Try not break anything, 007...
So James Bond 007: From Russia With Love caters for the Bond fans as well as the casual gamer, but how about the more hardcore console shooter fans? Well this is where Bond might come unstuck as the aiming system will probably be the biggest sticking point of the game for seasoned players. I personally love the fact I don’t have to fiddle around with an aiming reticule, but a more experienced console shooter player could well find the system rather limiting. You can opt to use the Bond Focus for every encounter, but the real problem comes when you want to shoot objects rather than people. In a few sections there are some obvious explosive barrels but being able to target them in free-play without aiming is impossible as there’s no aiming reticule to use. You could just take a guess that you’re going to hit the barrel but you’d be lucky if you did and the more experienced player will no doubt find the lack of freedom the aiming system gives you to be more trouble than it’s worth.
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Click for larger imageThat said, the casual player or the novice will get along fine with this and find the few sections where you can free aim to be quite challenging. There are a couple of ‘on the rails’ sections where you’re shooting off the back of a speedboat which are going to be tricky, especially as the gun’s elevation is limited meaning you can take fire from a bad guy you can’t hit in return unless you shoot him early. Also, there’re a couple of sections where your sniper skills are put to the test and again it’s a free aiming system meaning patience and a steady thumb are the order of the day… so whilst experienced console shooter players will find it all a bit simplistic, there are moments when the game challenges you, especially on the harder difficulty settings.
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Click for larger imageBut that doesn’t mean that experienced players should shun James Bond 007: From Russia With Love as they’ll miss out on what amounts to a great Bond inspired game that follows the film as closely as possible. It has to be said that the music is simply superb and the extra bits EA have commissioned and recorded aren’t distinguishable from the original score. Of course, for gameplay’s sake, there’s a lot more to each section than you see in the film with the main idea being that the inspiration for each mission is taken from the film and then built on from that. This does mean that a couple of sections, namely the motorboat ones, just don’t sit as well as the others and are a tad overlong too. The trickier control method for these parts is in stark contrast to the rest of the game and I found them at first a bit tricky, then irritating and finally just plain tedious… Which was a shame as I was so enjoying the rest of the game.
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