I wish I had a better frame of reference for going into this game, if I have seen the film of Tomorrow Never Dies it was a blur to me, a bit of a hazy Bond shaped blot on my memory. Perhaps I was too young when it came out. The frustrating thing is, I remember seeing The World is Not Enough! Going into a movie tie-in game completely blind might not be a terrible thing, these kinds of games tend to get a bit of a bad rap, seen as cash grabs that are devoid of ideas, where they don’t do the source material justice or by taking massive liberties with it.
As a slight aside, movie tie-in games, what exactly is the expectation of them? Movies, generally speaking, do not translate well to video games. This is true of any kind of media, there is always something lost or some liberty taken during the adaptation process, either for expediency or padding. Is there a golden standard for how we should adapt movies into games? Because if we use Goldeneye as an example, we just need to look at the 2nd and 3rd act of the game to see we have gone way off course from the source material, that being said, Surface, Bunker, Silo and Frigate are all great levels! But we were talking about... Oh, yes Tomorrow Never Dies.
So, from the offset, there are a few things we need to address. No, I am not talking about the perspective, Third-Person Shooter is a totally viable gameplay genre for a James Bond game, not everything needs to be Goldeneye after all. No, something a little more egregious starts to come into effect very quickly in this game. But let’s talk about some of the positives first, because if you hadn’t of guessed, this isn’t going to be a glowing recommendation. Firstly, the game has a lock-on function for nearby enemies, that is polite. The game comes with a lives system, you start with 2 lives, and each stage has hidden extra life, some are hidden better than others. Losing a life means you just respawn back at full health exactly where you died, you only need to restart the mission when you run out of lives. Sweet. Also, lives carry over to the next stage, so you can stockpile them for the later levels. Awesome! You also can carry medkits, up to ten in total, and can be used with a push of the square button, if they are your actively selected item. Using a health pack heals 1 to 2 pips of your health, which is a little inconsistent. I think it is more on a percentage basis, a numerical health value would be better to understand the damage you take and how much you’re healing. But that is a minor niggle.
The healing is a minor niggle and I don’t think about it too much, as healing tends to involve me mashing the Square button in a blind panic, why is that? Well, something you might realise very quickly into the game, enemies can and will drain your health bar in seconds and your extra lives will very quickly drop. In fact, in the first level, there is a bunker very early on, the enemy in that bunker can take easily half your health in seconds. Almost every enemy in the game has a machine gun of sorts and will just spray you with bullets, sometimes with pinpoint accuracy and no amount of circle strafing will protect you. In this game your best defence is a good offense. Shoot first, ask questions later. There are a few instances where effective cover is given, but usually you just need to be aggressive and hope you kill enemies quickly. You want quick kills because sometimes damage is a bit wonky, sometimes an enemy will take 3 shots from your pistol, other times you need to unload about 10 bullets. Not ideal when there are multiple enemies all coming down on you.
You can use a first-person aiming mode in the game, to allow you to get headshots or snipe enemies who exist on the fringe of the games draw distance, but your crosshair moves sluggishly across the screen and really isn’t that viable outside of stealthy headshots, which the game does give you good opportunities for. But you won’t know when this is a viable option unless you have played the level multiple times over, which… If your first play is similar to mine, where I would die at least once per level, but also pick up the extra life, keeping my lives at a constant two throughout the entire eleven mission campaign. Campaign is a weird word to use here, military shooters certainly have had a massive impact on gaming lexicon.
Some stages also have some issues where enemies will not spawn until they are off camera, which can lead to you being flanked because they popped in behind you after you passed their spawn location. Once you know the location of these enemies, they are predictably inconsistent.
Graciously, most levels are relatively short, so retrying levels because you have run out lives or because you want to try and beat the level without dying to stock up on those lives isn’t that taxing. Though you can’t skip mid-mission cutscenes, these only start to grate if you have had to play the level numerous times. But, outside of there being two difficulties, Agent and 00 Agent, there is very little reason to replay this game once you have beaten it. The differences in the difficulties seem rather negligible, as enemies on Agent will still make you a bullet-ridden block of swiss cheese with deadly precision. There are no unlockable bonuses, no cheats to encourage replaying levels with special weapons or silly effects… Considering that the back of the game box calls it the Ultimate Bond Experience, it all feels a little lacklustre.
If it wasn’t for some of the achievements in Retro Achievements causing a bubbling desire of self-defenestration, I wouldn’t have given this more than a single playthrough and never looked back. Honestly though, not taking damage on Mission 9 was equal part the worst experience of my life and one of my greatest personal accomplishments in gaming to date, and I at least have an achievement as spurious evidence to say I have done it!
Honestly, I would say that is probably my least favourite Bond game of this generation, and that is saying something…
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