So, I've come to the latest Bond video game on my rankings that currently has a reputation for killing the game franchise. The game notably had a rushed production to be released the same month when the film Skyfall was scheduled to celebrate the 50th anniversary for the film franchise, and the final results show. The game is supposed to celebrate the franchise itself, covering one Bond film from each era. But instead of seeing a different model for each Bond (like Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan), Daniel Craig is in all the classic Bond adventures featured in the game. Unlike how Goldeneye Reloaded remodeled the characters and changed the story and environment to fit the Craig era's modern dark tone, 007 Legends alters half. Most of Bond's foes look precisely how they were in the films, while his allies aren't. The technology is updated, yet most environments don't fully match the Craig era's gritty tone for how bright and nostalgic they appear. It's actually silly seeing one of the most serious actors to portray Bond fight against a lightning-shooting Gustav Graves in Die Another Day and going into outer space in (you guessed it) Moonraker.
The game becomes more of a mess for how it attempts to tie-in six different Bond stories together. After Bond gets shot by Eve in Skyfall, as he lays in the water, he hallucinates friends and foes he's met in the past, and the player is right smack in the middle or at the climax of a Bond story. It would have made sense if all these stories were tied together through mission briefings from M, but because the game is desperate to tie-in to Skyfall, it lazily crams in all these stories during the opening credits portion of the film. If a player who has hardly ever seen a Bond film but knows a little about the franchise with the understanding that this game is an anthology of adventures, the game's story would mostly come across as random and confusing. Not to say the game doesn't address what's going on, but it's usually given through rushed exposition. If throwing a player right in the middle of the action or a situation when the mission begins can't get any more baffling, levels would end abruptly as Bond is still in danger after killing the villain. The game all together ends as suddenly as the missions do. Tomorrow Never Dies at least showed Bond getting away in the end; here, Bond kills Hugo Drax, Drax's space station is about to explode as Bond struggles to find a way out, then the mission ends, and then the credits roll on the menu screen! We never see Bond escape or see him regain consciousness. The reason why the game has the worst ending to a Bond game ever is that current releases (except for the Wii U port) don't have the final two missions that were based on Skyfall. Since the game came out a few days before Skyfall was due to release, the makers decided to make the missions available to be digitally downloaded after the film was released, but ONLY for a limited time! So, the missions that were supposed to wrap up the game and make this odd choice of tying the stories together come full circle are not available for most game consoles, leaving the game's story incomplete.
A Bond fan would be less confused by the game's presentation. That's not to say that there aren't things in the game's story that wouldn't annoy or disappoint them. Craig's involvement in all the original Bond adventures can be highly off-putting enough. As a way of celebrating 50 years of Bond, having one of the worst Bond films, Die Another Day, to be part of the celebration is not exactly an ideal choice. The game is unquestionably going to take some liberties when adapting the stories to fit the gaming medium, and some of the changes can get under a fan's skin. At the start of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, for example, Bond is completely fine with MI6 letting Blofield go, when in the film, he was determined to get him even if it meant going rogue. Bond doesn't go rogue when the Licence to Kill portion begins; MI6 sends him to take down Sanchez, eliminating the edge and engagement in his revenge.
If stupid tweaks in the stories don't get a fan a little steamed, then having Bond completely misquoting his famous introduction line will! Pussy Galore asks for Bond's name, and Bond abruptly cuts her off responding "James Bond." How can anyone paying tribute to the franchise screw up an iconic phrase that even someone who hasn't seen the films would know?! For how fast Bond's response sounds in the game, it's as if part of the audio for Bond's line was missing, and that the makers just went with what they had given the tight deadline. But for me, the worst way for the game to not pay tribute to 50 Years of Bond is not to have blood trickling down the screen when it's game over. I'm not saying every 007 game is required to use the blood trickling effect for every game over screen; great games like Agent Under Fire and Everything or Nothing didn't need to use it. But if you're going to celebrate the franchise, this is the time to bring it back since it has been used since Goldeneye N64. Perhaps I wouldn't mind accepting this absence if the game didn't already have it in multiplayer and the showing gun barrel at the start screen for whenever I turn on the game. To me, that alone should sum up how little the game cares about producing a proper tribute to such an iconic action franchise.
