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James Bond 007: Nightfire

James Bond 007: Nightfire

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very underrated game
Review: Online all I see is people attacking this game for being simplistic and a disgrace to the bond games. Personally, I think the game is great. While the loading times for some levels (especially the Japan one in the demo) are absurd, for the most part the game is fast-moving and exciting. It has all the women, gadgets, and stealth you would expect from a bond movie as well as great graphics. It also has some truly unique sections - for example, in one level you must suction-cup up the side of a building without being seen. Buy if you're a bond fan at all.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great 007 Game!
Review: Run by the well known internationalist Raphael Drake, the Phoenix Corparation has been in the news lately for its efferts to decommission nuclear weapons, recent intellegences, however, suggest that there are more sinister motives behind Drakes actions. You must infiltrate a heavily fortified mountain castle near the austrillian border. Protect innocent hostages at a Japonese estate guarded by highly trained and heavily armed assasins. Be vigilant at all times in your mission to stop Drake, and always remember that no one, not even your closest allies, can be trusted. Engage in low gravity combat inside a space station armed with nuclear missles. Defeat Drakes army of elite paramilitary commandos on a nearly deserted South Pacific island. There are deadly, and sometimes familiar, villains-like Oddjob and Jaws-make every move a potentially dangerous one. There are nine action packed, single player missions, filled with beautifull women and treacherous enemies, demand your immediate attention and utmost skill. There are awesome online battles with up to thirty-two people and challenging all enemies in more than fifteen exotic locations deliver the most callenging multiplayer action ever! There are also cool special gadgets including Q-Specks for infrarred, night, and x-ray visibility, the Phoenix suitcase turret gun, and the laser watch. Do you have what it takes to be Bond?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good and not Great
Review: Someone once said that there is a far greater difference between "good" and "great" than "good" and "bad". Nightfire fits squarely in this definition. Some parts are good or at least tolerable, others are inexcusably bad. All together they made a decent, but not note worthy game.

The first thing the player will see is a neat little intro movie that evokes the colorful Bond openings. I actually think this is one of the better parts of the game, which isn't saying much about the game. Once you actually get in to the levels its first flaw is the engine. Nightfire uses the Half life engine, which is in it self a rebuilt Quake II engine. The HL engine was in its prime six years ago. To their credit the developers squeeze all they can from it. The characters and world objects are well defined with lots of polygons and generally look fairly good. Each level's detail is on par with the most other games out now. The water effects, shiny surfaces, and crisp textures are well done. However the tell tail signs of age are evident. The game lacks many of the modern bells and whistles players have come to expect. Character animations aren't smooth enough and no rag doll physics to speak of. The lighting, shadow, and weapon effects still look like they did in 1998. Clearly the devs polished up the engine but its undoubtly underpowered by today's standards. Obsolete may be another word.

What will make or break any game is the gameplay. Nightfire does not stray from the standard FPS model, but it doesn't bring much to it. It's fairly standard shoot, pick up armor/health, and shoot more FPS fodder. That really is it. The core gameplay isn't anything to rave about. What it does add are the "Bond" touches. In addition to weapons the player has access to a number of gadgets inspired by the films. These had a lot of potentional, but more of a distraction than an integral component. Every once in a while you will have to use one to progress in the game. However they are each serve a single use. The watch laser cuts locks for example. You can't use it as any kind of weapon and has no effect on the enemies. There simply isn't much else to do with them. The music and story are inspired by the Bond films, and done better there too. Neither is used to any great extent and you won't get to know much of the characters either. On an occasion there is a moment that evokes the movies. An early part has you take pictures of gorgeous women with a camera hidden in a cigarette lighter. The "night vision goggles" are slick sunglasses that Bond slips on. There is a good selection of exotic high tech weapons that have a high rate of fire. However it's usual stable of FPS guns (pistol, SMG, sniper, rocket launcher, grenades, etc.) that are available in any other game. Still the "Bond" components aren't enough or used to best effect.

There is some irritating level design in Nightfire. The game helpfully includes a list of objectives. But how you get to them is often too vague. For example one level has crippling a computer network as an objective. But what is this? Do I hit a switch or shoot a power generator, what? This is not made clear. I ran around shooting every computer in sight hoping to accomplish this. It was not until I got to the level after it that I did take out this computer network. Why was I told to do this in the previous level when I could not in fact do so? Often the levels are hard simply because it's unclear how you are supposed to advance to the next part.

