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From Russia With Love - Hands On Preview

Jon Wilcox

19/10/2005

Forget Daniel Craig, the real Bond returns in this videogame adaptation of classic 007...

It's an argument that will probably never end: who was the best Bond? The man that other men want to be like, and women want to be with, has been played by five actors over the five decades of Bond with Layer Cake's Daniel Craig the sixth actor brave enough to take the triple digit designation 007, but arguably the most popular Bond remains Sir Sean Connery. Following in the footsteps of the successful Bond title, Everything or Nothing 'starring' Pierce Brosnan, EA has gone back through 007's movie back-catalogue and developed an adaptation of Connery's second Bond film, From Russia With Love. TVG recently managed to play a preview build of the game, which hopefully goes someway to eradicate the nightmare that was GoldenEye: Rogue Agent...

As with the previous Bond title Everything or Nothing, the team at EA Redwood Shores studio have managed to recreate the character with uncanny accuracy; this is Sean Connery's 007 licence to kill from the obvious facial features, suit, and shooting stance (this guy literally shoots from the hip) through to the Scottish accent of the man himself. Another point that's quite worth noting is that I can do a half decent Connery impression so EA, I am available if you need a vocal stand-in for the next James Bond game, let me know, I'm a lot cheaper than Connery by far...

Whilst the character models at this stage of development are of the high standard you'd expect from EA's trademark production values, the environments do look a little bland, though we were only able to play through the first couple of missions in this closed preview build. Beginning with a scene at the Houses of Parliament (that's the British Parliament in London as opposed to any other British Parliament found in the UK) that sees Bond rescue the Prime Minister's daughter, played by UK pop 'sensation' Natasha Beddingfield. At certain times during the preview there were frame rate issues on more than one occasion that will hopefully be addressed by the time of release. Missions are spread out across the world (as youâd expect from a Bond adventure) with a few branching missions thrown in for good measure, though the narrative, like the level design, is exceptionally linear.

It does have to be noted that on more one occurrence the enemy AI was a little slack with Bond rolling within a few feet of them (and miss-firing a shot) with little response. The situation was all the more laughable given the unconvincing crunching footsteps that the super-spy made as he trundled through the various locations of the game. Not only hard of hearing, the opponents also appeared to be severely short-sighted (albeit temporarily) as they seemed to pause before realising Bond was next to themâ¦perhaps they were just in a state of shock? That same state of shock or confusion is also apparent at this stage when Bond is in the middle of hand-to-hand combat with an opponent; other enemies surrounding the pair seem to be very hesitant in shooting at the super-spy, worried that theyâll hit theyâre cohort? Both issues are hopefully due to the fact that we were playing the preview of the game and they should be ironed out by the time the game goes gold.

One gameplay feature integrated into the game is Bond Focus, which allows players to target key areas on an opponents body such as a radio for calling back-up. Taking out these focused items helps Bond deal with a situation with a greater degree of efficiency and may become an idea that we'll see continue in future 007 titles. During the preview build however, the feature did seem to over simplify the gameplay and comes across as slightly cheap, allowing players to instantly lock onto key areas with ease, especially when the Focus also zooms into the enemy too. Like much in the build, the question of balancing is an issue that still need to be resolved. The Focus has been integrated as an enhancement of the main targeting system, which locks onto enemies and can switch to other opponents through an analogue stick. Whilst the targeting mode seemed largely solid, there were times when the target failed to get a lock-on at allâ¦more work to be done at Redwood before the November release date.

Bond obviously is quite handy with a gun be that his trusty Walther PPK silenced pistol or an SMG, which can mow down opponents with accuracy. During the course of the preview missions, which were strewn with an over-abundance of ammunition (another one for balancing), Bond also earns various points that can be used research and upgrade various weapon skills and attributes including accuracy and the number of bullets in a clip. Whilst the idea certainly shows promise, once again the issue of balancing rears itâs ugly head and after the first mission players will have gathered enough of these research points to fully upgrade most of the weapons and armour available; weâd assume that this issue in particular will be addressed by the time the game is released.

Specialised ammunition is also available in the game so for instance the PPK can be loaded with armour piercing bullets; an somewhat obvious idea to utilise, the main issue is that in order to switch ammo players have to pull out of the game, physically select the weapon and then select âSwitch Ammoâ. Cumbersome and clumsy this only serves to break up the gameplay and destroy the sliver of immersion of the game that we had playing the preview build; surely it would have been easier and more fluid to implement a system by using shoulder buttons/d-pad?

Trained in hand-to-hand combat, 007 can also take down an opponent in the field, and in From Russia With Love players can disable enemies within close proximity by pressing a face button indicated on screen. Again this feature is overly-simplistic with single-buttons initiating a small sequence of punches and throws; perhaps in the final version the developers will rely more on multi-button ârhythmâ sequences to make hand-to-hand combat more of a challenge.

Like the character models, the sound of Bond is everywhere in the game from the introductory sequence to the little small audio hints of the soundtrack that play through the through main game. Of course it also helps that EA managed to persuade Sir Sean to record new dialogue for the game, and looking back at the success of Everything or Nothing, the title will obviously benefit from such detail. Music and voice artists aside, From Russia With Love does suffer at this stage with some ropey environmental sound effects; the aforementioned crunching footsteps are complemented by the over-exaggerated whizzing of bullets over Bondâs head. Like so many aspects of the game, the sound effects need some work if itâs meet the levels set by Everything or Nothing.

From Russia With Love also features a Multiplayer Mode that allows gamers to choose to play characters from the game as well as Goldfinger and Dr. No (guess EA have got to use the Rogue Agent models somehow). The preview build had three gametypes, Classic, Sabotage, and Dogfight, which essentially amount to Deathmatch, Bombing Runs, and Deathmatch with Rocketpacks. Visually these environments can diplomatically be described as underwhelming to say the least; grainy textures and character models that make the game look like itâs the PSone version, a lot of work will have to be done with the multiplayer modes if theyâre to offer any kind on playability let along longevity to the gamer. Such a barren selection of gametypes donât exactly inspire either and like Rogue Agent, the mode is far from the joyous multiplayer highs of GoldenEye on Nintendo 64 ten years ago.