archer though than James Bond which kind of makes sense on some level because honestly I think this might be Bond at his absolute horniest I mean the dude can't even contain his excitement when he meets a couple of twins during one of these early missions in the me time you can enjoy the view I already am I can still remember begging my dad to buy this one for me when it first came out I remember that he relented and I also remember then finishing it that same [Music] afternoon yeah this ain't exactly the longest campaign ever made even for a bond game and it can probably be finished in about 3 or 4 hours which is pretty damn sad this one isn't based off any of the films either the St is that bond is investigating Mal prave Industries headed up by the fem FAL Adrian Malave these are private quarters sorry M who's trying to create clones of nine world leaders to suit her own agenda apart from Mal prade the other villain is a dude who kind of looks like Steve Jobs named block who despite being able to almost succeed in his plans for world domination struggles to come up with so much as a basic comeback go to hell you first I mean dude it took you that long to think that one up the Bond girl this time around is Zoe Nightshade a CIA agent who's a mole working for Malave some of the Bond girls are named after body parts or euphemisms well Zoe's named after a vegetable maybe she should have been named after a breed of starfish go to hell now I might just have the power of nostalgia on my side here along with God and Anime but I still do think that agent Under Fire does have some pretty sweet levels the driving levels for instance in this one are just awesome bons Martin has been modeled really well and there's a great sense of speed with the vehicle combined with these arcade driving controls that are as smooth as a Shan scrotum not to mention just some really fun weapons to use it really captures the essence from the movies of how every time Bon seems to get into a vehicle he seems to be able to break the laws of physics and his Aston Martin may as well be a goddamn alien spaceship or something they've even worked in a level when you're in a tank which feels like a total homage to Golden eyon there's some really awesome on Rails levels too the first one reminds me a bit of virtu cop where you're in a high speeed Pursuit down a busy street weaving in between other cars as you fire back advance for the bad guys the second one is a high-speed chase through these underwater tunnels on a rail C that is actually kind of thrilling it's like some kind of amusement park Rod or something just with a lot more explosions and people dying one of the other things that I think agent Under Fire also did really well was how it made you really feel like a spy with all of the new gadgets that you got to play around with you've got a laser to cut through padlocks you've got a grappling hook among a bunch of others and the way you utilize these gadgets within the environment just kind of felt seamless and [Music] cohesive the problem with this game though I think is that the shooting is kind of inaccurate with a lot of these weapons it's like the end of the barrel is a garden hose or something and the bullets just seem to go out in these really odd cone-shaped trajectories I mean what is this stalker shadow of Chernobyl go to hell there is stealth to an extent but it's also so pretty basic and it just seems to work off whether or not you're in someone's line of sight on some missions you've got a dart gun which incapacitates enemies but ammo for this thing is tighter than a duck's [ __ ] I don't even know what that means ow in a lot of the missions you've always got your silenc pistol to rely on but you never punished for being detected anyway unless you count the sound of a NeverEnding alarm and constantly spawning in guards to be a punishment still though during those moments when the theme tune kicks in it's hard to not enjoy yourself throughout H Mission you've got these Bond moments where if you pull off some kind of stylish kill or use the environment to your advantage you get some bonus points and often a witty one lineup Safety First Lads it just has all of the hallm marks you'd expect from a bond game you've got the evil villain trying to take over the world there's two Bond girls one that always turns out to be bad along with a bunch of chasings it really makes you feel like you're playing as a guy who's mastered the art of saving the world along with mastering the art of somehow dodging every sexually transmitted disease known to I already am overall though it's not an amazing game but not a bad one either and like a lot of my sexual escapades it's short but sweet you're a dead man Mr bot what comes next is really I think one of the most interesting games in this entire list and that's James Bond NightFire now the reason I say that is because like the World is Not Enough there were different versions of the game depending on which platform you're playing on this time between the consoles and the PC the cons version was again developed by eurom with the PC version being developed by none other than Gearbox software and it is important to Define which platform you're playing on because the quality between both versions is very polarizing or just to put it a bit more bluntly