I’m a big fan of James Bond & James Bond games. One of my favorite PS2 era games is From Russia with Love. So, when a game was announced that seemed to be a love letter to the franchise, letting you play through every era of Bond. I was intrigued. But, I’m not going go sit here and pretend I don’t know about the reputation 007 Legends has. I knew what to expecting going in, and if it wasn’t for the low price I got this, I wouldn’t’ve played it. I also didn’t realize this game is now 10 years old. I though it was released in like 2014-2015, not 2012.
I could kinda tell from the beginning I was gonna have a bad time. The graphics for this game look rough. I’m guessing this must’ve been a shoestring budget game rushed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Bond, but man it’s ugly to look at. The world is sparsely textured, and the lighting is very bland and direct. There’s a hint of what material an object is made of, but the world still looks like it’s built from clay. It’s not helped that it’s lit like a hospital waiting room, very muted lighting with unnatural shadows for the “stealth” sections. The character models are probably the best work in the game. They recreate classic characters faithfully enough at a level of late PS2 era graphics, except Jinx, they really didn't even try to make her look Haley Berry-esque.
Along with the graphics is the world design. For the older films in the series, like Goldfinger & On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the developers went for a weird miss-mash of time periods. Because the game is framing all these exploits as part of Daniel Craig’s Bond, they’ve had to modernize them. Goldfinger still has his guards dressed in those blue jumpsuits and Blofeld’s mountaintop chalet has a 70s vibe, but that clashes with the modern US Army soldiers, Bond’s smartphone, and modern assault rifles. Instead of being a jewelry import/export business, Auric Industries builds fighter jets, what? I was hoping as an Easter egg we’d see Goldfinger’s Rolls Royce somewhere around the factory, but no. I’d much rather they drop the modernization pretense and let each movie live in its time period. I’m picking this game up to get immersed in those time periods with all their quirks. Watching Bond get into the Vanquish at the end of Goldfinger instead of the DB5 was a weird sight.
One thing the game does well is the musical score. When you’ve got the decades of Bond music to pull from it’s hard to mess that up. The main theme for the game is a remix of Goldfinger, which was disappointing. While it’s a rocking song, I was hoping for a mesh between all of the featured movies’ themes. I caught On Her Majesty’s Secret Service playing as you assault Blofeld’s base. The theme of Moonraker sneaks in as you explore the space station. It helped the game feel more like a Bond game, which is not something the combat did.
The biggest sin this game commits is being awkward to play. The shooting in this 1st person shooter does not feel good. There’s a bit of jankiness to the mouse aim. You can learn to adapt to it, but it takes some time. Though given this game is older than I remember, the sloppy shooting could be how games felt to play back in 2012. As I mentioned, there’s an assortment of modern guns, the difference between most is only skin deep. You can carry two long guns and a pistol at one time, a definite sign of an early 2000s game. There also doesn’t seem to be a coherent level design regarding combat encounters. You walk into a shooting arena and the game just dumps a metric ton of goons on you with no real sense of reason or tactics. They just spawn outta wherever, seemingly indefinitely, and you shoot your way through them. It’s not really a combat encounter where you’ve a set amount of goons you have to think tactically around, it’s a zerg rush. I can’t confirm, but it seems like the game decides to stop spawning enemies once you reach the other side of the room. Most people call this a CoD clone in a Bond suit, and I can see why. While CoD was a much tighter series gameplay wise, the influences are there. Bond is running around with soldiers, there’s lots of explosions and excitement, Felix barks commands like he’s a squad leader, Bond mans a minigun for a mission. It doesn’t feel very Bond in gameplay.
As mentioned early, there are “stealth” sections. Luckily, they aren’t forced stealth sections, because calling it stealth gameplay is a insult to actual stealth games. You can crouch and sneak around, but there’s never a great indication where enemies can see or a sense of the layout. If you kill a guard and another goon sees his body that triggers an alarm, which would be fine if you could move the bodies into shadows, but you can’t. They just lay where they die, and learning guard patrol routes isn’t worth it. Sounding the alarm does cause reinforcements to spawn, but it’s worth it just not be in the stealth section any longer than required. As the game goes on the stealth sections do improve a bit. Sneaking around Auric Industries was a mess, but Sanchez’s drug factory felt better built for its stealth sections. Still, I feel they were thrown in because, “Hey Bond’s a spy, he’s gotta be sneaky sometimes.” There's also two driving levels that add a break from the nonstop gunfights, but that's about it.
For me, the most egregious offense this game commits is the story. I will admit the overarching concept of having levels that recreate classic Bond films is not a bad one. Connery is my favorite Bond, I know I’m a basic, and Goldfinger is in my top 3 Bond films. I get they aren’t getting a whole game to flesh out the story and they have to rush through all the highlights, but they really messed it up. In the game’s storyline, Bond discovers all the details of Operation Grand Slam, then gets caught by Goldfinger, leading to the famous table laser scene, but when Bond name drops Grand Slam to save his skin & Goldfinger replies, “Those are just two words you overheard.” It doesn’t work. That’s a true statement in the movie, but here, we just raided his office. We know everything about Operation Grand Slam. The game is trying to hit all the iconic highpoints of the films it features, and Goldfinger has a lot, so they just toss them in there. The pacing is uneven due to the fact you’re playing through the climax of a standalone story every other level. I think that’s why the game ends with Moonraker, it’s hard to come back after giant space station laser fight.
But a lot of these scenes and iconic lines fall flat because we’re playing as Craig’s Bond. I get why for real world reasons, he is the current Bond, but he doesn’t work shoehorned into older movies. It’s not even actual Daniel Craig, but a decent soundalike. He does a good Craig Bond, but Craig’s Bond doesn’t have the same kind of suave, pretty boy charm of Brosnan’s or the assured machismo of Connery’s. Craig’s is dry and brutal, which isn’t bad, it’s his take on the character, but whereas Connery would’ve made a pun about a villain’s death, Craig just states the facts and moves on. The closest to his style is Dalton’s Bond, and License to Kill was the one level where he didn’t feel as out of place. Also, seeing Daniel Craig interacting with Honor Blackman, Robert Davi, & Richard Kiel is strange in an uncanny way. And it’s a shame this game was such a bust, because while most actors don’t reprise their roles, often due to them being dead, there are a few actual Bond alumni that return to reprise their characters. Surprisingly, they didn’t go for Jeffrey Wright’s black Felix Leiter, instead opting for one that’s more in line with David Hedison’s Leiter, which I'm guessing they did because License to Kill’s plot is kicked off by Felix.
All in all, I definitely believe this game wasn’t a victim of developer’s not caring, but of not having enough time. The premise here is a solid one that could work and at it’s base there’s still a little fun just getting to interact with classic characters in classic locations. It just needed more time in general to dive into each movie so their plots weren’t so pared down. While I could see EON requiring all media to use the latest Bond, changing the look & behavior of Bond to fit each era would’ve gone a long way. The vapid running and gunning is never fun and all the crazy action feels overproduced. Again, for such a neat premise, it’s a shame we got this result. The biggest positive I took away from this is I want to play From Russia With Love again, and I need to rewatch the Bond series.
