The world of cinema marked the 50th anniversary
of 007 in spectacular fashion, by delivering what is widely considered the best
Bond film yet. But what’s happening in the wonderful world of gaming? A movie
tie-in videogame perhaps? No. Instead we have a celebration of Britain’s
favourite superspy’s greatest adventures, in 007 Legends.
What we have here is a look back over the last 50 years,
picking some of Bond’s greatest moments and updating them with modern weapons,
settings, and Daniel Craig. It’s basically an expansion of Goldeneye Reloaded,
but doesn’t even come close to reaching the high quality of entertainment that
its predecessor provided.
What we have instead is a mediocre first-person shooter
experience that takes some great source material, and kills it with generic
gameplay, lousy visuals, and some dodgy voice acting – which is particularly
strange considering how most of the original cast of the movies – Daniel Craig
as Bond, Judi Dench as M, and some of the villains – return to reprise their roles.
Whenever Bond began speaking, it was the most bizarre experience. It sounded
like Daniel Craig, doing an impression of himself, playing Bond.
Also, the different weapons all sound (and play) very
similar, so there is nothing groundbreaking in the audio department. The
soundtrack is decent, offering a modernization on each film’s respective songs,
and putting it into the action sequences, but after the slight grin that comes
from realising the song that’s playing, it just fades into the background and
is barely even noticed.
As well as this, the game’s visuals are just plain bad. The
facial animation is dreadful, the character movements are stiff and unnatural,
and at one point I had to pause the game in order to contain my laughing fits
at how one of the characters was running.
The environments are okay, and give a slight feel of where
you’re supposed to be, offering minor glimpses at aspects from the originals,
but everything has been updated to the 21st century, so a lot of it
is new. This wouldn’t be so bad if any of them were particularly interesting to
look at, but as with most other things in this game, the word to describe them
is “generic”. The environments peak at the end of the game, where you can glide
around the space station from Moonraker.
It’s quite surprising how much the game deviates from the
originals, especially considering that this is supposed to be a tribute to
Bond’s history. A laser-tank outside Fort Knox? A Rambo-styled assault on
Blofeld’s headquarters featuring a chain-gun mounted on a helicopter? Add this
to how all the Bonds have been changed to Daniel Craig’s incarnation, and the complete
lack of Bond’s trademarks, and some of the sequences aren’t even recognisable
as being from the films that inspired them.
It’s not just the deviation from the source material that
disappoints here though. With Bond girls playing an extremely minor role, only
one car chase and the only gadgets being his watch and a smartphone (the former
of which was used twice in the whole game), the overall experience didn’t feel
like Bond at all. It just falls into the category of “generic shooter”.
Fortunately the shooting is done quite well. The intense firefights
are where the game shines. It also offers stealth mechanics for those who
prefer to do things quietly, but this is tiresome, and aside from a few
occasions where stealth is mandatory, I much preferred to just blast my way
through.
Not that stealth is difficult, it’s just boring. Any tension
or risk of being caught is nullified by the brain-dead AI. I could stealth kill
an enemy right in front of another and he wouldn’t react. I could run out in
front of one and it would still take him a few seconds to notice me. They don’t
fight much better either. They stand in open areas waiting to be picked off,
and the few that actually do take cover hide beside the object, rather than
behind it.
The dumb enemies make the game incredibly easy. A basic XP
system attempts to mix things up and help you out by supplying upgrades to
purchase, but I actually managed to play through the whole campaign without buying
any of them.
The multiplayer is where things look up a little, offering
splitscreen modes for the sentimental types who want to relive the glory days
of Goldeneye on the N64, and a nice variety of online modes. Some of these are
faithful to the Bond universe, featuring Golden Gun modes, as well as standard
Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the flag. However even this is sullied
by the complete lack of people playing.
007 Legends is not only an unsatisfactory celebration of 50
years of Bond, it’s almost an insult to it, sticking up a huge middle finger to
Fleming, the fans, and all of the directors of Bond’s best moments. If you’re a
shooter fan, this will be disappointing, if you’re a Bond fan…well let’s just
say there might be a few more rage gifs out there after this.
No comments:
Post a Comment