007 Nightfire is no masterpiece, but solid multiplayer and singleplayer make it well worth checking out for Bond fans and shooter fans alike.

Stick with what works Get the girls, save the world and look good doing it; pretty standard for James Bond. Nightfire's story is not especially different from that of any Bond flick. Some rich villain with more armed goons than common sense has some crazy scheme that threatens the world. You'll face betrayal, the vacuum of space, and countless gun-toting lackeys in your efforts to stop a madman with nuclear weapons. Naturally, you'll have the standard Bond gadgets, vehicles, and one-liners at your disposal to even the odds.

Nightfire isn't all that long, although getting medals, attained by completing missions and certain objectives in a set time, unlocks multiplayer characters, weapons, and upgraded gadgets and thus extends the lifespan of Nightfire's singleplayer to around 20 hours. Typically missions are pretty varied and the standard first-person-shooter levels contain a healthy mix of stealth and action. However, the vehicular missions provide an unnecessary change of pace. Both the physics system and steering seemed like they could have used some more work and the game is varied enough without them. Still, they're not actually bad, they're just not as good as the shooter missions.

Nightfire probably won't draw you in with its realism. Enemies will use walls and the like for cover, but are generally fairly lacking in AI. They don't notice corpses and tend not to respond too quickly to what should immediately get their attention. In one instance two Yakuza were firing machine guns at me and a third enemy just stared at the wall in the corner, waiting about 5 seconds before he even bothered to turn around. Outside of the slow responses, the AI just seems outdated. Maybe I've been spoiled by the flanking maneuvers from Elites in Halo, but enemies just seem pretty dull and predictable.

The standard Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and King of the Hill are included in addition to a few other original modes, providing a fairly well-rounded multiplayer experience. Up to six bots can join in with 1-4 players, and the only real disappointment is the fairly small number of maps. Fortunately, one of them, taking place on a ski resort, is particularly good.

Bond still looks good in a tux

Graphically, Nightfire is solid. Typically environments and characters look good, and the cutscenes tend to look good as well. Perhaps most importantly, all missions, with one exception, vary vastly in design and theme, keeping away a certain staleness all too common in some other games. In addition, EA seems to have paid special attention to Pierce Brosnan's general movements and facial expressions, as they're very well done.

He sounds suave too

The audio is Nightfire tends to be pretty good. The music is nice, reflects your environment, and sounds very Bond-like. In addition, there is good voice acting in ithe cut-scenes (not actually done by Brosnan, but a talented 'sound-alike'). However, Nightfire would've benefited from a few more enemy responses and yells during missions. During one mission, you hear "man down! man down!" around 20 times. It should not have been that time-consuming to throw in a couple more three second audio clips, so I'm not sure why EA decided against it.

In short

Goldeneye set impossibly high standards for any developer with the Bond license, but EA succeeds in making a generally enjoyable game, just not a great one. If you're a fan of James Bond, or just looking to buy a shooter, Nightfire is a good choice.