the PC version here [ __ ] sucks oh you're a talkative one aren't you the story in both of these games is that Bon's working with a French intelligence operative named Dominique to investigate an industrialist named Drake who's building a space station he plans to use to destroy the world or something it's all a bit moon rakish with a Eugenics angle to Drake's plan with him sparing the lives of the people that he deems worthy if you really break the whole thing down it's really just a more refined version of agent Under Fire And as a console game I got to say that it definitely looks a whole lot better the texture work is really good and you've got some nice eye candy in the opening Mission evening so we Nightshade makes a return and near the end of the game you even work alongside an agent named Aira Mcall who works for something something called Australian intelligence yeah Australian intelligence need a LIF Mr Bond Aur Mall Australian intelligence two words that don't usually go together in the same sentence sorry anyway for the console version the level design is also pretty damn good the car chases are back and better than ever and there's some cool on raal sections too one on the back of a snowmobile and then another one on a jet with a rocket launcher for one Mission you're even driving bons ason Martin underwater avoiding mines and taking out other vehicles As you move through these narrow tunnels it's really again captured that feeling of playing as the iconic agent gun plays also a lot more improved weapons are actually going to hit what you're aiming at this time and using all of Bon's gadgets are just found to feel a whole lot more cohesive there's a Glock an sg5 assault rifle MP5K and a shotgun which literally takes up half the goddamn screen as well as the return of a desert eagle which tears ass there's more stealth sequences but this time around it feels a lot more forgiving and if your D gun doesn't do the trick you can just easily beat someone until they pass out about the only thing that I don't like about this game though is the last boss fight which is just kind of AIDS and I think I actually contracted AIDS from playing it you have to take on Drake in orbit around his space station and it's just a classic example of why low gravity levels are about as fun as putting Denko rub on your ball sack but that's really the only thing that I've out hated about this game I'd even go so far as to say that out of everything I played in this video with this game I had the most fun yeah I know shocking hello it looks great for the time with really impressive and Polished visuals the plot is hand fisted and the twists are expected but that's kind of what makes the writing so enjoyable too and there's a nice variety from mission to Mission so it never feels boring or repetitive about the only thing that's lacking is Pierce brosen voicing Bond or Judy Dench voicing M but this was the same that Die Another Day came out so I assume that they were busy filming that disaster instead sadly though I can't speak highly for the PC version and the list of differences between both of these is long and troubling I actually did a video on both of these games a few years back and honestly I reckon I went way too easy on the PC version because this version really isn't a good game at all and it kind of Pals in comparison to what they managed to pull off on the consoles this thing was developed by gearbox software and it actually runs on half-life's gold Source engine which makes it look like a completely different game but it also makes it play like one I didn't even know where to start here like how about how a lot of the cinematics are now pre-rendered instead of using the in-game engine how about how there's no blood decals when shooting enemies so you often don't even know if you're even hitting someone and on top of that when taking hits enemies often don't get staggered either just reducing that feedback even more now look I have a bit of an unconfirmed Theory here and that's that gearbox have just copied over the ballistics right across from Counterstrike condition zero which they also worked on because that's exactly what the combat feels like there's even a similar looking P90 weapon model which I'm sure has just been reskinned to pass itself off as a different weapon the assault rifle the shotgun and the Desert Eagle also just feel much more weaker than their console counterparts and for some reason there's also now a weapon limit but apart from that every single vehicle Mission from the console version has just been removed entirely I mean I guess they just just couldn't be bothered recreating these and to make it worse the missions they've added in to replace a lot of these are just terrible so for that opening mission on the console version after you escape this chatau with Zoe you then get chased by bad guys on snowmobiles which was a really cool way to finish that introductory sequence now instead on the PC it's a slow boring stealth mission where you got to sneak onto an Airfield Bon's gadgets also seem to differ from the console version 2 instead of a dart gun he's got a dart pen and now he can use a phone as a Gra hook you've also got new sunglasses which I will admit is actually more handy for the stealth sections you can use one of the modes