The game's presentation is all over the map, which wouldn't be so bad if the gameplay itself wasn't so repetitive. At first, the gameplay starts out as fun as Goldeneye: Reloaded, using similar controls, having it a first-person shooter, given weapons that a player can upgrade, and having fight portions that combine quick-time and punch-out. The game also finally decides to provide Craig with gadgets that don't just involve him using a phone, including a laser watch that can also crack safes and a stun pen with three different settings. The gadgets featured on the phone offer some amusing features that can be used for scanning fingerprints and hacking the system. Aside from the levels based on Goldfinger dragging out as long as the levels in Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, it all feels exciting. But then, once the following two levels based on On Her Majesty Secret Service ends, it becomes clear that the majority of the game's levels will have identical objectives. A player will be running around blasting away enemies while blindly following the marker on the screen; search a villain's office for clues using the same gadgets; be forced to use the stealth mechanics once or twice or else the mission will fail; and will take on the villains in hand-to-hand combat. The stories and environments may be different, but they don't cover up the game's repetitive nature making the experience feel less exciting.
Some of the mechanics used continuously in the game do get annoying if they're not dull. I think the fighting mechanics are more fun than the other Craig games and wouldn't be as much of a problem if they didn't use them for every single boss battle. The game is so determined to recreate Bond's final showdown with a villain or henchman that it refuses to find creative and challenging ways of defeating a villain in a boss battle, making them anti-climatic since they all feel the same. And before the boss battles, the game would randomly require a player to fight against a regular henchman with these mechanics, so they're not even saved for when a player encounters an iconic villain. Compared to the game's forced stealth sections, however, it's minorly annoying.
The game usually allows players to carry out tasks their own way, similar to Goldeneye, where one can be sneaky or run around killing goons. In theory, the game's way of using stealth sounds promising, but in practice, a player will most likely be running to the next checkpoint. There are ways of sensing when a guard will spot Bond, and more than one way to neutralize them, except the game doesn't allow the player to hide the body. And for not having a straightforward way of detecting how many guards are present; it's easy for them to spot the body or the player. Once a player is spotted the alarms are raised and more guards will show-up where a player will most likely die half of the time. It gets more agitating when a game forces the player to occasionally use stealth. If spotted, it will automatically become a mission fail, which will become likely for the first few times. And if replaying a portion of a level more than a few times can't become as frustrating as 007 Racing, players are treated to about a minute or more of loading time. For heaven's sake, at least 007 Racing spared players that pain!
Not all levels play-out the same; the game does throw-in a ski chase and a few driving levels, which sounds cool, but it'll most likely make a player wish they were still playing a Call of Duty clone. This game easily has the worst skiing gameplay out of any in the franchise. It's not as much of a hassle to steer Bond, but catching up with Tracy while avoiding trees and fighting against goons is enough to warrant more than a few mission failures. But what's worse is the mission barely gives a player time to learn the controls, so as a player is learning, they will most likely fail in a matter of seconds, taking a few tries to grasp the controls before worrying about the obstacles.
One would expect the driving levels to have the same problem, but they are the complete opposite; they help the player so much that there's no challenge. They function more like tutorials than they do actual levels where a gamer has to think for their self. A player can't use any of the car's weapons freely unless it is locked onto an opponent's vehicle after three seconds, where the focus is more on catching up than to blast away like other Bond games. One level (out of the two) doesn't give a player the option to use any vehicle gadgets; it's just pursuing Franz Sanchez's tanker truck while avoiding missiles, where a player will be hit more times than easily avoiding them. But the damage doesn't matter for how short it is, so there's very little chance of restarting the level.
I know I sound harsher on this game than I did with Tomorrow Never Dies that I'm sure some of you are wondering why I didn't rank this as the second-worst 007 game? After all, some would go as far to argue it as the worst for failing as a tribute, killing the game franchise, coming across as annoyingly repetitive, and having an overlong playtime than any of the previous two games I've placed. Well, objectively, it is a bad game, and the criticisms it gets are deserving. But as I've stated since I started this list, I'm not a die-hard gamer or an expert on game criticism when compared to others who live and breathe this particular medium. So, speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn't play a whole lot of video games (or a lot of 2010s Call of Duty that this game clearly takes a lot from), I subjectively had more fun and interest in the game by comparison to the other ones I ranked low on the list.
