Remember when Bond games were about as solid as games got? If so, you’re probably old… It’s been a long time since Agent Under Fire (2001) and Nightfire (2002) came out, and even longer since one of the most iconic games of all time, GoldenEye 007 (1997), arrived on the N64. The simple fact that GoldenEye, perhaps the most successful of the Bond Games, came out on the N64 is enough to prove my point.
So where did all the good Bond games go? After all the last Bond game to receive generally positive reviews was James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, released almost a decade ago.
Do we have the new direction of the Bond franchise, an undeniably more serious, Jason Bourne-like tone, to blame? Have we in the gaming community matured to the point where we are incapable of enjoying a game that takes itself less than seriously? I’m not sure, but the receptions recent releases in the Bond franchise have received suggest that the series has nothing more to offer us; at least not until they reassess their standards for what is an acceptable product to release on the market. These new games are really bad…
What’s even worse is the fact that it’s not as though game developers don’t have some really great templates to work with. I remember spending countless hours matching wits with the AI on Skyrail, one of the best maps in Nightfire. Admittedly this was hardly a difficult task, but it was fun nevertheless, and in the end isn’t that all we’re looking for?
I understand that some of what made Bond games fun, the gadgets, the girls, the silly one-liners James delivers, may not appeal to some of these new-age gamers, who only care about stats and K/D ratio’s; you know the type. The ones with the modded controllers, and as many empty energy drink cans as hours spent using the Striker and camping in Modern Warfare 3.
However, to those of us who are just looking to pick up a simple game and feel like a suave secret agent, capable of taking down even the most dubious of villains while maintaining hairstyle perfection, the James Bond video game was exactly what we needed, when we needed it, and the fact that the franchise no longer seems viable is just sad…
