Review curt924 2/5 · Aug 23, 2023
So maybe all these James Bond shooters aren't as much fun as I remember. Even as a kid I could recognize that Nightfire was just an overall better game than this, but this has aged much less gracefully.
For starters, this game runs on Id Tech 3 and it uhhhh doesn't look great. There's no anti-aliasing and textures often look …
So maybe all these James Bond shooters aren't as much fun as I remember. Even as a kid I could recognize that Nightfire was just an overall better game than this, but this has aged much less gracefully.
For starters, this game runs on Id Tech 3 and it uhhhh doesn't look great. There's no anti-aliasing and textures often look blurry and gross. Bullets are also comically large to the point where you can see them firing out of your gun like confetti and it just doesn't look all that good. Considering that this came out around the same time as Halo 1, it looks pretty horrid. At the very least it tries to keep a constant frame rate of 60, but it still dips down during the more busy sections of the game.
One of the game's biggest issues for me is the gun play. Where Nightfire has mostly accurate weapons that'll go where you are aiming unless you are rapid firing, Agent Under Fire has some of the most hilariously inaccurate weapons I've ever seen. The base pistol you have is more accurate at long ranges than the Assualt Rifle which is just sad. It makes the shooting feel very underwhelming and often times unfair since a lot of gun fights just involve you getting as close as possible to the enemy and barrel stuffing them. This isn't helped by your VERY limited health and the pointless lives system that the game has.
The driving sections are back, and they are passable though not exactly memorable. That can be said of most of the missions here actually. Despite playing this countless times as a kid, I really didn't remember any of the levels except for the last 2. It's honestly just standard shooting fare and none of it is especially well done. The gadget play here is very basic and almost never used in an interesting way. You use a laser to unlock doors and grates, or you'll use a Q-device to interact with an object, but that's really about it. The Q-claw is pretty much just a replacement for a ladder and the jetpack is horribly underused.
On top of this, the game's controls are just... off. Where I was able to get really accurate with the weapons in Nightfire, Agent Under Fire had me constantly fighting to hit targets accurately. The C-Stick sensitivity was far too high to hit anything that needed precision, and the gadget swapping was a nightmare. Goes to show how much smoother and usable the UI in Nightfire is.
Unfortunately, Agent Under Fire is a relic of its time. It doesn't look great, it doesn't play great, and the campaign is pretty forgettable overall. There's some fun to be had with the final chapters of the game, but I'd skip this in favor of Nightfire or Golden Eye any day.