I know there are games outside the franchise like this that are better, but I'm still satisfied with half of my time playing the game. The controls are easier than the previous two games where I felt I was better in control of Bond, making it less of a burden. The only time when the controls get as frustrating as the others is for the skiing level. When I first played this game, I did have problems with many of the levels for the issues I've mentioned. And playing it a second time now knowing the layout, though I can't say the mechanics and levels aren't still flawed to the point where it becomes tedious and frustrating, I had a better time. I personally never find myself getting tired of firing away at guards, watching them bleed, or knocking them out with fists or the pen. The same gadgets are used for half of the levels, yet I still find some amusement using them for the mini-games and different phone settings to search for clues. Even the fighting bits, as anti-climatic and overused as they are, still keep me engaged enough to feel some fun. I only wish the game didn't tell me where to strike my opponent to make it feel a little more challenging.
Judging the game from a graphic standpoint, it is nicer to look at by comparison. I enjoyed exploring places like Fort Knox, the Ice Palace, Piz Gloria, and Drax's space station during the missions, as well as visiting each villain's office. They may not fit the Craig era, and some parts of these levels do look bland when it attempts to modernize them, but as a whole, I'm happily pleased by the atmosphere. The character models are not unappealing either. When they look different from how the characters looked in the original film, they can be boringly forgettable (like Jinx, Dr. Goodhead, and Draco). Still, when the game does use the likeness of actors of the movie, they're just as fun and menacing to look at as they are in live-action. It also helps that some of the cast is voiced by veteran Bond actors, including Carey Lowell, Toby Stephens, and Michael Lonsdale, each turning in an excellent performance. And not all the original character models that the game creates are terrible. As much as I enjoy Felix's new model (though wished he looked more like the current one of the time Jeffrey Wright), my real appreciation goes to Blofield. Instead of resembling one version of the character, Blofled is a combination of Donald Pleasance, Telly Savalas, and Charles Grey, and yet, still as a whole, stands out as an original design. It makes me wish that the Blofield we see here was the Blofield we get in the official Daniel Craig movies. I'll even say that this encounter with Blofield is the best liberty the game takes for creating a better climax than the actual movie by having him and Bond duke it out on top of a cable car, as opposed to chasing each other on bobsleds. And I find Blofield disappearing after falling off the car to be more plausible of keeping his fate unknown until the end than Bond just leaving him attached to a branch and not walking a few feet to check if he's dead. The same can be said about Pussy Galore turning good where her change comes from finding out about Goldfinger using the gas to kill the guards than knocking-them out, when in the film it was from falling in love with Bond after he forces himself on her.
I'm not going to excuse how clumsy the game's attempt to tie everything together is; it's horrible. But I can't help but like a bit of the anthology element of giving the player more than one story to play, which feels a little better after completing the game now that I can pick and choose the stories I enjoy. And a part of me does kind of like the idea of new Bond meets old Bond, and that these are reimagined adventures that happened before Skyfall (though the film Specter retrospectively made the game's concept more of a disaster). Goldeneye: Reloaded objectively handles this idea much better, but again subjectively speaking, I think it's more fascinating here for how odd and disordered it is with its choices.
Unlike most Daniel Craig games like Quantum of Solace (Ps3) or Blood Stone, where the multiplayer campaign is strictly online, this game allows players the option, just like in Goldeneye: Reloaded. But given the game's rushed production, the multiplayer duplicates Reloaded's campaign. I won't bother wasting my words on the details of this multiplayer, given how identical it is to a previous game, but I will point out a few pros. The arenas are all locations from story mode that look as appealing. But the only arenas I usually play in are the ones from Die Another Day, for how colorful and full of personality they are compared to others. And if there is one thing that this game outdoes Reloaded are the character skins. Aside from a few bland redesigns, the designs for the characters in story mode resemble their film counterpoint, and the game includes most of the special character models from Reloaded. The only new special character players can play who was not a leftover from Reloaded (unless the character's an unlockable) is Emilio Largo. I don't mind having the villain from Thunderball as a playable character, but would it be so much to have one more special villain that's not from Reloaded?
