Game Review #2: 007 Agent Under Fire (released in 2001)

First things first, I'd just like to quickly apologise for not bringing a review out yesterday.  You see, I was traversing the sea of souls, whilst trying to play Guitar Hero on my way to the book store and long story short; I wasn't able to bring out a new review.  So because of that here's a review of an old and really good Bond game that I grew up with!

The premise of this old, gem of a PS2 game is; you are the legendary bad-ass MI6 agent James Bond on a mission to stop a sinister organisation, with a dramatic emblem and even more dramatic name, from cloning some world leaders in order to take over the world... or something like that.  See, the weird thing about the plot in this game, is although it’s very much like the plot in all the other Bond games and films (i.e. Bond meets a woman who may be evil and discovers from her about an evil organisation and then teams up with a good woman to knock it out etc etc), the plot of 007 Agent Under Fire actually gets pretty difficult to follow at some points.  Thankfully however, the game compensates for that with some awesome guns, some unintentionally comedic aspects to the game (eg: the most inaccurate sub-machine gun in a game ever), a truly entertaining split-screen mode and of course a laser gun in split-screen mode that can only be described as the "you lose, bitch" cannon.

Like the plot, the graphics aren’t up to much. I mean, it looked good back in 2001, but today it looks like every character has been constructed out of bits of cardboard and toilet rolls.  Nowadays though, that in itself contributes to the game being all the more comedic and appealing.  There are some cut-scenes in the campaign where, because of the graphics, you get the feeling that all of the characters are completely void of any emotions, which may also be due to the slightly pants voice acting.  Now you're probably wondering why I'm saying so many bad things about a game that I said I've always liked.  The truth behind that is that all of the flaws in the game are balanced by other flaws; crappy AI in the campaign compensates for dreadful accuracy in most of the guns and great deals of unintentional comedy compensate for a pretty token plot.

The best thing about the game funnily enough however isn't the gameplay, comedy, cracking vehicle sections or women with box-shaped boobs, but the typical, trademark bond gadgets.  In the campaign you're given a typical bond-style selection of gadgets to help you achieve your objective; a laser for locks, a decryption device for large doors, a grapple hook for grappling onto hooks, etc etc.  On top of getting plenty of handy gadgets in the campaign you're given a couple in split-screen mode; the Q-Jet and Q-Claw.  As far as names go these two gadgets are pretty self-explanatory, with the Q-Jet you press the button to activate and you can blast around on rooftops having dogfights with rubbish assault rifles.  The Q-claw is also bags of fun. In the campaign you can only use it on all-too obvious grates scattered around each level, but in the split-screen multi-player mode you can use it on any surface which means that you're transformed suddenly into a frantic version of Spider-Man wielding a rocket launcher and revolver. The gadgets consequently add hilarious and endless possibilities to the generally close combat multiplayer maps.

As well as the unimaginative names for the gadgets in the campaign you're also forced to do several vehicle sections.  Now vehicle sections are hard to pull off especially in a shooting game where you spend the rest of the time in 1st person view.  Surprisingly though, the vehicle sections in Agent Under Fire are actually not half bad.  In total the game has only three or four and for a pretty short campaign of 12 levels that's a pretty good number of driving sections. In most of the vehicle sections you zoom about in a beautiful car fitted out with missiles, chain-guns, oil-slicks and whatnot.  The best vehicle section by far however is half-way through the game where Bond crashes his car into a warehouse and surprise, surprise; he steals a cold-war heavy tank to rampage around the city streets with.  Although being highly un-realistic, this section is balls-out fun especially when you shoot a passing fuel train on a bridge to collapse the bridge onto two other tanks.

So aside from the stupidly easy campaign (especially the bosses) and graphics that makes Mortal Kombat look like the nuts, 007 Agent Under Fire is actually a pretty damn good game especially for revisiting the days when the latest bond game or film wasn't total crap.  So get an old second-hand PS2, then get this game and I guarantee that you'll  be shaken not stirred (ba-dum-tish).