Everything aside the biggest flaw is the AI. It's rock stupid. It doesn't qualify as "intelligence" at all really. Enemies will come running in to your fire, ignore loud sounds like grenades exploding, shoot in to walls, slow to react, and generally make Forest Gump look like Garry Kasparov. In one instance I aimed the sniper rifle at one bad guy's head but missed by a hair. Despite the thundering gun shot sound and bullet hole just behind his head, he failed to notice anything. He stood there as if nothing had happened. There are many more instances of incredible incompetence though out the game, suffice to say its just plain bad. Considering that AI in Half Life was one of the best ever its baffling why six years later Nightfire features some of the worst possible.

The end result is a game that is entertaining on a basic level but fails to impress or generate much excitement. It's doesn't overtly fail and follows tried and true conventional design. This could actually be very entertaining to someone not familiar with currently FPS games. However it's AI is terrible and the overall average quality doesn't stand out.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good and not Great
Review: Someone once said that there is a far greater difference between "good" and "great" than "good" and "bad". Nightfire fits squarely in this definition. Some parts are good or at least tolerable, others are inexcusably bad. All together they made a decent, but not note worthy game.

The first thing the player will see is a neat little intro movie that evokes the colorful Bond openings. I actually think this is one of the better parts of the game, which isn't saying much about the game. Once you actually get in to the levels its first flaw is the engine. Nightfire uses the Half life engine, which is in it self a rebuilt Quake II engine. The HL engine was in its prime six years ago. To their credit the developers squeeze all they can from it. The characters and world objects are well defined with lots of polygons and generally look fairly good. Each level's detail is on par with the most other games out now. The water effects, shiny surfaces, and crisp textures are well done. However the tell tail signs of age are evident. The game lacks many of the modern bells and whistles players have come to expect. Character animations aren't smooth enough and no rag doll physics to speak of. The lighting, shadow, and weapon effects still look like they did in 1998. Clearly the devs polished up the engine but its undoubtly underpowered by today's standards. Obsolete may be another word.

What will make or break any game is the gameplay. Nightfire does not stray from the standard FPS model, but it doesn't bring much to it. It's fairly standard shoot, pick up armor/health, and shoot more FPS fodder. That really is it. The core gameplay isn't anything to rave about. What it does add are the "Bond" touches. In addition to weapons the player has access to a number of gadgets inspired by the films. These had a lot of potentional, but more of a distraction than an integral component. Every once in a while you will have to use one to progress in the game. However they are each serve a single use. The watch laser cuts locks for example. You can't use it as any kind of weapon and has no effect on the enemies. There simply isn't much else to do with them. The music and story are inspired by the Bond films, and done better there too. Neither is used to any great extent and you won't get to know much of the characters either. On an occasion there is a moment that evokes the movies. An early part has you take pictures of gorgeous women with a camera hidden in a cigarette lighter. The "night vision goggles" are slick sunglasses that Bond slips on. There is a good selection of exotic high tech weapons that have a high rate of fire. However it's usual stable of FPS guns (pistol, SMG, sniper, rocket launcher, grenades, etc.) that are available in any other game. Still the "Bond" components aren't enough or used to best effect.

There is some irritating level design in Nightfire. The game helpfully includes a list of objectives. But how you get to them is often too vague. For example one level has crippling a computer network as an objective. But what is this? Do I hit a switch or shoot a power generator, what? This is not made clear. I ran around shooting every computer in sight hoping to accomplish this. It was not until I got to the level after it that I did take out this computer network. Why was I told to do this in the previous level when I could not in fact do so? Often the levels are hard simply because it's unclear how you are supposed to advance to the next part.

Everything aside the biggest flaw is the AI. It's rock stupid. It doesn't qualify as "intelligence" at all really. Enemies will come running in to your fire, ignore loud sounds like grenades exploding, shoot in to walls, slow to react, and generally make Forest Gump look like Garry Kasparov. In one instance I aimed the sniper rifle at one bad guy's head but missed by a hair. Despite the thundering gun shot sound and bullet hole just behind his head, he failed to notice anything. He stood there as if nothing had happened. There are many more instances of incredible incompetence though out the game, suffice to say its just plain bad. Considering that AI in Half Life was one of the best ever its baffling why six years later Nightfire features some of the worst possible.

