Fun for the ten thumbed gamer
Now I’ve never been a big fan of first or third person shooters on the consoles, mainly because I’m well used to the PC’s mouse and keyboard combo, which feels far more intuitive and natural. I’ve struggled with many a game trying to use one fiddly joypad stick after another to get my aim on target and I’m happy to report that EA have made aiming in James Bond 007: From Russia With Love as easy as possible without taking too much skill away from the player. All you have to do is hold down the L1 button to cycle through your targets and then let rip with R1 to take the bad guys down. This system makes the game instantly accessible for those cack handed console gamers like myself who just can’t get on with aiming in a third person shooter.
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Click for larger imageIn fact, EA have obviously taken a good long look at how to keep James Bond 007: From Russia With Love accessible as well as letting more seasoned gamers have a challenge too. For each mission you can select the difficulty level which dictates how many awards you pick up to unlock bonus levels but in the actual gameplay itself you can play at two different levels. The aforementioned auto-aim will be fine for most casual players, but the skill comes in when you try the ‘Bond Focus’ shots, which target an individual part of an enemy’s body. With this you can pull off those ‘cheeky’ Bond moments when he shoots a guard’s radio from his hand or shoots a grenade hanging on a soldier’s belt.
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Click for larger imageThe X button is used for all the interaction within the game, be it leaping a gap, vaulting a wall or opening a door, which again, keeps things simple. L2 allows you to select whichever weapon you fancy using to take the bad guys out with, with each having its own advantage or disadvantage. Weapons are of course a main focal point for the game and there’s plenty to choose from. You start off with just the PP7, Bond’s personal favourite, and then quickly picking up a machine gun, then a shotgun and so on before moving onto the more exotic weapons like the armour piercing rifle or the dart gun. Each of these comes in handy at various points in the game, the beauty of which is that once collected, they’re available for the rest of the game allowing you as much freedom as possible.
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Click for larger imageGadgets also feature heavily and the level design makes sure you use them often. Bond’s laser watch is here along with the belt-rope but EA have added in some new toys such as the Q-Copter which is a small remote chopper, filled with explosives and handy for opening locked doors from the inside if you can fly the chopper in there. Also rather cool is the briefcase turret gun, though it sits less well within the feel of the rest of the game… for although the gadgets might be hi-tech as far as the setting of the game goes, they’re lo-tech compared with what a modern game might throw in. That’s not to say that the gadgets aren’t fun to use and effective… it’s just the turret gun sticks out a bit as being a bit…odd.
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