Christmas Retrospective 2004: 007 Everything or Nothing (PS2. XBOX. GC) – The Wanted Gift

As a Bond fan and a gamer who always wished to have the ultimate Bond experience on a console we were almost always sorely disappointed time and time again. Sure the odd glimmer of hope appeared such as the well received and awesome Goldeneye for the N64. Not that remake garbage! But for the most part we were left feeling sour and a little bitter at games like The World is Not Enough (Fantastic movie, terrible video game) Well almost all the Bond movies are fantastic and as I keep saying most the games are bad. So when I opened this game I was thinking “I wanted this, but it’s probably going to be awful” I was shocked.

Gameplay

The traditional concept for Bond games has gone in this title, almost every title before it uses the first person view while this one takes the third person view and honestly, it’s the breath of fresh air it needed.

You get a varied amount of challenges to complete during gameplay which can range across various things you do throughout the game adding to the longitivity of the title.

Most importantly the guns feel like guns, you feel like Bond as you mow through villains and that is important for a game based on a famous character, fans of James Bond want to feel like James Bond, some even want to be James Bond. This game does a good enough job to immerse you in that role.

The bullets left Bond’s enemies a little shaken and probably stirred!

Graphics

The graphics are very well done for the time, it set somewhat of a standard. Everything looks fantastic from lighting, character models and there are even a vast amount of destruction to be seen here such as Glass shattering and explosive damage.

Most importantly are the reactions to explosions amongst all game characters, friend or foe it doesn’t even matter everyone reacts to everything. This is a rarity for that era of gaming and truly makes this game something to behold and be proud to have owned.

Sound

Another strong point for this game is the quality of the acting, along with the explosions, guns and other in world objects the voice acting is what truly sets the game apart from the rest, doesn’t feel as awkward as some of the older Bond games.

The acting is done by Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe (If you ar new to gaming you may know him from Beyond: Two Souls) and the Quartermaster is played by John Cleese. I probably should have just referred to him as Q.

Some people may be thrown off by the lack of Desmond Llewelyn as Q, but he actually died a few years prior to the game, back in 1999 and also had left the Bond franchise during The World is Not Enough in a fitting and rather emotional scene if you had watched him throughout the franchise (I may talk about that more some other time).

Final Verdict

This is a title that fills me with nothing but happy memories, it fills me with joy to know that more than one good James Bond game exists. It fills me with even more joy that EA actually made more good games than just Mirror’s Edge.  Most importantly it makes me so happy knowing that a fitting game with action, spills, thrills, adventure, great acting, good graphics and great gameplay actually exists for the James Bond franchise. They gave it some love and so they should have.

The last recent company to show Bond some love was Bizarre Creations with Blood Stone, they got fired for it. (I don’t understand either). Eurocom got fired for showing it a lack of care and attention {I understand that). These were both companies under the Activision umbrella.

“Hey Activision, I have an idea, sell the rights back to EA. EA seemed to care about Bond games. Even though I hated The World is Not Enough on PS1, and I haven’t forgotten about 007 Racing, it seemed as if they were feeling their way into the franchise and while I may not love the other titles the made they were certainly playable and EA were legitimately trying to give people a good Bond game all along.”

007 All or Nothing:

http://youtu.be/-LHGn0yiLtQ

Feature image courtesy of Wikimedia

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