That’s right; it’s a Bond game that isn’t a first person shooter. While the legions of Goldeneye fanboys may consider this the greatest heresy since the new Q, Electronic Arts pulls it off and makes it one of the best Bond games yet. EA put a noteworthy amount of effort into making this look and sound just like a Bond movie, and they pull it off pretty well. The controls are great and the missions are all very nice. Despite its reformation, EON still has the magic found in Goldeneye and Nightfire.
The story plays out like a real Bond movie, and although the actual actors from the movies contribute to the illusion of this being a Bond movie, it detracts from the game. Anyway, the story goes, after years of research, scientists finally know how to create a fully functional Nanobot, a microscopic robot capable of traveling through people’s body. The head scientist of the project ends up being kidnapped and Bond is deployed by MI6 to rescue them. You end up discovering that a man named Nikolai Diavolo, the evil sack of cash behind the project, is planning to use the Nanobots to conquer the world by altering them to seek out and destroy metal, ultimately giving him an edge over all the global superpowers. So, Bond’s mission is to stop Diavolo from destroying the world and pick up two or three women along the way. While having all sorts of major celebrities, like Mya, Pierce and Judi Dench does make it seem more like a Bond movie, it just doesn’t sound that great. Do you know who Crispin Freeman is? Jennifer Hale? Cam Clarke? While you probably don’t know, if you are a well versed gamer, you’ve most likely heard them many times over, whether they were speaking as Jack Archer (Robotech: Battlecry), Balmung (.hack), Albedo (Xenosaga) or Olga Gurlukovich (MGS2). With that said, I need to stress that the celebrities really don’t sound as good as the professional voice actors do, but that is the game’s only major flaw.
The combat engine in EON is nearly flawless. The guns have a nice lock-on-and-shoot system, borrowed from the N64 Zelda series, which allows you to run, aim and shoot very easily. The diversity of the weapons is also very nice, since each is very different, whether it is in fire rate or ammo capacity that makes all the weapons useful (that’s you, klobb). One of the most impressive aspects of the game is the superb hand-to-hand system. The excellent setup has you able to punch with either your left or right hand and allows you to easily switch between enemies, and look good while doing it, by using an elbow or backhand to hop from foe to foe. There are also melee weapons like bottles and crowbars lying around which you can club an enemy in the noggin. This makes the fighting entertaining, and greatly contributes to the fun of the game.
The greatest aspect of EON is the incredible diversity of the missions. You may be on foot in a graveyard, sniping people in clock towers, speeding down a highway on a motorcycle, or destroying limos in an 18-wheeler, but no matter what mission you are on, you will never feel the d?j? vu found in some mediocre shooting games. The car/truck/motorcycle controls are great, which makes the many missions using vehicles play smoothly. In addition, the goals in the on-foot missions are all different, where you have to do anything from infiltration to assassination. Lastly, the levels are all nice looking and compliment your equipment, allowing you to use Bond’s tools like the rappel gun (a grappling hook in a gun) and Q-Spider (a mechanical explosive spider) to their best.
Therefore, EA was able to make a Bond game that wasn’t first-person, but still an excellent game. The plot is very Bond-esque, which of course makes it cheesy in many ways, but cool in others. While EA did do well pulling together the entire Bond cast, they just didn’t sound that great. The game does have what counts, though, in its solid combat and fun missions. While its greatness in relation to Goldeneye or Nightfire is debatable, Everything or Nothing is still a high-quality and overall good shooter. Any fan of the series and fan of games in general should pick this one up.
