GENRE
	First-Person Shooter
	DEVELOPER
	Electronic Arts
	PUBLISHER
	Electronic Arts
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-4
	CONNECTIVITY
	no
	BUY NOW AT

Under fire? Damn! You bet 007 is! EA has taken the MGM owned James Bond franchise and has opted to avoid the espionage and sneaking around. They’ve instead keyed in on what makes James Bond great; completely over the top end to end action. Sure, in the movies, Bond suaves the ladies out of their thongs and does some sneaking about. But when you think of Bond you really think of tanks rolling through cities, shootout after shootout and stunning stunt and driving sequences.

Agent Under fire delivers on the essence of modern day Bond. In fact, I’d say that it’s more accurate of a representation of modern Bond flicks than Goldeneye. Careful Dojo Disciples. I didn’t say this is a better game than GE; but it is more of a Bond game. This game is fun, entertaining and light hearted. If you approach it with the same mentality that you bring to watching a Bond movie you’ll enjoy the entertaining qualitities of Agent Under fire.

One last comment before we begin. I think that several critics missed the entire point of this game in their reviews. They bitched that it wasn’t “spy” enough and that it was all shooting. It is! That’s the beauty of it. EA has created a beautiful and action packed entertainment package. While it may not be a long adventure like Goldeneye before it, Agent Under Fire is a blast while it lasts.

visuals

Gorgeous. From their sports line up right up to their action titles, EA are creating beautiful games. The first word that comes to mind about Agent under fire smooth. The gameplay graphics have no slowdown and everything whips around with excellent clarity. Regardless of how much action is taking place on screen. I kept thinking to myself; “Imagine a Goldeneye redux on Cube ala Resident Evil?” Dare I imagine Dojo Disciples? Dare I?!?!?

Enemies are big, bold and animate fairly well. The collision detection could use some work though. One of the brilliant graphical touches is the “tracer” fire from your weapon and your opponents. Just like real bullets packed with an incendiary charge, you can see the "white chiclets.” The cool thing is that you can trace enemies by following their firing pattern.

As for the driving levels, both the BMW and Aston Martin look beautiful. The cars blast through the streets with Beetle Adventure Racing style emergency brakes and multiple weapons. The level with the Aston hunting down components and flying through the air is particularly “Bondesque.” Rather excellent actually.

Menus are easy to navigate and intuitive cut scenes really add some excellent humor and a great original Bond storlyine. The have some solid dialogue and cinematic quality.

audio

There’s plenty of Bond music to fill in the gameplay. In fact, you’ll notice that every time you engage an enemy a soundtrack plays. This adds to the game tension.

All of the guns and environments’ soundscapes are well detailed. From the zipper of a body armor, to the reloading of a defender and the steps of your opponent in multiplayer; all of the sound details add to the immersive qualities of the game. Nice work.

gameplay

Fast, frantic, over the top explosive. That would just about sum up the gamepaly here. The story line moves along at a zippy pace. It moves you from different locales and gameplay styles. From FPS to tank gunner to an Aston Martin-equiped stuntman. All of the control schemes work well. I have to say that this game has made me realize just how tight a dual analog stick control set up can be. Once I got the swing of using the main stick and C-stick together, I was flying. This also led me to the realization that I wish the C-stick had a knob on top of it. I have big fingers and sometimes even the rubberized top can’t keep me on the stick.

Not to harp on Electronic Gaming Monthly, but they bitched about fumbling through gadgets when looking for weapons in their Xbox review. This is not the case in the Cube version. First of all, the D pad is really easy to reach on the Cube. Secondly, if you’re ever really in a bind you just tap the fire button and you’ll shift from your gadget to the last weapon you had selected on the fly. Very simple control scheme.

From a personal perspective, I really enjoyed the gameplay here. It captures the joviality and excitement that is Bond. There’s even a reward system for when you perform “Bond” moves. When I fought a mini boss chic named the Jackal I realized that instead of shooting out with her head on, I could lead her to a certain spot and hit a machine. Zoom! She was pushed by the machine into a vat of acid! Cue the Bond music and M calls in to ask what happened to Jackal… you reply: “She fell for me.” HA! Love it!

My main gripe about the gameplay is that even with all the difficulty levels and reward systems there just isn’t enough depth here to keep you going for an extended period of time.

multiplayer

There are some really cool mini games in the multiplayer mode including the Escort mission where you duel across a train station to protect or assassinate a VIP. It’s too bad you can’t play these modes in a one player version against bots like in Imperfect Dark. Now that would’ve really extended the gameplay as a combat simulator.

I had a great time pulverizing my brother into a tie in the Castle level. It was cool because I turned up the audio and we said that we’d ignore the radar so we were actually listening for each other’s footsteps and trying to trace our weapon fire. Very Nice.

overall

EA has done a great job capturing Bond’s essence. Maybe I’m in a good mood because of Easter (that’s rare of me) but I found this game to be really fun! Mind you, I’m reviewing this as a rental though. I picked Under Fire at the local Blockbuster. Would I be disappointed if I bought his game? Probably not. It was great fun. The prudent thing to do here is to rent this game first. You may want to do more in terms of replay than just chase down records. In the end, this game is nothing like Goldeneye. That’s a good thing in my opinion. Good work capturing Bond, EA! Check it out!

I agree with Eric: Agent Under Fire almost perfectly captures the style and pacing of the recent 007 films. And as a long-time fan of the Man with a License to Kill, that's exactly why this Bond disappoints me. He snaps one-liners, flirts, incites general mayhem -- but doesn't really resemble anything from Fleming‘s books or the classic pictures. (Not that the classic films resembled the books either, but that's a seperate discussion.) A Bond in style, but not in substance. Brosnan’s Bond has been saddled with superficial scripts, at the expense of a more interesting psychological context. He's a man with no family, whose job is to kill, who respects the one woman he's close to -- Moneypenny -- by making her the one woman he doesn't bag. It's a fitting metaphor. Agent Under Fire is not based on any specific movie. The developers could have taken chances, and made Bond colder, less cartoon. They didn’t. AUF is a solid and pretty, if brief, First Person Shooter, but blows a unique opportunity to advance this cinematically mishandled franchise. This is a fine shooter; genre fans, take note. Bond fans… Die Another Day. 7.9/10 -- Gordon Distin

8.1/10