to see through walls which really kind of helps when you're trying to hide from patrolling enemies and in the first level you can also use it to see through women's clothes and see what kind of lerie they've got on hello top it all off with your Zippo lighter which also doubles as a spy camera because yeah that's totally inconspicuous the levels set in Drake's corporate building though are some of the worst parts of this version though and it goes on and on and I think this is probably the biggest issue I have with this version at least with the other Bond games they have the decency to not linger on certain missions for too long so even if one of them sucks it's off and over pretty quickly this one however lingers forever it's like a turd that just won't flush so on the PC there's nine missions in total right broken up between 41 separate Maps but 18 of these maps are spent in this one area now that's almost half the game in a single location and not only that but for one big part of it you're just escaping the building going back again through the same areas you've already explored I mean at this point they're just outright recycling environments speaking of recycling they also reuse the same boss fight twice once early in the game you fight a ninja then later on you fight two of the same ninjas at once same thing to for a fight in Low Gravity early on it's against Drake's body guard named aook and then it's the exact same thing again for the final fight against Drake himself yeah imagine that that Gearbox software being lazy and cutting Corners sounds familiar overall it's just a far worse off version than the console game and about the only thing this campaign does better is that at one point you get this really great shot of aura's ass and I mean look if grown men can't all get together and appreciate some hot pants and a nice ass on a low polygonal character model well is life even worth living yes indeed there is one other benefit to this version though in that it's still being supported by its community so getting it up and running and playing it really isn't all that hard the PC version also allows you to play through the multiplayer maps with bot support which I have to admit is kind of impressive but this is one of those rare examples when a PC Port gets beaten out by its inferior console counterpart which honestly it really shouldn't [Music] happen at this point we're really starting to get to the tail end of the sixth generation with golden ey rogue agent released in 2004 four and never has there been a more blatant example of a game trying to cash in on the popularity of something else not since Christmas Vacation 2 what they pretty obviously tried to do here is tap into the vast Legacy that golden I64 left on the gaming industry but the only problem is that this thing has nothing to do with golden eye at all you're not even playing as James Bond I mean he shows up for all of 30 seconds in the first mission where then gets crushed to death by helicopter the story itself is like something out of fanfiction so in this one after somehow being blamed for the death of bond your character is kicked out of MI6 bym and then given a job offer from Goldfinger to work for Spectre you're then tasked with hunting down Dr no who's turned against the organization given assistance from odd job and [ __ ] colore my name is [ __ ] Galore that must be dreaming the Gold N in the title comes from your character's code name and also the fact that he literally has a golden eye which gives him four different abilities you've got x-ray vision hacking enemy weapons and energy shield and and a magnetic field and these upgrades are also given to the player by Scara Monga The Man with the Golden Gun no seriously the magnetic hack feature will allow you to tamper with machines and electronics from a distance if that's not enough one of the main boss fights is against Zena onop though I do have to admit that is kind of cool and about the only thing the game does wrong there is that she doesn't ever get to kill me by crushing me to death with those leather bound thighs overall the whole thing just has a very weird vibe though I mean it's got these characters who were all mostly from the connory and the mo films back in the' 60s and '70s but then it's also got someone like zenya from Golden ey which came out in the '90s then the weapons and the setting comes across as quasi futuristic you've got these laser guns and take on drones that look like the hunter killers from the Terminator films like I said it plays out like fanfiction I do think the golden eye mechanic is kind of neat though even if the shield is really the only consistently useful ability but utilizing things like the x-ray mode and that weapon jamming ability does at least give the shooting some depth for shooting things you've got Golden ice pistol which despite having unlimited ammo is about as useful as piss flavored mouthwash the P90 assault rifle and the Desert Eagle are the guns you're going to be using the vast majority of the time but you'll find all of these within the first level of the game and you'll still be using them right up until the end there's other weapons like a rocket launcher which you only really need use against tanks and drones not to mention one of the most useless shotguns in any