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> Results: From Russia with Love
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A well-dressed gentleman steps out of his Aston Martin DB5, walks inside, weaving his way through the crowd like a shark trolling for his dinner. As he steps to the bar, "Shaken not stirred." Seems like the classics never die, and Electronic Arts chose a good one to bring back. For this latest installment of the 007 games, they went all the way back to the beginning of Bond, and hired Sean Connery to reprise his role as the super agent. Like many others, he's my favorite Bond. From Russia with Love is a decent game, but it seems to be aimed at the fans more than the super-elite first-person shooter experts, and you know what, I like that! This one's all about style, that classy old school 1960's Bond style. From the very beginning of the game, it presents itself exactly like the movies do. You're dropped right into the story. Only once you've completed that first level, do you get to see the opening credits. EA went to great lengths to keep the movie style of 007 intact.
The play is easy to pick up. Instead of manually aiming each shot, the game's designers included a handy auto-aim feature. Hold down the L1 button, and Bond will lock onto an enemy and you press the opposite R1 button to fire. Switching between the enemies is as easy as pressing L1 again. You also have the option of going for skill shots, much to the relief of the hardcore, by pressing square to get smaller skill targets. One of the great things about this is that if you are running low on ammo, you save a few bullets by hitting one of the skill shots. If the person happens to be carrying a grenade, you can shoot the grenade off of their belt, and take a group of soldiers out in one shot. You can even shoot someone's rappel cable to get the drop on him. Of course you do have multiple weapons available, all of the 1960's variety, and Bond's famous gadgets. The gadgets include the laser watch, the Q-chopper, an automatic briefcase machine gun, and sonic cufflinks. Every last one of these, along with the weapons, can be upgraded with research points that are found scattered throughout the game. Multiplayer mode lets you take on the guise of several henchmen in the game, including the infamous Dr. No, and Goldfinger. You unlock them with the skill points you earn in each level. Remember those skill targets? They give you more points at a time. As far as replay goes, you can repeat stages in single player mode to find more items and get additional points, in case you missed anything the first time around.  Unfortunately, there are problems with this otherwise entertaining game. There are a couple of driving levels. I really wish they weren't there because the driving isn't very robust. Oh sure, there are undercarriage machine guns, and a spiffy grenade launcher, but no oil slick? The enemies are kind of stupid too. "Hey lets get in front of the guy with machine guns poking out of the front end!" Another is a boat level where you take command of a machine gun turret, to keep the bad guys away from your boat. Okay we've seen that one eight hundred times too. Luckily as long as you're happy with the score from a completed stage, you never have to go back to it. There are also problems with the camera. In the corners the camera angle gets stuck behind the pillars and gets you shot a few times. It's also a little difficult to tell where exactly on the map you should be going. There's no feature to see the whole map at once. Guess it helps keep it all a little more difficult? The cut scenes between levels look really nice but you can't skip them. The cool retro styling really helps save this game from the lower end of the scale. The sound is decent with the appropriate 007 fanfare and mood music, while the overall theme of being in the movie with Sean Connery as Bond is great. It's amazing how frighteningly close the character looks to Connery himself. Some of the other characters have that creepy "too real to be real" look going for them. That's just one more small ding on a game that is otherwise entertaining. This one's still more for the Bond fans than the shooter fans, though.  
Who doesn't want to be the coolest spy ever? There are no obvious blood sprays or oozing wounds. Enemies just fade away into whatever items they drop. The Bond girls are from the 60's era so they have a little more decency than some of the modern video game girls do. Of course this is James Bond we're talking about, so just in case you didn't know, he's a real ladies man. There are several blatant sexual innuendos and while you don't actually see any thing, only the clueless will miss what they're about to do. Then there's they gypsy camp, where two of the ladies have a disagreement and decide to settle it "gypsy style" which means roll around on the ground clawing at each other. Too bad you can't skip the cut scenes. Unless your kids are major Bond fans, I'd recommend this one for teens. If they ask for it, sit down and watch some of the 007 movies, preferably the older ones with Sean Connery, or even From Russia with Love itself and see what you're in for.
This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: From Russia with Love |
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