The end result is a game that is entertaining on a basic level but fails to impress or generate much excitement. It's doesn't overtly fail and follows tried and true conventional design. This could actually be very entertaining to someone not familiar with currently FPS games. However it's AI is terrible and the overall average quality doesn't stand out.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Buyer Beware! PC Version of "Nightfire" FALLS VERY SHORT!!!
Review: System:
Gateway - 1.8Ghz Pentium 4
Memory - 512MB SDRAM
Video - 64MB GeForce2 MX400

Nightfire presents gamers with the chance to experience the 007 First Person Shooter (FPS) action that had previously been reserved for console games such as Goldeneye for the N64. Since Goldeneye almost all titles relating to 007 have been strictly console based, and according to other reviews, extremely disappointing. Nightfire was rumored to be the next big step in this 007 spy genre, and has apparently hit pretty close to its mark on Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube. However, porting this title for PC seems rushed and inadequate.

Those who have played FPS titles on the PC will argue that it is a gaming style that should have never been moved to console for control reasons alone. Now in an almost unfathomable turn of events it seems that FPS games are being developed for the console market and are simply, and need I say poorly, ported to run on the PC, almost as an afterthought. Nightfire is a prime example of an apparently great game gone wrong. Though I have not played the console version of this game a sampling of reviews for the console title indicates it is pretty close to yielding a Goldeneye level gaming experience. This is NOT the case with the PC version.

Plotline: (3/5)
Perhaps the only redeeming feature of the game, Nightfire does follow an overall decent story with semi-exciting cut scenes and better than average voice acting. As with many Bond films the story centers around an unlikely criminal mastermind who wants to take over the world. However, developers attempt to vary game play often distorts the plotline to include different combat environments including underwater and outer space sequences. Though the story is enjoyable with the typical Bond structure common in the films, the convoluted twists forced by the need to vary game play caused this reviewer to loose the particulars of the plot. Though I would like to know the whole story I am not about to play Nightfire AGAIN to get it.

Graphics: (3/5)
The cut scenes and opening musical sequence might trick the average gamer into giving Nightfire a higher graphic rating. Unfortunately, that is where the intense graphical experience stops. There is nothing remarkable about Nightfire's in game graphics. Reminiscent of Half-Life, aside from a few intricate and colorful areas, there are no graphical elements worth mentioning. Despite its sub-par graphics I did run into some slowdown during high action sequences. Although I must mention that I am running a severely out-of-date Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and that this may have affected both the Frame rate and my appreciation of the on screen effect elements.

Control: (2/5)
Aiming in Nightfire seems sluggish. Weapon selection and switching between the weapon and gadget functions are anything but intuitive. One would also expect an automatic reload after the complete discharge of an ammo clip. Changing out your ammo clip is almost strictly manual, forcing the gamer to hit "R" to reload. Typically this would not bother me except for the fact that it often takes several presses to initiate the reload. This bug is especially common during high action sequences, when the reload feature happens to come in most handy. Click-click-click your dead - hope you saved.

Game play: (1/5)
Nightfire seems stripped of any well executed game play elements, and leaves many pondering, What do I do next? Nightfire attempts to expand some elements of the FPS genre by adding navigation elements such as the cell phone grappling hook that allows Bond to reel himself into areas that are inaccessible at first glance. Despite having a hint screen, it is these elements that lead to the most confusing and tedious portions of the game. This reviewer found his gaming experience coming to a halt all too frequently. You WILL find yourself wandering around the same area over and over trying to determine how it is you are supposed to complete your mission objective. One such instance occurs towards the end of the game where you have to turn off two radio jamming beacons. It took me three days to see the small grappling hook located just underneath a platform on the second beacon building. This lack of visual clues almost led me to call EA thinking it was a glitch that all the exterior doors of the building were locked. Events such as this are common throughout the game. Some might qualify these as puzzles, but I found these elements insanely annoying.
Enemies seem to have varying levels of intelligence, some react before you have entered the room; others do not react to their buddy dropping dead right next to them. There is no rhyme or reason to the AI in Nigtfire, making it difficult to establish any kind of decent strategy.