single game I think I've ever played I mean it's actually astounding just how bad this thing is it's a double BR monstrosity called the mumber and even when it's dual welded it is so unfun to use I never thought I'd use a shotgun which takes away all the fun of using a shotgun and yet here we [Music] are now the way that I see it there's three major problems that the shooting has in this game for starters the weapon spread is just ridiculous the spread for the P90 for instance has to win some kind of award for being so inaccurate what did I say earlier about how agent undef guns were like trying to shoot someone with a garden hose well this is 10 times worse the other issue is the reload times and in my opinion it takes far too long to reload the guns in this thing which is an issue considering how high the enemy count is and how quickly you burn through magazines when killing people and off the back of that the ammo capacity isn't very high for a lot of these weapons either meaning you'll have to be constantly swapping back and forth between different guns just so you've got enough to get by there's a mechanic where you can dual World weapons and this honestly only seems to exacerbate the problem not to mention when you're dual wielding you can't throw grenades grenades which are surprisingly effective but by far the worst part of the shooting if you haven't noticed it by now is the placement of the Crosshair you know how in most games made by sensible people they put the Crosshair in the middle of the godamn screen well in Rogue AG agent the Crosshair is in the upper third it's like they saw how Halo put the Crosshair slightly lower than Center and so they decided to try a wor soft version of that now look I can't and I probably never will understand why someone thought this was a good design choice so if you are going to play this which I don't recommend do what I do right turn on auto aim try to ignore that Crosshair and just never look back I think part of what sucks the most here is that you can see during some brief moments how this game could have been so much more because despite everything said the gun play isn't terrible once again the Desert Eagle absolutely tears ass the same can also be said for this minigun that you get to play with a few times as well almost everything that you shoot at often blows up and explodes and death animations for enemies looks really good too you can often use traps in the levels to kill a bunch of enemies at once and this does make you feel like a bit of a badass but overall this isn't a very good game and it makes a disappointing swan song for James Bond themed firstperson Shooters on the the sixth generation consoles next up is7 Quantum of solar developed by none other than Treyarch who of course developed some of the best games in the Call of Duty series with World at War and Black Ops however they didn't seem to bring no skills across into this game because this feels like a rushed sloppy cash grab and has all the Hallmarks of a half finished and lazy movie time the proof in the pudding of how Rush this thing was is that it came out the same week of the film and you're quickly going to see that this pudding needed a lot more time in the oven now this one's actually a combination of a third person and a first person shooter and if you've ever played Rainbow Six Vegas it's going to feel pretty familiar so when you're moving around freely the game set in a firsters perspective you can aim down sights Crouch jump and all that [ __ ] but then when you pop into cover the game zooms out to a third person perspective giving you a better view of your surroundings and also improving the accuracy of of all of your weapons somehow magically removing 99% of the recoil now you can get through this thing playing it like a generic firstperson shooter if you really want to but a lot of the combat areas are outright designed for cover-based shooting which you'll notice by the conveniently placed blocks of cover strewn throughout the environment there's some basic stealth mechanics too you've got your silenced Walter PPK there's cameras to avoid and deactivate and if you can get up close behind someone there's a bunch of different takedowns you're not outright punished for being detected and I don't even think there's a failable state for it I wouldn't be very good at my job if it did it just has the downside of spawning in these elite soldiers almost instantly but these guys are about as dangerous as a house fly being developed by Treyarch and even running on the Infinity Ward engine this thing also has all of the Hallmarks of a Call of Duty shooter that being hit markers regenerating health and an abundance of hit scanning enemies peppering you with bullets constantly and I couldn't help but notice how it's very clearly just a lazy asset flip from some of the Cod games you'll notice some very similar looking animations for the enemies during combat the vaulting over cover and aiming down sights also feels very familiar but it also seems like they flat out reuse some of the weapon models slightly reskinning them but mechanically they feel about the same I mean one of the guns in this game is an M14 rifle which is a gun that was never seen once in the movie but here it features heavily because I don't know I guess reusing it