James Bond: Agent Under Fire

James Bond: Agent Under Fire is Electronic Art's second attempt to add to the Bond universe. EA's first James Bond game came under the name of The World is Not Enough. This was a great game given the pressure it had to deal with competing with Rare's game Goldeneye. All that we can do now, is hope that AUF can be another masterpiece.

Of course, as in all James Bond games you are put in control of James. Your mission is to stop Malprave Industries taking over the world (of course) with clones of the world leaders. The boss of Malprave Industries, Adrian Malprave, is Bond's main target. If he succeeds in bringing Adrian down Malprave Industries will crash.

As in most Bond games you will have enemies as well as allies. They will give you briefings before each mission. As always you will be briefed by M (Bond's female boss), R (Gadgets Briefing), Zoe Nightshade (a CIA Agent which helps in-game as well) and Natalya (giving Bond her help after her Golden adventure.) The briefing will play an important role if you are to complete the game.

The game will boast an awesome arsenal of weapons

This includes:
Wolfram P2K
SWZ SSR 4000
Frinesi Special 12
Dart Gun
Ingalls Type 20
KA 57
Windsor-Viper
MRL-22
Meyer-Westiloher LiGW
Koffler & Stock K57

These are just a few of the many weapons in AUF. You may recognise quite a few of them, for some of them played starring roles in Tomorrow Never Dies (the gun, not the character.)

Multiplayer looks to come into its own with AUF. The multiplayer looks to copy and improve on Perfect Dark's Multiplayer. With Bots and many different styles of play, it seems that it could even topple PD's famous first person shooter multiplayer mayhem. A great improvement when you compare it to EA's first attempt of Tomorrow Never Dies, that was a total flop!

AUF will have a mass of twelve well constructed levels for gamers to feast their eyes on. They will all have a minimum of one mission through out and they even reach a climax of twelve (from sources.)

These include:
Trouble in Paradise
Precious Cargo
Dangerous Pursuit
Bad Diplomacy
Cold Reception
Night of the Jackal
Streets of Bucharest
Fire and Water
Forbidden Depths
Poseidon
Mediterranean Crisis
Evil Summit

You can see by the name that the titles of the levels they look to be stuffed with fun gameplay and a wonderful connection between levels.

EA has dished out the big bucks in order to license James, Moneypenny and other James Bond characters. The reason for this is that they are not going to follow any movie plot for AUF and the original creators of James Bond have asked for a lump sum of money in order for Electronic Art's to do this. This may prove to be a great success as EA will not be restricted by a pre-made plot. This will lead to characters, items and areas being better suited to the game. On the other side of things the plot might be a dismal display. In this case the whole game will be effected, because we all know that the base of any game is the plot.

Graphics: All characters are all well rendered, with a considerable number of pixels going into each individual to give a surreal sense. The background is not to shabby either. Each stage is beautifully drawn up and you will find realtime lighting everywhere. Each of Bond's items (being either guns or gadgets) are almost carbon copies of the original and will give each player a sense of reality.

Gameplay: The gameplay doesn't seem to differ that much from any other Bond game. If you have played Tomorrow Never Dies then you probably would have experienced the gameplay already. Multiplayer looks to be great and really I can't find any reported fault be looking around many sources throughout the gaming community.

Lastibility: This looks to be one of the strongest parts in the game. As it was with Goldeneye the gameplay looks to be extremely fun. This will help gamers to replay the levels over and over again. Although now, EA looks to have incorporated a great multiplayer mode that looks to rival Perfect Dark's this will have gamers playing for months.

Sound: With music fit for the London Symphony Orchestra and voice acting almost identical with the movie, the sound seems to be faultless. Is there any better noise than letting off a full magazine of ammo?

Overall: This game looks like a real eye opener. From the PS2 and Xbox's port being substantial for various hardware reasons. The GameCube port seems to be running extremely well, according to various sources. A must buy!

Anticipation Rating: 94%

The Boz Master
19/5/02