Genre: First Person Shooter
Developer: Eurocom
Publisher: Electronic Arts
# of Players: 1-4
Memory: 2 blocks
ERSB: Teen
Released On: November 19th 2002
Also On: Playstation 2, Xbox
Features: Dolby Pro Logic II, Progressive Scan
Introduction:
How long has it been since the Nintendo 64’s Goldeneye?
Since the release of the of Rare’s Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, in 1997, there has not been a single Bond that matches up to the greatness of Rare’s masterpiece. Even after countless attempts, since acquiring the James Bond license, Electronic Arts has not been able dish out a game that anyone could truly accept as being Goldeneye’s OO7 successor. Eurocom’s previous OO7 game was a step in the right direction, but many felt that instead of trying to recreate the experience found in Goldeneye, it was trying to be more faithful to the James Bond franchise and in my opinion that isn’t exactly the best way to go… Can Nightfire do what the others couldn’t?
Presentation:
The thing which Nightfire does best is recreating the feel of a Bond flick like no other game before it. The moment you turn on the game you are treated with a cool little FMV intro, an intro just like a Bond flick, hot chicks dancing and a song about the name of the game. Unlike most GCN games, Nightfire’s FMV does not suffer from compression problems, how this was solved boggles my mind since DivX was not implemented during the development of Nightfire. The menus, unfortunately, seem a bit uninspired and after playing games for many years I’m actually beginning to get annoyed by trivial things, such as menus.
Gameplay:
Nightfire is the second OO7 game to feature a completely original storyline. Of course, it’s just as good as any of the movies. It manages to take some of the best parts of the past films and mold them, intricately, into one excellent adventure for your Nintendo GameCube. It always keeps you on your feet, with the plot twists that we’ve always known to expect in a Bond flick.
As for the gameplay side of things, Nightfire is a mixture of FPS, racer, and “on rails” shooter. The shooter levels in Nightfire are the part of the game that truly shines; it’s exactly what we should expect from a successor to Goldeneye. From the start you get your mission objectives, at first they are not all present, but as you get further along in a mission they reveal themselves to you. Nightfire also has some elements of stealth, not as many as I would like though. During one mission you will have to break into an office and infect a PC with the Q Virus, in order to do this you must avoid guards, cameras, and at one point, sentry guns as well. Unfortunately, you are given the choice of approaching things in a stealthy manner. You could climb through a vent, but why not just go through the front door? After playing a title like, for example, Splinter Cell I can’t help but thirst for much more emphasis on stealth, I mean c’mon OO7 is a secret agent after all. Bond’s arsenal is as cool as ever, with stuff like watch lasers, door decoders, the ultra cool sentry gun briefcase (obviously an inspiration of the Laptop gun featured in Perfect Dark), and the awesome seeker rockets, makes James the most bad ass European secret agent you’ll ever come across.
Now what’s a Bond game (or movie) without the exotic cars? In Nightfire, James gets to ride in the beautiful V12 Vanquish, a car that only a playboy like Bond could afford. Of course, his ride is equipped with its own arsenal of machine guns and seeker rockets. The levels at which you drive your Vanquish is an engine based off Electronic Arts Need For Speed franchise, so if that doesn’t already tell you it plays well then I don’t know what does. The action is fast, furious, and just fun. You’ll blaze through cities while taking out tons of enemy vehicles, such as helicopters, and flying high in the sky when going through secret passages. It’s a really cool addition to the game, but because of the game’s short length it feels as if putting these car levels meant sacrificing some of the FPS missions, something that would really suck. At one point Bond’s V12 Vanquish transforms into a submarine type vessel, on this mission you secretly infiltrate an enemy bunker in attempt to stop their terrorist ways. Even though, this level plays smoothly and extremely well, nothing stops it from it being the most frustrating mission in the entire game. I died too many times, and the fact that you have to start from the beginning of the level every time you die made me walk away from my GameCube, and not touch it for a few days. Aside from the car levels, there are some “on rails” missions, they end up being somewhat fun but they go on for too long, and after that they seem to feel tedious. I hate it when I’m sitting there waiting for a damn mission to end, sorry, there’s just oh so little that you can do with the “on rails” missions in Nightfire.