from world of war or Black Ops was easier than making a weapon from scratch this is also a pretty crappy PC port for starters it's locked at 30 frames per second so you'll need to use a trainer to fix that but even then it seems some of the animations are still capped at 30 frames per second which means everything's still going to look choppy during gaml there's a lot of minor control issues that also kind of pissed me off as well like how you can't Vault over cover whilst in cover you have to first pull back off the wall for a second then wait for that on screen prompt to let you know you can jump over it weapon damage scaling is also horrible and it seems like very little effort has been put into balancing this out what I mean by that is that you take damage so quickly at times from some weapons that you can be killed literally in less than a second and there was just so many times where I died from something I couldn't even see coming behind calling it Quantum of Solace is also a bit of a misnomer it's got 15 missions in total but 10 of these are scenes from Casino Royale with only being the scenes from Quantum of Solace and these ones I think are easily the shortest missions too I guess Quantum was out at the time and it just made more sense to call it that and cash in on the popularity on top of all of that it's just a bad looking game there's a level on a train which is trying to simulate both wind and rain but it instead just looks really blurry and it's downright fuzzy at times most of the cinematics are these really boring briefing screens where all of your information is given through audio recordings and minimal imagery I mean it's just lazy very much sir what is recreated from the scenes looks sloppy and unfinished the character models can often barely be recognized as the characters they're supposed to be portraying and honestly you'd hardly even know it was the real actors doing the voices at times every single boss fight is a QuickTime event where you've got to drag your Crosshair to a preset spot and click it within a very short time limit but they're just so easy and they lack any excitement the level where they recreate that scene from Casino Royale where Bon gets poisoned at the poker table is one of the worst things I've ever experienced in a video game if you ever want to play something to induce vomiting well just play through this Mission I hope our little game isn't cing you sp and then later in the Venice level it does that [ __ ] that I absolutely despise in video games where it shakes the whole goddamn screen to simulate explosions which also just makes me want to Bath I don't want to sound like a negative Nelly and I guess one constellation is that it's a short game most levels can be finished in 10 or 15 minutes and the whole thing probably lasts only 3 or 4 hours there are some neat sections I guess I think the shootout in the chase in Italy was kind of fun I think the split screen moments as few as they are are kind of neat too because it shows that someone would have had to actually put some effort into making these and optimizing them like NightFire there's also two different versions of this game with the major difference this time being between the PlayStation 3 the Xbox and the PC version and then the PlayStation 2 version now I know that I said I wasn't going to review the non FPS game but look I made an exception for this one just on account of how godamn awful it is I hope you gave your parents heal for that and if I achieve absolutely nothing else from this video I hope it's that I prevent someone from ever having to play this absolutely woeful piece of [ __ ] it is worth mentioning how this PlayStation 2 version is an entirely different game for starters it's a third person shooter only and it also has its own unique levels with only 11 missions all up this time seven of these are quantum of solar scenes with the other four being from Casina Royale you know don't think this is a very good plan do you and the Casino Royale scenes are also much more accurate to the film even down to the fist fight with the bomb maker on top of the crane which is almost shot for [Music] shot that doesn't mean it's any good though and I can't decide which one of these versions I dislike more think I hate this one more though simply for it having some downright broken quick time events my main issue with this one though is just the controls which are absolutely horrendous this is a third person cover based shooter but it is just so unsatisfying to play because for some reason they've given it this almost tactical semi-realistic recoil and weapon spread which means you have to be standing still and aiming down sides to actually hit anything which is fine in any other game but it kind of goes against the grain when you're playing as James Bond I mean this dude is supposed to be a highly trained operator who could could probably perform a vasectomy on a house flow with his W to PPK so that erratic widespread to firing weapons just doesn't work with this kind of game combined with a Crosshair the size of a dinner plate and enemies that spend 99% of the time hiding in cover the default control scheme is also one that feels like it's been designed by lunatic I mean look we' had third person shooters by the Dozen at this point and still someone