007 Nightfire

The thing that pleases me the most about 007 Nightfire is the variety in the gameplay. While you still do a lot of shooting, there are also levels that involve driving, turret shooting, sneaking, and using Bond's gadgets. You'll really feel like a multitalented super spy as you attempt to discover what the Phoenix Corporation is up to and then put an end to their evil plans.

All the Bond trimmings are present: beautiful women to lock lips with, and evil henchmen to lock your sights on. Q and M are here to help you through this adventure and you've got a nice selection of gadgets including a grapple tool, watch laser, stunner, micro-camera, decryptor, and a few others. Keep your eyes peeled for armor and guns/ammo as there are times when you'll run out of bullets. You don't carry your weapons from mission to mission. The game's arsenal is fairly deep and you'll have the chance to fire guided missiles, be sneaky with the sniper rife, use grenades, satchel charges, and flash bangs, as well as shotguns, machine guns, and pistols.

Throughout the missions, you get extra points for remaining unseen, and for either stunning your opponents or forcing them to surrender, rather than gunning them down. The points will help you earn secrets and unlockables.

The story is a decent one and will keep you playing as it twists. It's driven by cut-scenes before and after the missions, which give context to the action. The mood and tension in Nightfire are helped out considerably by excellent voice acting and sound effects, and an above par soundtrack. Bond's risqu� quips to the ladies come across just as they do in the films and the women have some good lines of dialog themselves. A few more missions wouldn't have hurt though, as skilled gamers will power through what's here in a hurry.

The game saves at the end of every mission and will allow you to restart from checkpoints if you die within the missions. I wish that these checkpoints were also official save points however, because a couple of the missions consist of several long sections.

Driving the Vanquish and other vehicles is fast paced and fun. Wheeling the Vanquish around on the ice was a personal favourite moment. Of course you've got a smoke screen, and you can go up on two wheels, among other enjoyable Q inventions. The vehicle control is quite arcadey and simple. Though there is only one control configuration for driving, there are eight control set-up choices for the regular, non-vehicle missions. Overall the game's controls feel good and are responsive. Two minor niggles: the auto-aim is useless and I wish that you could move Bond forward and back while aiming a weapon.

Probably the first thing that you'll notice about Nightfire when you pop it into your Xbox is that it's a fine looking game. The faces are expressive and the character movement is smooth and realistic. Having Pierce Brosnan's likeness really does give the game a note of authenticity. The locations too are detailed and nicely textured, from the snowmobiles ripping up the mountain slopes to the posh castle home of Phoenix Corp's Raphael Drake. Some of these environments are quite large--for example there's an office building with a ton of rooms and staircases to explore.

Along with having a very well crafted single-player game, EA and Eurocom have spent considerable time working on the multiplayer aspects of Nightfire. With room for four players and a selection of bots, this is a great one to pop in when your friends are over. The game modes you can choose from include Arena, Team Arena, Capture the Flag, Uplink (where you attempt to control satellite dishes), Top Agent (everyone has a set number of lives and the last one standing wins), Demolition, Protection, Industrial Espionage (both teams try to recover a data disk and bring it to their base), GoldenEye Strike (obtain both halves of the GoldenEye key to call down an orbital satellite strike on the enemy team), Assassination, King of the Hill, and Team King of the Hill.

Some of these modes must be unlocked, but you start off with plenty. Other unlockables in the game include multiplayer characters, and outfits (Bond in his spacesuit for example). I really appreciated how much you could fine-tune the multiplayer bots. You can tweak everything from their speed, to their aggression, health, and accuracy. You can also set parameters like where characters respawn, whether they can use their grappling gadgets, whether hits are body location sensitive, and whether the environments contain fixed guns or remote control mini-vehicles for use. The only thing the multiplayer game is missing is Xbox Live support.

While not the best first person shooter on the Xbox, Nightfire does an admirable job of capturing the essence of a Bond film and should please the majority of 007 fans. I know I'm stacking it in my "keeper" pile.

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