From Russia With Love

Connery returns as Bond, but is this reason enough to tackle this latest EA secret agent game?

Selling the Bond licence to EA really was one of the worst choices Nintendo ever made. Not only had GoldenEye proven a critical and financial success on the N64, Rare was already working on a follow-up (and rumours suggested it was going to be based on one of the older films).

Yet what has EA ultimately had to show for it since its accruement? A series of distinctly ho-hum action adventures, that’s what. Where news of a new game in the franchise isn’t met with much enthusiasm anymore. That’s because we know the game has a larger chance of being rubbish than good.

Such is the case in From Russia With Love. However, what’s saddening is that in playing From Russia With Love the signs of a great game are clear and present in almost every aspect. Unfortunately, what we have in its place is something distinctly ho hum instead. But really, is anyone surprised?

As is no doubt evident, From Russia With Love is based on the second of Sean Connery’s Bond efforts. While everybody always seems to mention Goldfinger as the quintessential Bond film, I have to admit to liking the previous film much more. I always found Dr. No to be boring, but From Russia With Love ultimately got the balance between story and action perfect.

Similar to the way Rockstar handled The Warriors, EA has seen fit to take the story from the film and base the game around the locations and events that unfold over its course. And just like The Warriors, scenes from the film are re-created using the games engine.

Connery – now 75 years old – reprises his role as the suave secret agent, and while time hasn’t been too kind to his voice, it’s wonderful to have him back as arguably the best Bond. Other cast members join him (along with some new, such as Natasha Beddingfield – no, she isn’t that great) but most of their voices are lifted straight from the film.

Speaking of which, EA really takes some liberties with the story. While there were several action scenes in From Russia With Love, it was more story and character than anything else. Story and character is dropped in favour of providing excuses from the film for prolonged, sometimes interminably boring action scenes.

Never is this more evident than in the Istanbul car chases sequences. The game is a third-person action adventure that is – as EA is now so fond of doing – broken up with vehicular sections. Unfortunately these are some of the worst in the game, what with the appalling framerate and over-responsiveness of your Aston Martin.

The game works with one of the most rudimentary lock-on target systems I’ve yet encountered in a game. By holding down L1, Bond automatically locks on to the nearest target – thus taking away any element of actually aiming full stop. You can tap the square button to enter Bond focus, where there are two areas you can specifically target (which allow you to disarm or disable the walkie-talkies on enemies).

Whilst driving, again it’s just a case of holding L1 to target enemies and the game does the rest of the work. Not only does this make for the impression of rudimentary game design, it means the game is easy irrespective of which difficulty level (Agent, 00 Agent, Secret Agent) you choose.

From Russia With Love works on a points-based system. Points are accumulated for such things as stealth killing, Bond moments (exactly what they sound like), disarming and disabling walkie-talkies and finding secret documents. At the end of each level you are then given a grand total and can use this to upgrade your gadgets or weaponry.

If anything the implementation of this skill system ultimately made me think of better games that implemented it perfectly. Better games from better developers who could make stellar Bond games (such as Monolith or Free Radical – the latter of which is comprised of most of the people responsible for GoldenEye and Perfect Dark at Rare).

With Monolith now operating in the console area EA would be stupid to not consider throwing the licence their way, what with Monolith’s amazing No One Lives Forever series eclipsing every Bond game with only two titles thus far. Free Radical is now a subsidiary of EA so quite why it hasn't had the chance to work on a game is anybody’s guess.

But it’s about time EA changed the way it tackles Bond. From Russia With Love had all the makings of a Bond classic. The story was already there, along with a number of cool set pieces. Unfortunately the game forgoes any subtlety in the film in favour of OTT action sequences and barely any stealth at all (it’s there, but like everything else in the game it is rudimentary at best).

What I find most unfortunate is the fact that, like every other Bond game consumers are going to scoff this up, thus making the way for even more dire Bond games.

This review comes courtesy of our friends at www.boomtown.net .The home of harcore PC, Xbox, PS2, GameCube and handheld gaming news, previews, features and reviews.