thought that mapping precise aiming to R3 of all things was a good idea it's like the whole thing was programmed by alien all combined with these trial and error stealth sections where you have to complete a series of tasks in a very specific way or else you're detected just makes the whole thing a bad game and honestly my day was ruined after playing this ruined next up we've got another attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the golden eye name with golden ey reloaded developed yet again by eurom and originally released for the Nintendo Wii in 2010 but then later released on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 with this reloaded Edition however this thing actually has a proper claim using that gold ey title because unlike rogue agent this thing follows the plot of the original film not to mention I guess also kind of being a remake of the 64 game it's also just a more modern interpretation of the story and replaces pce fren's version of Bon with Daniel Craigs who again even does the voice acting for the character now this one gets a lot of hate which is understandable but honestly it's really not that bad especially after coming in hot after Quantas Solus the opening level in the dam is actually kind of badass you see some very familiar looking environments and these new rain effects also looks gorgeous giving the level a much more atmospheric feeling throughout there's even a really cool version of the gold eye theme sung by one of the Pussycat Dolls which isn't terrible I know I'm as shocked as you are now i' got you [Music] with a golden it's just that it's kind of like what would have happened if golden ey was directed by Michael Bay and 5 minutes into this first level James and Alec the so-called secret agents are suddenly driving a truck across the dam during this so-called stealth Mission firing off machine guns and murdering everyone they see so again like quantum soless this thing is basically call a bond even down to it again running on what's very clearly a modified version of the Infinity Ward engine which they call engine X but look that name ain't foolen anyone I mean you've got things like breaching into rooms in slow motion even down to the weapons you can pick up showing what kind of attachments they've got stealth again does kind of suck you're using silenced weapons that aren't even silent at all but like before you're never really punished for being detected you just get that spawning of extra guards now I don't have too many problems with the gameplay here outside of just P kind of derivative it is but I do have an issue with how some of these characters have been portrayed though mostly zenya who really was one of the most memorable female villains I'd argue in the entire series if not just movies in general not bad for a counterfeit fam Jansen just made that character so memorable even for Bond villains which is really saying a lot now in this version she has none of those traits she's just this generic looking Russian chick and about the only memorable thing she ever does is we this horrible looking outfit that kind of looks like a fur coat got into a fight with some food dye the boss fight against her like all of the boss fights in this thing is just a lame QuickTime event where there's not even any sense of weight or impact to your hits or hers same thing with changing up zukovsky from Robbie c train to whoever this [ __ ] is now he's just this edgy looking dude with tattoos all up his arm and instead of Bon having wounded him in the past by shooting him in the leg now he's left a giant scar across his face it seems like less of a professional courtesy this time call it professional courtesy compared to just having maimed him now was outright scarred the guy and deformed him for life at least Natalia looks better I guess she spends half the game walking around in a denim minis skirt coming across looking like a high priced escort burnt out on cocaine gameplay-wise despite being kind of mundane and repetitive with just shooting things over and over there is some variety to the level design and you do get the choice between sneaking around or going in blazing I think the nightclub level is outright impressive even just from a technical standpoint you're moving through this huge open area with dozens of NPCs trying to find your contact and it actually feels like a real place then afterwards you've got to escape getting into all these gunfights with henchmen along the way and it makes for some pretty fun combat the tank level is also kind of awesome taking the tank sequence from the original film and that old game and dialing the whole thing up to 11 during the remake of the Memorial Park level you move through these underground tunnels with an AA 12 and night vision goggles on and this whole thing just made me feel like John Wick just mowing these dudes down as they popped around corners even the jungle level's kind of cool sneaking through the bushes like you're playing Far Cry and reprogramming gun turrets to fire back on the bad guys but it really just is the most dumb down basic kind of shooting you'd expect and it lacks all the creativity and challenge of the original game's level design I mean about the most tricky thing you'll have to do is use your smartphone to take photos or something