Friday From the Archives: Nightfire (2002)

Every Friday we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

Once again, I still have many of these same opinions about Nightfire, though I wouldn't cherry-pick so many inconsequential details, such as my fixation on Bond's voice. And though I cringe when I read about Chicken Man and I supposedly "[giggling] like school girls" as a result of this admittedly incongruous voice, I do find something very amusing and endearing when I see how a computer-rendered representation of an automobile produces such a guttural yell as "Awww yeah!" Life was so simple back then. Also ludicrous is my claim that I'm a "veteran" of the shooter genre. Still, Nightfire has really grown on me since the time of this review (only a few days after the game came out, strangely enough, making for one of the few times we wrote something timely, and I'm proud to say that trend continues to this day) and my comments on its multiplayer are spot on. So, like I said then, Nightfire is certainly no TimeSplitters 2, but it is a wonderful game, one of the best Bond's available on PS2.

"Last year's Agent Under Fire left a sour taste in my mouth. It had some great ideas, but was just a decent, if somewhat sloppy, FPS. Nightfire, coming a year later, makes a substantial upgrade, in what might be the best 007 title since TWINE for the N64. For one, NF comes eerily close of maintaining everything expected from a movie with a license to kill. The opening sequence, attending parties, Pierce Brosnan's cyber-scanned noggin all scream 007 coolness. Except for a major flaw: His voice. Chicken Man and I giggled like a school girls the first time we heard it. 'Sounds like Connery with a cold. But what would Bond be without some sweet Q-division vehicles? How about the V12 Vanquish? Awww yeah! These levels are superb, and play a lot like Spy Hunter (read: That's a good thing) but sometimes feel a bit on rails; most of the said coolness happens in cut scenes, which is a flaw I can't help but pick out. 80% of the game is FPS, so I expected something special. And, thankfully, these fared well, with a veteran of the genre like me. Especially appealing is the multiple pathways to finish a level. Nice. Multiplayer-wise, NF exceeds my expectations completely: The high level of bot customization, the minitank/helicopters, hidden characters, all of which are excellent and full of variety. NF is no Timesplitters 2, but it stands on its own quite nicely."