On her Majesty’s secret s**t list – 007 Legends Review

It’s is very hard to screw up a James bond video game. The design had been perfected by Rare with Goldeneye on the N64, continued through with EA’s rights to the game with both original titles and the ones based off the movies. Activision however had some difficult times with it, despite a great start with Quantum of Solace with Treyarch, continuing from the short but amazing Blood Stone.

This is Eurocom’s second attempt at the 007 licence, the first being the mediocre remake of Goldeneye. They taken an ambitious concept by bringing 5 classic James Bond movies, and his latest adventure Skyfall, as levels for the game with hopes of linking them all together.

The game starts during the opening sequence of Skyfall, where James is shot and falls off the train (it’s not considered a spoiler when it’s in the trailers for the movies), and is presumed dead. At this point, James’ life is flashing before his eyes.

The movies that they are linking together are Goldfinger, On her Majesty’s Secret Service, Moonraker, Licence to Kill, Die Another Day and Skyfall, pretty much one movie per actor that played James Bond. The story is told in a “What if?” style where the events of these “classic” Bond events have taken place between the 4 year gap of Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. This would explain why you will see more modern weapons and technologies in the game, and why all the Bond’s look like Daniel Craig (not that I’m really complaining about that, but it would have been better if they actually got him to voice act and not just lend his likeness).

The real problem with the story is that there is none, it moves from level to level without really explaining what is happening between the events. Making it unclear to why James is after Goldfinger or anyone else for that matter and what exactly it does it have to do with Skyfall’s story line. It quickly becomes a giant clusterf**k of James Bond storylines which just don’t make sense to this game.

At it’s best, 007 Legends is a straight forward shooter following in the footsteps of Call of Duty. The big difference is that you can gain experience by completing optional objectives which can be used to purchase new attachments for specific types of guns, and upgrades for your gadgets. These moments, however simple and basic for shooters, are not as fun as they could be due to bad controls, unbalanced difficulty, and generally weak weapons. It seems like if you don’t do a headshot every time, your wasting your entire clip just to take down one enemy.

The real problem that 007 Legends has is it’s stealth levels. Most of the time these are used to break the monogamy of the action sections. Usually if your caught, you can get back into hiding and continue to sneak around and deal with opponents at a higher attention a la Metal Gear or Splinter Cell. The minute you are caught in 007 Legends, you are surrounded by more soldiers then you started with all with amazing aim and powerful weapons. There is no indicator that makes sure your completely hidden and if the enemy just glimpse at you or a dead body, they will raise the alarm. While this seems fairly realistic, it’s a terrible system for a video game and makes it not fun.

The Quick time events for the game are just as bad, while from time to time you’ll get some cool moments like fighting Jaws and Oddjob, but the straight hand to hand quicktime events are done so sloppy that it feels like it’s over way to quick without anything really happening. The hits don’t look like they do much damage and having the icons show you exactly what to press to hit in each section takes away from the event.

Most of the problems with 007 Legends could be calculated to a rushed development, the concept was interesting but unfortunately the execution was just awful. If you really have the need to play a James Bond game, do yourself a favor and play anything else then Legends.