but you often can't miss these prompts anyway it does also again feature one of the worst tropes in video games where it has those sequences where you're trying to escape from somewhere as everything is blowing up around you and the screen is shaking like it's having a goddamn seizure the one in gold and I reloaded last for about 15 minutes during the mission set inside the Soviet bunker and I'm not kidding when I say that it gave me a goddamn headache like my head was aching El they also brought brought back a sequence where you've got to defend Natalia as she hacks into a bunch of terminals which I can only assume is supposed to be a throwback to those horrific missions in golden eye on the 64 this whole last level is downright sadistic as well it's a huge difficulty spike in an otherwise kind of cruisy game well you've got to get across the Cradle to catch up to Alec through this opened up area with all these walkways most of which collapse when you try to walk across them this is all whilst literally dozens of enemy soldiers are shooting at you from off in the distance then it's topped off with a QuickTime event against Alec followed by the final fight where he literally survives dozens of bullets but I guess it's okay because he's wearing a bulletproof vest so yeah of course he doesn't get killed from being shot in the head 150 times that was sarcasm by the way still though I think this is hands down better than Quantum of Solace and I also have fun memories of watching El pridor raging over the multiplayer mode as well you [ __ ] pieces I almost sto my [ __ ] control sadly though I really do think the worst has been safe for last and let's just get it over [Music] with yep that brings us to the end of our list with7 Legends released in 2012 and yes yet again developed by eurom and this game right here is the reason why no other developers touched the franchise in 9 years the first indication I had that this was going to be pretty bad was during that opening Gun Barrel sequence where it didn't even use the main movie theme which alone should have been half of a warning but it won't take long playing it to see just how half fast the whole thing is despite coming out after both Quantum of Solace and Gold N rate loaded it somehow manages to look worse than both games again it's supposed to be running on this engine X which this time is even more obviously just the Infinity Ward engine even the pause menu has the exact same layout as the Call of Duty games the engine also looks super blurry despite what setting you've got it on and and that's because even if you're running it at 1920x 1080 it's still just rendered as 720p upscale to 1080 it's lazy resolution aside it doesn't look all that bad though like there is some nice eras here and there I think the Ice Hotel from D other day does look pretty good it kind of reminded me of Fort Frolic from bshock arguably the most attention to detail though is in the Bond girls the likeness for Honor Blackman and Diana rigs is pretty impressive just reminds you how good looking both those women were even some of the Lesser Bond girls like Pam from license to Kill like I needed another reason to be attracted to girls with short hair I don't know if I can do this sadly though there's no h Berry in the dying other day levels though I don't know maybe she had the good sense to just keep her nose out of this thing it would have at least been the second most embarrassing thing that she's ever done in her career same thing again with Dr goodhead in Moonraker now again it's just some basic [ __ ] that kind of looks like a background extra that you'd see in Too Fast Too Furious how do I know this isn't a trick but what is7 Legends All About well I'm so glad you asked well like Quantum of Solace this thing was released around the same time as one of the movies this time Skyfall and basically just tries to cash in on its popularity the game Begins by recreating that opening scene from skyall where bond is shot accidentally by money Penny and seemingly falls to his death it then flashes back through the past films where you get to relive them through Daniel Craig's Persona reimagined again to fit a more modern aesthetic you've got Goldfinger On Her Majesty's Secret Service Licensed to Kill din the day and moon rer with skyall being released as DLC around the time of the game's launch not bad for a start got to say it's kind of weird too some of the choices it made for scenes to recreate I mean look don't get me wrong Goldfinger is a classic that side of Jill's golden corpse on the bed is one of the Siri's most iconic images same thing with Bon being tied down to that laser table about to have his nuts cut in half no Mr Bond I expect you to die I also think that on Her Majesty's Secret Service is a criminally underrated Bond film and I love that it's getting some more attention here but then you've got Licensed to Kill Die Another Day moon rer was a decent film too but it's hardly one of Roger Moore's best ones either I think that only it goes to foror Eyes Only what was it that I said about the last game how it was basically Bond of Duty or call of bond well yeah this one they take it even further by just outright copying mechanics over for btim for starters like I said before the pause menu again has the exact same layout as the