Overall Thoughts
As bad as 007 Racing and Tomorrow Never Dies was, they did offer great ideas that moved the franchise forward when this game just killed it. But I'm sorry, as influential as those games were, they still weren't all that fun to play through as a whole. 007 Legends game doesn't offer anything new, but I can at least say I had a much more enjoyable time playing it since there is some familiarity to the gameplay to make it a little easier to play. As repetitive as it is, I don't find myself bored. The game's writing is terrible (at times downright insulting), yet it does make a few improvements. Its choices of celebrating the Bond films are stupid but still intriguing. The character models and backgrounds look cool half the time, and half the time it doesn't. It's a Bond game I know I should hate, and a part of me does, and yet a part of me doesn't for the things it gets right, half right, or fails in such a bizarre way that I can't help but find amusing. My feelings for why I enjoy it are complicated, and I'm probably a minority for feeling this way. The bottom line is I had more fun and interest with this than the other two games combined, and if you'd like to read more about why it's higher on the list, please read the "favorite mission" section.
To play on the anthology element of the game, I'm going to pick the worst and best missions as a whole, instead of by level.
Worst Mission: On Her Majesty's Secret Service
I was going to go with Licence to Kill because it looks dull compared to other levels; the stealth mechanics are at their worst when required to plant bombs; Bond is assigned to get Sanchez from MI6 rather than personally going after him; and it has the least active driving in any of the 007 games. On Her Majesty's Secret Service does have a nicer environment, a fantastic Blofield design, and a better climax than the actual film. But then I find Bond happily allowing MI6 not to touch Blofield and give in to his demands to be more insulting than taking away Bond breaking MI6 rules for revenge, at least he's still giving it, just under orders. While it is nice attacking Blofield's base, it's at this point in the game when it becomes clear that most of the levels are not going to change as much with their objectives. Some of the fun of exploring Blofield's base gets ruined when Bond is forced to wear night-vision goggles, which was fine in the Goldfinger level since it takes place in a part of Fort Knox not featured in the film, but here it's while exploring each room where Blofield's Angels of Death have slept. Rooms that would no doubt be inventively designed to suit each woman of different ethnicity, and yet we're looking at these rooms in night-vision as they appear to look the same, making it a missed opportunity. On top of it all, this mission in the game does include the infamous skiing level, which is so unfairly advanced that it'll make a player wish it was as easy to finish as the lackluster driving level in Licence to Kill. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the part of the game where gamers decided to stop playing the game altogether. Who would want to spend half of their playtime watching loading screens after dying so many times?
Favorite Mission: Moonraker
This level alone is the very reason why I ranked this game higher than others on the list! I always thought Die Another Day would translate better to video game format than film for how ridiculous it is, and yet sadly fails just as much as it did as a movie. I'd swear that the game's handling of Moonraker would fall under the same trap and was pleased to see that I was wrong. Visually, it's the best-looking level with plenty of cool rooms to explore that look distinct; my favorites include the training rooms, the center of Drax's launch base, and the space station. Unless someone owned the PC version of NightFire, this is the only level to explore space as James Bond, when the console version's of the space level was just a big boss battle. Adding to the level's fun is the ability to float around after the gravity is shut-off while firing a laser at Drax's "master race." Unlike other times when the game annoyingly changes its controls for players to get used to, the controls for floating up and down are straightforward to grasp, which is surprising since this level could have easily been as insufferable as the skiing level. And Bond is given more to do than just blast enemies, searching offices for clues, using forced stealth mechanics, and taking part in hand to hand combat. Players have to escape the exhaust before the ship blasts-off; take part in a bit of on-rails shooting; fire at the space stations defense system; finding codes to delay the poison pods to eventually destroying them before time runs out; and are allowed to fool around by scaring and hitting defenseless people recruited by Drax to re-populate the earth. This level even gives fans a chance to fight alongside Jaws, which is cooler than it is in the film since he's firing lasers as well. And instead of giving Jaws a girlfriend for a cheap plot device for him to reform, Bond persuades him to help because he doesn't fit Drax's ideals for a perfect race. Bond's persuasion makes Jaws' change plausible while still keeping his villainous reputation as his actions suggest that their truce is only temporary when in the film it's most likely they're allies, now that he has a lover. Serving as the olive to the Martini is Michael Lonsdale's reprisal of Hugo Drax, standing out as the best of the limited number of original actors returning to their roles, by still strongly coming across as charismatic, and playfully menacing and snarky. The game's problems are still present in the level, but it's more fun than the others, and if I had to recommend one segment for gamers to play, it's unquestionably this.
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