Ya know, for a console shooter from 2002 it holds up surprisingly well.

Nightfire is one of those childhood games for me that I sank countless hours into years ago, but I really haven't touched since maybe 2010. I have a lot of memories of playing Arena on Ravine with snipers only and just having a fucking blast with a bunch of pals. I played through the story a lot back then as well, and it honestly might be the first game I've ever completed from start to finish.

As for my most recent playthrough? I actually had a lot of fun! Maybe it was just nostalgia for the levels and my determination to finally beat it on 00 agent difficulty using a controller after playing on PC for so long, but it really holds up. The pacing of the levels is pretty great and there's a lot of fun "James Bond" scenarios to go through. That castle infiltration at the start of the game is probably the highlight, but the rest of the levels entertain with the exotic locales and genuinely fun gunplay.

However, it's not Halo. Despite my claiming of it holding up well, there's certain aspects that don't. There's 3 different vehicle missions in the game and none of them are much fun. The Vanquish Escape is probably the least offensive as it's just a generic driving section, but the underwater stealth mission and aerial island infiltration are both godawful. The underwater one is particularly offensive with its complete lack of checkpoints and multiple areas that are instakill deaths. Barely tapped a mine? Go back to the start. Get hit by ONE torpedo from that submarine while it can take like 10? Go back to the start. It's an extremely frustrating level and honestly adds nothing to the story.

Other than those low points though, the rest of the missions are actually pretty great. A personal favorite of mine is where Bond is infiltrating an abandoned nuclear power plant that is absolutely infested with enemy snipers. It's a very clever way of making you check your surroundings and keeps you on your toes as well. 2 sniper shots is all it takes to down you so these frantic sniping battles become really intense. Another favorite of mine is a stealth section where you infiltrate Phoenix's offices. It isn't particularly difficult or in-depth, but it really helps you carry out that James Bond style fantasy.

As mentioned before, the gun play in the regular missions holds up pretty well. There's an auto-aim feature if you need it in the lower difficulties, but in 00 agent you need to make extensive use of the manual aim that has been carried over from the N64 era. It's a little rough at first, but I eventually got that hang of it and was able to headshot like 3 guys in a row with my walther, which feels totally badass. All of the guns sound great and are surprisingly well detailed and realistic for a GCN era console shooter. Each of them feel different enough to justify their existence, and the animation work makes them feel appropriately powerful. Some of the later missions become a little messy just due to the sheer amount of enemies that are thrown at you, but otherwise the core game play here is really fun.

Surprisingly, the game also holds up graphically as well. It looks far better than most other GameCube games (perhaps only surpassed by RE4) and the character models look really awesome all around. It would've been nice to see some more variety with enemy character models, but their animations are really well done so I can excuse it. Even the in game cutscenes make good use of the facial animations on Bond and other characters, and it really impressed me for a game that came out before HL2. The soundtrack kicks ass too, from that brilliant opener "Almost Civilized" to the multiplayer BG music, Nightfire has one of my personal favorite soundtracks to any shooter. It's probably not anything you'd put on a spotify playlist, but it is appropriately atmospheric when it needs to be and always gets me pumped during splitscreen matches.

So yeah! Nightfire is actually still a shit ton of fun to play today. It has some issues with enemy AI and the actual story isn't anything to write home about, but the campaign missions are unique and entertaining, and the multiplayer is iconic splitscreen shooter fun with a few friends. Would definitely give this one a shot if you are interested in other James Bond shooters besides N64 Goldeneye.