While not entirely crappy, 007 Nightfire is a game I'll never play again. I will try not to praise GoldenEye all the way, first because I know and you know that one's a freaking awesome game and second, because this is not GoldenEye, this is Nightfire.
Ported by Gearbox in 2002 -the same that gave us the Half-life expansions and Halo (I guess)- Nightfire is your standard FPS bringing you Pierce Brosnan as James Bond! -I think that's pretty cool- I don't know much about the Bond books, only the movies, but it appears that this one is not taken from any of them, it's like a made up plot from both the books and the movies. The intro of the game is just awesome -and in my opinion better than many of the openings from the movies-, The song is "Nearly civilized" by Esthero by the way, it's a collage of all the cheesy images we like from the movies, very pretty.
One thing that I must admit is that, even if the plot is well made, It felt rushed and I always felt like I was left out of it, even to the point that I didn't get it right at all, I don't know, it was like getting someone to resume me Moby Dick, you can get to know what happens, but it's not like you actually read it.
One of the shittier aspects of the game is AI, they are plain dumbasses! I don't know how to explain myself, but they are simply dumb, sometimes you shoot one from a distance and he turns around and runs the other way while the soldier besides him is just standing like nothing happened, or he runs and shoots the hell out of a wall or runs straight at you while you shoot him, or shoots a rocket to you while standing just in front of you, I mean, they feel dumb and odd. One thing I just hated is that sometimes you shoot the shit out of them and they keep on shooting you -pretty much like the soldiers from Half-life, but at least those where smart- or you shoot them in the head and they don't die -the inverse is totally likable, sometimes you shoot them in the arm and they die instantly :D-, also they scream things, but all of them say the same thing, like "Identify yourself" -while you're shooting him- or some things in japanese that sound really stupid, at first it seems ok, then you get bored of it.
Sometimes I felt that there was a lot of unfair challenge, I know this is some kind of stealth game and you have to avoid enemies and all that, but there are times you are walking and just killed a bunch of dudes when the door behind you opens and a guy with a rocket launcher blows the shit out of you! Come on! I don't have an eye inside my butt hole!
While playing I felt that there was no technique or tactics or anything, yeah, you can go past by some guards and all that, but I preferred to run and gun everyone because there are times that you are going stealth fine and a dude like a kilometer away spots you and alerts the 50 guards you just left behind and they shoot the shit out of you -Pretty much like the mercenaries from Far Cry-
Your partners are crap too, there's this mission where Allura -I guess it's her- joins you and she is carrying a sniper rifle, but damn she's so dumb! she never shots that shit! sometimes the guards are in front of her shooting you and she just stands there watching! sometimes when you reload, she respawns in front of a guard and neither of them does a damn thing xD
The game is really buggy at times, sometimes you try to open a door, but you have to be standing at a very specific spot to get it open, also, there is a part near the end of the game that a camera spots you and alerts the guards, but I’ve never been able of finding where the hell that camera is placed! On that same spot, there’s a security room, you can’t open the door, the guards come out and you’re set, but sometimes they don’t open the door and try to shoot you through the door, and this is a game stopper, I stood there like ten minutes trying to get them to open the door and eventually had to reload the game. Sometimes the corpses fly away when they die xD
A special mention goes for the ninjas near the end of the game, they are just fucking shit! You can’t shoot them because they run around and they take like a million bullets to go down while they can bring you down in no time -I mean, it’s James Bond, not Chuck Norris-
Even walking in the game is odd, you feel like you’re floating or something; and the guns feel odd, I don’t know how to explain it, but they are odd, they don’t feel like when you play other games and you feel the shots, remember playing Return to castle Wolfenstein? Remember how it felt shooting Nazis with a Luger? Remember how it felt shooting vortigaunts with a shotgun, like a real shot? Well, that doesn’t happen here, it’s an odd feeling that makes it even more bothersome and crappy to kill the dumb soldiers, even the sounds of the shots sound odd, and that makes your experience even crappier.
Well, this has gone too long right? To wrap things up, 007 Nightfire is a good game but fails in many many aspects and that is what does not let this game become a great game –or get close to Goldeneye-, I enjoyed playing this game, but sometimes I hated it and wondered why the hell was I playing this shit. Play it if you can have it borrowed or something so you don’t waste your money in it –Or if you can get it for a console, try it there, I’ve heard it’s better there-
PD: At least, boobs look nice :D