Call of Duty ones but more than that7 Legends has an XP and an upgrade system that just outright uses mechanics and perks from Call of Duty's multiplayer modes for instance you can upgrade all of your weapons to give them the same looking Red Dot and ACOG sites along with upgrades like rapid fire and silencers that ain't enough there's also the same player upgrades too like a faster reload time which is literally slight of hand from Call of Duty along with taking less damage from explosions again which is basically just the flat jacket perk it's also got very similar Call of Duty style Gunplay down to the same hit markers I mean it's like they didn't even bother trying to pass this off as anything new the first mission is also kind of misleading it introduces you to all of these functions your gadgets have like how you can scan the area for toxins or fingerprints you can use your watch to crack into safes or cause electrical equipment to malfunction but then right after that you've got like four or five levels of just pointless mindless shooting where you'll probably forget everything it taught you I mean the level right after all of this sneaking around has you in that huge shootout against Goldfinger soldiers at Fort Knox where you will kill literally hundreds of them James hurry followed by a skiing sequence based on the chase scene from On Her Majesty's Secret Service with controls that make me think that whoever designed this level has never skied in their life then after that another level where you're storming blow felds Mountain Base where again you're going to be responsible for the genocide of countless henchmen there's a melee combat system where you engage a single opponent at a time which is like a seriously dumb down version of Super Punch Out and you've got to hit their weak spot to a button prompt which has very clearly been designed with a controller in mind and again just like in Quantum of Solace every single boss fight uses this mechanic every single one of them like a few of the other games you can also play through this in what's called 007 classic Mode which removes regenerating health and brings back health and armor placements though this kind of feels like an afterthought because there's so few of these pickups in each level there's a couple vehicle sections too with insultingly bad controls and some of the most hilarious vehicle physics I've seen since big rigs over the road [Music] racing somehow those old driving levels on the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube are more fun than this overall it's really just nothing but a constant swing in a Miss what did I like about this thing um um I don't know I guess I like seeing Richard Keel coming back as Jaws again I know he's supposed to be a bad guy but there's just something so lovable and memorable about the character that I couldn't possibly hate on him and I guess I like seeing Pam one of the most underrated Bond girls being given some more love here on a positive note I guess it does have a more developed stealth system so this time enem is going to spot you gradually if you're in their line of sight compared to instantly like it was in Golden I reloaded in the later levels you get a pen which can fire off tranquilizer darts distraction darts you've got your watch which can fire out a laser which is Handy for taking out cameras and it is actually possible to sneak through some of these areas undetected which is a positive change the inclusion of all of these Main and side objectives to complete combined with the XP system adds some depth to the missions making it more than just Mindless shooting sometimes but it really just is a terrible game and there's probably a reason why this was the last Bond game we've ever gotten it's kind of sad I mean the series deserved a better send off I'm not sure if there's any point talking about the new Bond game in the works by IO interactive considering there's not that much information given about it at this point but if nothing else it sure is in the hands of the right people I don't think we'll see the release of it in 2021 but honestly I don't mind waiting a little bit longer and I do think it's been long enough now that the stigma associated with those later games has washed away and we can all go back into this series with a Fresh Approach either way though this brings me to the end of my video it's been long and lengthy like the list of women that bonds bed over the years if you'd like to see me cover any of the other Bond games that I miss specifically well be sure to let me know in the comments section and if you'd like to see me do more videos like this well I'm always open to ideas thanks for watching

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 1,894,956

Keywords: james bond, goldeneye 007, video games, james bond video games, project 007, daniel craig, video game, everything or nothing, james bond games, james bond games evolution, game evolution, playstation 2, first person shooter, james bond theme song, first-person shooter, history of james bond, 007 games, agent under fire, history of bond games, goldeneye 007 remastered, goldeneye 007 n64, goldeneye 007 wii, gmanlives, gggmanlives, nightfire

Id: fsBsxHSVtZA

Length: 51min 46sec (3106 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021