With Agent Under Fire doing well for EA without having to be an adaptation of a Bond film, EA carried on with making new adventures for Bond, this time with Eurocom, who made the fantastic The World is not Enough on N64. There’s also a greater feeling of “legitimacy” due to the use of Pierce Brosnan’s face (although not his voice). It does a really good job at capturing the tone and style of the films, but how does it play?
Thankfully, it plays great. Nightfire is a solid first person shooter, with a bit of stealth mixed in (which works better than stealth in previous Bond games), and in quite a few instances, you’re prevented with a few ways to progress, which goes a long way into making you feel like Bond, as you need to spot these opportunities for yourself. There’s also a good mixture of fast-paced action and slower objective and stealth-based missions to keep things interesting.
Vehicle missions return and, while they’re more linear than Agent Under Fire, feel amazing. The driving is good enough that they could have made a great racing game out of it, and there’s still bit of variety in it, with one car mission focused on using guns and another letting you drive the Vanquish as a submarine, something the actual Bond driving game failed to do despite having the actual underwater Lotus Elise.
Nightfire is a really solid all-round adventure and one of the best Bond games, which says a lot as there’s some very strong competition. It’s definitely not as groundbreaking as GoldenEye was, but it’s still a wonderful experience.