Overall: (2/5)
In the end the minor and poorly executed risks EA takes with Nightfire do not improve this generally poor title. I expect a superior product from EA considering the price tag. Several of the features listed for the console versions are simply not available in the PC format, such as the sequence where you get the drive Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish. This could serve to explain the obvious plot holes and short overall game length. Despite having multiplayer which is, poor at best, Nightfire for the PC is still a waste of ones gaming dollar.

Final Thoughts:
As a fan of both Bond and EA I could not have been more disappointed by this title. I would not recommend this title to anyone except for the fanatical Bond fan who does not own a console. With several superior FPS titles available today, one must wonder why EA would release such a terrible product to the PC gaming community. Nightfire is a flop, and though it makes me sad to say it - perhaps Bond was not meant for PC.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: BAD
Review: THE GAME SUCKS IT HAS LOADING TIME FOR EVERY SINGLE ROOM.THE GRAPHICS TOO SUCK.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Horrible computer port
Review: There's a reason the price of this game has dropped so quickly compared to it's console counterparts - it's a horribly sub-par conversion of what might otherwise have been a pretty decent Bond game.

Nightfire is a mixture of the most infamous elements of the James Bond movies. Bond must stop a mad industrialist from nuking the world, and has several gadgets and female friends to help him accomplish this. EA takes advantage of the Bond licence, as the game features Pierce Brosnan's face as Bond, the familiar Bond theme, appearances by classic Bond villains, and other goodies.

But Nightfire lacks in several areas. First, the cool driving levels found in the console versions have been dropped from the PC version, probably due to lack of space. This leaves only 9 levels, which is just too short of a Bond experience. The game also seems to require a pretty high-end system to run.I have no problems running other recent games, such as Jedi Outcast, but Nightfire still stuttered along even when I set all the graphics options to low detail (and the graphics in Nightfire don't seem that spectacular in the first place). While I said EA takes advantage of the Bond licence, this isn't always a good thing. The Bond theme appears too often and quickly gets annoying, while the voice actor for Bond overplays his part and turns Bond into the stereotypical, cliched secret agent. Actual gameplay isn't too bad, but nothing special either. The levels are mostly non-interactive, small, and take too long to load (especially the Japanese resort level, where the game has to pause and load every few rooms, completely breaking up the gameplay). Finally, the game actually copies all of its cutscenes as AVI files onto your computer during installation. What's the point of playing the game when we can just watch the cutscenes, EA? Someone should have thought this out, and encoded the cutscenes as an unlockable extra, not give players free access to them even before they've seen the first level.

If you have a PS2, Gamecube, or X-Box, get Nightfire for one of those instead, and not this inferior PC port. If you don't, I can't really recommend Nightfire even to the most die-hard James Bond fans.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: This is too bad
Review: This game could have been a lot of fun if they would have let you play Mutiplayers without having to conect to the internet, First what if you don't have the internet second what if you can't conect right them which is most of the time, Me and my buddy had so much fun with the last one we played against each other all the time it was a blast.. It is just too bad. I hope the next one has that opption.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 007!
Review: This game is awesome. Very realistic. However, there are some flaws. For instance, characters like Oddjob, Goldfinger, Scaramanga, etc. are only in multiplayer mode! BOO! The machine guns are just plain awkward, especally the Storm mp9. What happened to guns like the ak47? In Agent Under Fire, there were TONS of different pistols, but Nightfire only has 4! Don't even bother trying to kill an enemy with a grenade, it takes forever to explode. plus, the enemy will usually just pick it up and throw it somewhere else. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WEAPONS IN THIS GAME!!! All in all, Nightfire is very addictive, but Agent Under Fire is much better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: an extreme game
Review: this game is the greatest thing ever. there are few bugs and it runs smoothly. The one bad thing is that there are only nine levels but once you are done you can do multiplayer even if you have slow internet. The guns are sweet like the desert eagle and the commando with a scope and laser. The graphics are awesome and there are lots of cool gadgets. It is worth [the money] but you can get it for [less]. this game is right up there with goldeneye


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