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EA must have one hell of a time with the Bond series after they acquired the
license back in 1998, after Rare passed on the oppertunity to do a game based
upon "Tomorrow Never Dies" (and they should have taken it, rather than spend
so much of their time with Perfect Dark.). The first 007 game under EA was
Tomorrow Never Dies for the PS1, which is by far, the worst game in the series. Now EA
kind of has an excuse, they didn't develop it, Black Ops did. But still, who
was in charge of quality control? The next year, EA recruited two different
companies to handle the N64 and PS1 version of "The World Is Not Enough". Black
Ops was once again in charge of the PS1 version, and Eurocom was in charge of
the N64 version. Both turned out pretty good, the N64 being better just because
it was longer, had a multiplayer mode and felt like GoldenEye. The PS1 version
looked nice, but was way too short. Then comes Agent Under Fire (I'll ignore
007 Racing, because it's better compared to Spy Hunter than GoldenEye), an original
Bond game form EA, that wasn't based upon a 007 film. At first, I wondered "What
the F- were they thinking?". But after playing it, it wasn't so bad. It's a
fairly adequate FPS, but again, could have used more.
Agent Under Fire's premise is about cloning. Someone wants to clone big
government figures around the world, and of course, Bond must investigate and
stop whoever is behind this. Sounds like a standard 007 script to me. And the
writers and conceptualists behind the game have actually done a good job of
re-creating a 007 movie, although this one doesn't exist. It follows the formula
of Guns, Goons and Girls, and does it well. We have our established mad man (or
woman?) with their henchmen, the "Bond Girls" who seem to always come up at the
most oppertune times, and of course mindless destruction and gunplay. While
stealth elements have been implemented into the game, they're not always apparent.
Most of the time, the game hints at what you should do in terms of gadgets, but
there's also hidden elements of stealthiness, ones you wouldn't think of, such
as crawling through air shafts. It seems like the game was designed to have people
shoot everything in sight, but when you go through everything, things don't seem
right.
The graphics, for a PS2 game, is pretty good. The textures are fine, the models
look fine and the stages are pretty big. But all this comes at a price. This
version has a framerate that tends to lag every so often, and the lines appear
jagged a bit too often. Also, this is one of the first games I've actually seen
flickering in. Some say Ridge Racer V had it, but I couldn't see it. Here, I
could.
The sound, is pretty good. All the voices and effects
are intact, and sound like they should. Guns sound like guns, cars sound like cars,
and oofs sound like oofs. The voice acting is adequate, and kind of comical in
a way, but it really does match the game.
The control is pretty tight for the most part. The control here is not as
tight as it is on the GCN, but it is playable. Fumbling around for important equipment
drives me crazy. It's so unnecessary going through your invetory for your
grapple wire.
Overall, AUF is a fairly solid game if you plan on using the multiplayer
stages and modes. As a single player game, it can be beaten within a rental.
I played it from start to finish in about 3 days, even when I repeated a couple
of stages (either because I had to or because I wanted to). If you really need
a first preson shooter, there's much better and more depthful out there. Games
such as TimeSplitters 2, Medal Of Honor Frontline and more offer longer gameplay
than what's offered here. The gameplay here is just too short for one to play, and unless you
can pick it up for $10-15, I would just recommend a rental.
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