007 Racing (PS1) - The names title, misleading title

007 Racing Summary Toot

There are several things that people think about when they hear James Bond. The action, the ladies, the gadgets and by extension of that, the cars. There is probably a larger portion of people I anticipate who remember and talk about the Bond Cars. So, on the surface, a racing game based on the James Bond Universe is… Probably not a bad idea, I can see it now, it would be an arcade style kart racer with different Bond cars and characters, heroes and villains alike, power-ups like missiles, oil slicks, etc. Perhaps throw in some quotes and taunts as you overtake people or hit them with a weapon!  It all sounds incredibly feasible! Heck, character kart racing is a sub-genre we can probably blame Mario Kart for.

Yeah, that’s not what we got.

007 Racing is, primarily, a mission-based vehicle game that has a scattershot of ideas, providing each of its 12 missions its own unique feel. Missions include destroying targets with your car’s gadgets, a checkpoint style time trial, a pseudo tailing mission where you are trying to download information from a series of cars whilst maintaining a certain distance from them. Heck there is even an actual point to point race! I guess that title wasn’t a lie!

With all that, there is something here that could be enjoyed. I say could because we need to address probably the biggest sin this game has and that is the control, when it works, it feels decent but a lot of the time you will find yourself wrestling with it. A few of the more time-sensitive missions are likely to test your patience more than your driving skills. Personally, I found the driving inconsistent, there will be runs you will have where you glide around corners seamlessly, and other times when you will spin out of control wildly costing you valuable time, prompting a reset. Graciously, most missions are relatively short meaning you aren’t losing a huge amount from those restarts.

Thankfully, most missions your car is quite sturdy to crashes, whether they be scrapes or head-on collisions. Your biggest threat to your health appears to be small arms fire, goons peppering you with gunfire proves to be far more fatal than crashing headfirst into oncoming traffic. Actually, that is not 100% true, there is a bigger threat, your own missiles and explosives seem to have an impressive amount of splash damage that on a couple of missions you may find yourself completely sapped of health because you weren’t a quarter mile away from your own missile explosion. Very annoying on missions where you need to actively destroy enemy vehicles or other targets.

The game also features the weirdest difficulty landscape I have ever seen. Not quite Driver 1 difficult or confusing for an introductory mission, but there is a lot going on and it can be quite overwhelming. It’s one of those missions that is easy once you know what you are doing and once you get a feel for the game. There is a lot going on, enemies shooting at you and explosions around you, but you can by and large ignore those. But anyway, after the first few missions it then becomes much easier, until the difficulty spikes again at mission 9 before ending on a rather polite downhill. I say that, the last couple of missions are less challenging and more head scratching, a situation of what do I do here? But nothing that I would deem taxing on gaming skills. Incidentally, the game does have two difficulties, but you do have to beat the game on Agent to unlock 00 Agent. The biggest differences can be seen in Mission 2 where the number of items to collect is doubled, and across the board you are required to get a performance score of 80% or higher to pass the mission, most of the time this is automatic, with only a couple of missions giving you hassle with that score target.

So, something I have appreciated about (most) James Bond games, are the unlockable cheats/bonuses. 007 Racing delivers on these, but they are all a bit… Meh. Some of them being alternative visual effects with only one of them being remotely useful, and that is double health. To unlock these, you need to achieve a challenge that the game graciously presents to you, one for each mission, and must be done on a specific difficulty. In a very similar way to how Goldeneye did it. Some of these are akin to pulling teeth, requiring a level of patience and masochism that I can’t endorse. Along with unlocking these bonuses, would be the best word for it, you are also rewarded with a rather cringey clip of one of the female characters praising your abilities. Perhaps If anything it just adds an awkward level of sleaze to the game.

As mentioned, when everything falls into place 007 Racing can be a lot of fun, it is certainly a game that has ideas. It is very much a curiosity, something that, frankly, I couldn’t recommend outside of those who really want to play a bit of an oddity. Your life is not going to be enriched by the experience, you are not missing out on some gem from the PS1 era if you don’t play it, and I am not just saying this because as it stands, I am on top of some leaderboard sections on RetroAchievements!