Ah! Multiplayer, oh how I missed thee… If you’re like me then you’ve experienced the multiplayer madness that is Goldeneye. Even to this very day, its multiplayer is practically unrivaled, so you think that I would expect an excellent multiplayer from any game bearing the Bond franchise. Sadly, Nightfire fails to deliver. It’s not as if the game has a bad multiplayer, because that surely is not the case, it kicks some serious ass, but it is just that it doesn’t reach my expectations for Goldeneye like, for instance, TimeSplitters 2 has. On another negative note, it feels as if your character moves a bit slower than he does in single player mode when playing 4 player Death Match. It does feature a nice amount of gameplay modes though, like Capture the Flag, Top Agent, and the appropriately named Goldeneye Strike.
As for Nightfire’s controls…You’ll have to toy around with the controller configuration at first. My suggestion is the configuration named Goldeneye, and just like its namesake it’s the best out of them all. Otherwise, the game handles, quickly and smoothly.
Visuals:
I was a bit stunned when I first popped Nightfire into my GameCube; I didn’t really expect an impressive looking game since Agent under Fire wasn’t much of a looker. Nightfire on the other hand is a beautiful and clean looking First Person Shooter. A big issue among Shooters is framerate and thanks to talented guys at Eurocom we get a great Shooter experience that almost always holds a solid framerate of 60 frames per second. I said “almost” didn’t I? Well, unfortunately during some of the 4-player multiplayer games you will see a slight drop occur here and there, and in one of the later driving levels in the game, where you find yourself undersea, there’s an unfavorable occurrence of framerate instability when navigating through a minefield, but it’s nothing that dampens the gameplay experience at all. Texture quality and level design is a mixed bag…On FPS levels everything is beautiful, detailed, vibrant, and squeaky clean, with the end result being one of the best looking FPS experiences you can get on the GameCube, the driving levels on the other hand just aren’t as flashy. It is not as if they look bad, because that is surely not the case, they just look inferior to the FPS levels, with level geometry and texture use looking uninspired and bland. One problem I had with Nightfire’s predecessor, Agent under Fire, was the fact that the bullets looked like little yellow marbles, instead of uh…bullets, luckily that has been solved and all other effects like that such as explosions, look spectacular, as does the rest of the game.
Audio:
My biggest gripe with Agent under Fire last year was the overuse of the James Bond theme, at first I didn’t mind but after hearing it few hundred times you just cannot take it much more. Thankfully, this is sure as hell is NOT the case with Nightfire. Nightfire has a superb soundtrack, instead of repeating the main Bond theme a few thousand times over it takes excellently composed tracks and adds some OO7 flavor to them. Of course, the main Bond theme is there, and if it wasn’t many would be pissed, I mean c’mon it kicks ass! Voice acting in Nightfire is terrific, some of the best I’ve heard in any game. Though, oddly, the GameCube James Bond sounds more like Sean Connery than the Bond he was designed after, Pierce Brosnan… I don’t blame Eurocom for doing that though, SEAN CONNERY IS THE MAN! As for sound effects such as gunfire and explosions, there loud, pretty damn loud, and I wouldn’t haven’t any other way ‘cause that’s just as it should be.
Lasting Appeal:In my opinion Nightfire does not last long enough. Sure, you have multiplayer to keep you and some friends busy for a short amount of time but there’s a numerous amount of other and better multiplayer experiences available for your GameCube. What I look for is a lengthy single player romp and Nightfire does not deliver, if the game can be beaten easily within a rental’s time period then it is too short. That’s a bit sad too, since the game is exceptionally fun. As for Extras…sorry Nightfire you’re no Goldeneye, you can’t keep me coming back in attempt to get those secret goodies.
The one thing I could ask for, for Eurocom’s next Bond game would be a lengthier game, more shooter levels and definitely some more car levels because once you beat the game you beckon for more.
Final Thoughts:
When it’s all said and done, Nightfire is the best Bond game since Goldeneye. With this latest installment it seems that Eurocom is trying to recreate the OO7 experience to the best of their ability, making it as close as it can be with the style of the movies. The action, the exotic cars, the beautiful Bond girls, and the quirky humor we all know and love from the movies is all there. If you’re a fan of OO7 then don’t even hesitate to pick this one up right now. The game has its downsides but it’s still undeniably fun.
