James Bond 007: Nightfire

No amount of gadgetry can save this game from John Gillooly.

Gearbox software has made a name for itself through its work in enhancing existing games. Be it with Valve on the Half-Life franchise, or with Activision on Tony Hawk 3, it has seldom put a foot wrong. Tony Hawk 3 proved that a PC conversion of a successful console franchise does not have to suck arse.

So much excitement has accompanied Gearbox’s work on the much belated reappearance of James Bond on the PC. Designed for a simultaneous release on all consoles and PC, the game is primarily a first person shooter of the old school (the console version also includes action and driving sequences). The scene was set for fun.

With gadgets galore, guns, Bond chicks, villains and a crack development team, the promise was huge and it was doubtful that this would ever be a bad game.

And they succeeded -- sort of. James Bond 007: Nightfire is not a bad game, just an incredibly average one. Maybe we have been spoilt by the recent release of the sleek and sassy No One Lives Forever 2, but Nightfire just reeks of been there done that. The game opens with a very bond-ish theme tune, complete with strangely abstract visuals.

This then segues into the opening movie, in which an insanely accurate model of Pierce Brosnan parachutes from a plane into the middle of the action.

While the shock of realising that the voice actor playing Bond sounds nothing like Brosnan is left until the second bout of cutscenes, this first one demonstrates agonisingly well the lack of attention paid in the console porting. All the movies seem to be rendered at 640 x 480, appearing fuzzy and interlaced on the PC screen (but apparently looking fantastic on the console versions).

You then land in the thick of things and come face-to-face with an engine that looks good but not great. After being spoiled by the small touches and overall gorgeous looks of the Unreal Warfare and Lithtech Jupiter engines that have reared their heads of late, Nightfire seems to lack something. The visuals are functional and non-offensive, but as said, simply not great.

The next step involves sneaking into a chalet, and gives you your first glimpse at the enemy AI, which is marvellously patchy. One good thing is that if you reach the point of frustration with a certain enemy you can just watch his movements that he will repeat perfectly when you reload after death.

Apart from being mundanely predictable, the AI is also one can short of a six pack when it comes to detecting you, rendering any attempt at sneaking completely useless. Sometimes you can walk right up to an enemy, shoot your unsilenced gun at another enemy over the other side of the room and not have the guy near you flinch. Other times you’ll poke your head around a doorway and instant gunfire will be returned. And then the gunman will stand there firing blindly into the wall, still aiming at you but too stupid to realise that there is 50cm of reinforced concrete between your head and the muzzle of his gun.

The mind boggles that first person shooter AI can still be so average and mundane; years after games like Half-Life raised the bar. And the experience working with that fine example of AI should have rubbed off on Gearbox at some point or another.

This is not helped by the loose and crappy control system. At first glance it is your standard move, shoot, reload, jump, crouch kinda fare, but it translates poorly in game.

The addition of lean controls are good, but in the end the fact you cannot lean while crouching, moving or even standing stock still at times renders them to the depths of irrelevance.

Movement is imprecise and clunky, weapons just feel wrong most of the time and it is generally an unsatisfying experience all round.

Nightfire could have been great, and from all accounts the console versions are much better than this PC outing. Gearbox just fails to translate the game into anything more than a bog standard shooter, and considering we have already seen some stellar efforts in the past few months it slides well and truly into mediocrity.