Status Chovus Jul 3, 2022
007 the game is not enough
Beat on 007 difficulty. First thing I did was change the key bindings significantly. Strafe to L1 and R1, crouch to triangle, aim to square, and switch weapons to the analog stick. The inventory menu was tedious to use but I did like how I could assign each thing to the weapon cycle or …
007 the game is not enough
Beat on 007 difficulty. First thing I did was change the key bindings significantly. Strafe to L1 and R1, crouch to triangle, aim to square, and switch weapons to the analog stick. The inventory menu was tedious to use but I did like how I could assign each thing to the weapon cycle or not. I liked having only 2 or 3 guns on the cycle. I had no idea what the gadgets did so I did not disable the metal detector in the first level and just mowed down everyone. I did not find out about the briefing messages from the other 2 people until after beating the game. Pretty good shooting mechanics. Aim assist helped a lot, and the aim mode that prevented movement was good occasionally. I got to the end of the level and it told me to escape. So I went to the door missus ran into. Nope break the window it said, so I shot at the background window until I noticed the thing with the highlights around it. Then I failed the mission because I took to long. What the fuck game. This kind of bullshit design will be a running theme for this game. There was no need to have a hidden and quite short time limit, and at worst I should have had to kill the enemies and take a score penalty. Restart and try sneaking around this time. Bypassed the metal detector after looking at a walkthrough to see what stuff did, then tried to taser the next guard. I got him but he somehow alerted everyone so the rest of the level was mowing everyone down again. At the end I knew what to break now, so I shot at it a few times until the game said I had to use the briefcase. Ok, why the hell does that matter? Bullets can break glass.
Second level was good, just straight up run and gunning. There was a hidden time limit but I had no trouble. Third level took several attempts because I kept taking too much damage. It started 007 off in the open getting shot at by multiple enemies and he was stuck wearing stupid skiis that made it more difficult to get around. After a few deaths I decided to grab the sniper rifle and bail out of there without killing the enemies. Then at the end I hid by the pipe and sniped the flyers. Fourth level was by far the worst part of the game. No shooting, just playing blackjack. Jesus sweet merciful christ, I signed up to play a first person shooter to shoot stuff in the face. If I wanted to play blackjack I would go play that. This had no business being in the game. So I hate gambling and failed this mission a lot. I bet 100% of my money starting off to get it over with faster. When I finally won it was because of a lucky series of 21s on the draw. Or maybe it was the game taking pity on me for sucking. This was the only level where I got gold. Every other was bronze and 1 silver. I bombed on time, did well on health and mediocre on efficiency and accuracy.
Level 5 pissed me off because it was a stealth mission with no killing enemies and insta fail upon detection. I got pretty far just sneaking around but failed after tranquilizing a guy. Then another guy came while the 1st was getting back up. Yeah I'm not dealing with that shit. The point of stealth is to make it easier to kill. Once everyone is dead no one can detect you. So I used the walkthrough, which said I could kill the guards by punching after tranquilizing them. Ok better but why the hell does that work? The tranq should last the duration of the mission. Level 6 was where I got silver but I failed a lot because it was designed terribly. First I tried tasering a soldier but oh no not allowed to hurt the soldiers. What the hell? Who the fuck cares if I kill soldiers or even civilians of another country? Acceptable losses for collateral damage. The game did not even let me continue playing the level after failing. It has been a long time since I played Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but I am pretty sure you could goof around after failing a level. It made no sense to sabotage the power to get past the soldiers when Bond could use the fake ID to get into a room beyond them. Surely if he had clearance for that room past those guards, then he would have clearance to get past them as well. Every part of this level before the shooting was pointless and should have been cut. Then I failed the shooting because missy died. Oh just what I like, don't let retarded AI get killed. Then I failed to get to the end fast enough. Then failed to use the grappling hook fast enough because I was trying from too far away. God damn arbitrary fail states. The only fail state should be my health = 0. The ending part of this level should have been removed and been a cutscene.
Level 7 was decent with some Rainbow Six style rescuing hostages. I rushed in with the silenced pistol and never bothered with flashbangs or gas grenades. I did fail my first attempt due to going loud and not being fast enough to save the 1st hostage group, but won next attempt. Level 8 was annoying. I tried to snipe the helicopter from the beginning while it was too far away to shoot me but that did not work. Then I made it to the end and used the wrench to get gas going to the chopper. Then shot with my gun. "You must use the flare gun". What the fuck? What flare gun? There is no flare gun. Why can't regular bullets ignite it? Why can't I use the rocket launcher? I still had rockets. Looked at the walkthrough and I missed a side path, but I did not have enough health/armor to backtrack for that. Died a couple more times from taking too much damage from the choppers until finally reaching the end with the flare gun this time. So I shot my 1 flare into the gas. Nothing. Oh god dammit I had to directly hit the valve? I was very annoyed and thought I had to restart again, but the innocuous cardboard box had flare ammo. Level 9 was good with run and gunning. I didn't know what to do at the end so I went out the door. Failed. What the hell, why even let me go out the door if it is a fail state? So I had to blow the thing open with explosives and disarm the bomb. That could have used better direction. Level 10 was the best level with no bullshit. Just killing enemies and completing simple objectives. Even had a proper boss fight. The last level was mostly good with plenty of enemies to kill. The only problem was the radiation room. I died there first attempt. The next time I just barely made it through at 100% dose, and again on the way back. That tells me this room was poorly designed if there was that little margin of error to get through. The radiation was the true final boss.
This was not a good game. Though the core gameplay mechanics and engine were good, the level design left a lot to be desired. They were a far cry from Goldeneye and Perfect Dark with way too much arbitrary nonsense and railroading to the exact events of the movie. I felt like I should have rewatched the movie before playing so I would have known better what to do. A good game would let players be creative to solve problems in multiple ways, even those not expected. Most of the levels I have no desire to ever play again, and I see no point to unlock the cheats. The levels were also quite small and short, so nothing interesting to go back and see with god mode on. I did not see a multiplayer mode at all, and only the 2 difficulties, so the replayability is in the toilet. I had a brief freakout moment while starting my 2nd play session because I could not select continue. I thought I lost my save. But after looking in thd options menu there was a memory card submenu with load. Really odd design to bury loading like that. If they removed the blackjack and annoying nonsense I would give this a 7 for the production quality, but as it stands...
5.8/10
Will have to try the N64 version at some point since I hear it is much better.
