Introduction

Back in the early days of the Nintendo 64 , Nintendo’s own second party, Rare, established itself as the king of First Person Shooters with a game by the name of Goldeneye. Goldeneye brought gamers into the world of secret agent James Bond which included non-stop action, hot babes, secret missions, and a ton of unique gadgets...

Suprisingly Nintendo and Rare did not renew their license with the Bond franchise and allowed Electronic Arts to pick it up. Still riding off the succes of Rare’s Goldeneye Electronic Arts released two FPS Bond titles which were far from achieving the magic Rare had once accomplished.

Agent Under Fire for the Nintendo GameCube is indeed a port of the PS2 original which was released months ago but it does feature many enhancement and upgrades that put it above the PS2 original. Agent Under Fire is also the first Bond game to ever feature an original storyline and tries to be as true as it can to those whacky Bond adventures we know of.

Read on and perhaps you might want to join OO7 on his quest to uncover the evil doings of Malprave... Agent Under Fire is EA’s third attempt at an FPS Bond game, and you know what they say "Third time’s a charm!"

Presentation

When starting up the game you are presented with a FMV showing cutscenes that occur during the game, these cutscenes are done very well and have the that Bond theme we all know and love playing in the back drop. Load times in the game are short but are still noticeable ....especially during missions. Other than the mission briefing the menus are bland but easy to navigate.

Graphics & Sound

Graphics:

Agent Under Fire is not the best looking GameCube game but it sure is one of them. It boasts a constant frame rate of 60 frames per second and it also boasts detailed textures and landscapes with tons of geometry. Character models are also impressive , they include excellent facial animations and the Bbond girls in the game have a certain bounce in a few areas...The game is not a visual masterpiece though... the bullets don’t look like bullets at all, they look more like little yellow marbles and this affect can become rather annoying. If it wasn’t for that bullet affect the game would be a great piece of eye candy.

Sound:

Ofcourse this game features the trademark Bond them but it tends to overuse it and you pratically here it every 5 seconds.... you can imagine this becoming very irritating. Along with the Bond them we all know of are some occurences of guitar riffs and techno which occur during intense gun fights. I have to give props to EA though because the voice acting is done very well and is some of the best I have heard to date! Gun shots, explosions and other sound effects are also done very well but they prove to be a little too loud, this can prove to become a nuiscance at 2 in the morning when everyone is trying to sleep....oops!

Gameplay

Agent Under Fire features many types of different gameplay aspects and modes.

Single-Player

In the standard FPS missions Bond is up too his normal every-day routine. Receive mission goals , kill people, meet hot babe , and accomplish goals. In order to make these tasks Bond is assisted with his Q- gadgets which are the Q-Claw, Q-Laser, Q-Remote, Q-Jetpack, and Q-Specs. Ofcourse these gadgets aren’t neccesary for every mission but you will often find yourself using the Q-Claw and Q-Laser quite often. The Q-Claw is a pretty neat little item, it’s a cell phone that can also be used as a grappling hook to get from rooftop to rooftop and other high platforms and areas. At the end of each mission Bond is rewarded with a score which based on the way gamers complete each mission, in order to get a higher score players must find OO7 medals as well doing Bond like moves. A higher score unlocks weapons and multiplayer bonuses...

In order to get a more Bond-like feel out of the game Electronic Arts has included driving missions which ends up being a positive addition to the game. In these missions Bond drives his high tech automobiles blasting away at enemy cars while cruising through large cities which contain obstacles themselves.

The last single-player gameplay aspect is rail shooting. These rail missions focus more on precise aim in order to take out gunners on rooftops, take out helicopters or even tanks.

The game provides a decent single player experience but it is quite short. The PS2 version featured some really dumb CPU AI but Electronic Arts has attempted to fix that problem ...yeah , they’re still pretty dumb but on the harder difficluty levels they are tough!

Multiplayer:

I’m not the multiplayer type of guy so I can possibly be a little biased against these aspect in games but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize a good multiplayer experience when I see one...

Multiplayer in Agent Under Fire is pretty wild, this is most likely due to the fact that the arenas are incredibly small. All you can basically do in multiplayer is run, run , run, and hopefully you’ll get lucky and actually kill someone. Ofcourse you get of all of Bond’s weapons and gadgets featured in single-player , and in multiplayer the Q-Claw will come in handy as well.

Multiplayer is fun for awhile but the arenas are too small and after putting so many hours into to multiplayer games, like Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Halo and Counterstrike...Agent Under Fire’s multiplayer won’t seem too attractive.

Lasting Appeal

Agent Under Fire’s single-player can be beaten in day if someone tries hard enough and depending on the gamer’s skill everything can be unlocked within the time span of a rental. Multiplayer can provide a reason for a purchase but its not too great anyway.

For some reason the game has proven itself to be extremely fun and that’s good enough for me to purchase it, but that’s me. Unless you’re some Bond freak or you just want to get your hands on the GameCube’s first FPS I suggest a rental first...

Conclusion

Even though the game has its flaws it still proves to be a fun gaming experience and that is were it counts my friend. I really like this game and I hope you will too!