James Bond is a cinematic icon, celebrating his 50th anniversary in cinemas this year and enjoying his 60th in print starting in 2013. On print and onscreen, he is the epitome of debonair living intermingled with male power fantasies—he drives the best cars, drinks the most finest alcohol, and mingles with the most beautiful women, all while protecting Her Majesty and the world from megalomaniacal geniuses and power mad businessmen alike. He is an icon, and a force to be reckoned with.
In videogames, well, it’s not that simple.
Bond has been kicked around in the gaming industry since 1983’s James Bond 007 for Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, but took off like a rocket after Rare blew up the Nintendo 64 with GoldenEye 007. For gamers, Bond was now synonymous with top-shelf shooter action, and barring the occasional 007 Racing, most follow-ups mimicked GoldenEye’s tendencies towards first-person shooting. Bond split his focus between adapting pre-existing movies (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough, Quantum of Solace) and newly-written adventures (Agent Under Fire, Everything or Nothing, Bloodstone), with quality swinging wildly between entries; I enjoyed the hell out of Agent Under Fire and Everything or Nothing on PlayStation 2, but Bloodstone on Xbox 360 put me to sleep.
Our of all of Bond’s various adventures in videogames, though, very few have actually felt anything like a proper James Bond film. My gateway into the Bond license was GoldenEye 007 on the N64, and I was surprised, upon renting several of the spy’s movies, at how little action there was compared to the non-stop shooting on GoldenEye. The niceties of Bond’s film escapades—the exotic locales, the nuts and bolts spying, the banter and interaction between Bond and his villain du jour—are often lost in EA and Activision’s single-minded goal at reviving Bond as the premiere multiplayer game in shooting.
There have been some exceptions. Both Agent Under Fire and Nightfire for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube sprinkled Bond Moments throughout their campaign, preset traps and triggers in each level that took advantage of Bond’s resourcefulness in the field, like shooting out the winch on a crane or knocking an enemy boss into an environmental trap. Bond adventures in the third-person perspective often feature sojourns into vehicles and other less shooting-intensive missions. Still, Bond is so much more than how well he shoot, and considering the depths he can plumb if confined only to shooting (*coughhack007Legendswheezecough*), developers are doing both themselves and a disservice by their laser-like focus on Bond’s action prowess.
What separates Bond from other action heroes is character. Bond is a rapscallion bastard of a gentleman, enjoying expensive tastes in clothes and cars, and an impossible competence for completing his mission. Most first-person shooter protagonists end up becoming cyphers for the players, either intentionally (Master Chief, Chell, etc.) or unintentionally (everyone not named Captain Price in the Call of Duty series), making the FPS genre wildly ill-suited to strut why Bond is such a good character. If Bond is to be the hero of his own game, the best place to start is with a third-person camera; we came to see Bond kick ass, so let’s actually see him!
That same character bleeds over into nearly everyone else Bond interacts with while on Her Majesty’s secret service, from the cast of colorful villains he clashes with to the slew of beautiful women he meets over the course of his missions. Think of the film Goldfinger and the first scene from it that pops into mind; there’s a good chance it isn’t the ending fistfight with Oddjob or the car chase involving an ejector seat, but “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!” The rapport between Bond and his quarry is as big a part of the experience as a shaken-not-stirred martini, and increased focus on dramatic character moments as well as action would serve the series well.
While large action setpieces make up a notable part of 007’s cinematic adventures, they’re hardly the parts where most of the screen time is dedicated. The best of Bond shows him investigating and following leads, gathering intelligence and piecing together the grander picture. I would love to see some sort of investigation system used during a mission, something like a cross between LA Noire’s evidence-gathering mechanic and Arkham Asylum’s basically automatic evidence-gathering mechanic. Downtime helps make big moments seem more exciting, and low-key sequences of examining areas for clues would help sell Bond for what he really is: a spy and member of British Intelligence.
Many of Bond’s third-person games feature separate driving sequences, sometimes handled by developers with experience making racing games (Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Project Gotham Racing, etc.). Bond involves himself in vehicular action during most of his films, making the addition of car chases well-suited to videogame adaptation.
Bond is a classic character of cinema and literature whose exploits are begging for proper videogame treatment. Unfortunately, very few of them receive a treatment even approaching “proper,” to the detriment of his potential for greatness in the videogame space. Rather than continuing to churn out yearly Bond games of varying (read: “low”) quality, Activision needs to hand Bond off to a trustworthy developer who can put give their own take, similar to what Rocksteady did with Batman or what High Moon did with Transformers. After all, that same approach was taken by a well-liked development studio who released their own spin on the James Bond formula a full two years after the most-recent Bond film—that studio was Rare, and the game was GoldenEye 007. Certainly no one can complain about those results.
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