PC Review: 007 Nightfire (2002)

We already did this one on consoles, but I finally managed to finish it on PC after years of trying. It sucks! But I was bored.

Nightfire on PS2 (and the other Sixth Generation consoles) is still an amazing 007 game. I break it out once a year and, while it's not flawless, fond memories aside it translates the formula of the films to video games better than any before or since. The PC version is a near disaster, however. I tried this version years ago (probably a decade) and couldn't bring myself to finish it. I kept coming back to it, though, for the fascinating and uncanny ways it evokes and even extends the console version in ways that nearly break it. Say goodbye to the excellent driving levels of the PS2 edition, for example, and the professionalism (if not the originality) of its storytelling. I'm not saying Nightfire is fine literature, but the PC edition is lacking production values and, for lack of a better word, polish. Audio quality is, frankly, shitty. The cutscenes have all the direction of CCTV footage. Gameplay variety is practically non-existent: instead, it's just a lot of corridors of clunky, Half-Life engine shooting, with super dumb, unresponsive enemy agents. PC Nightfire even has a few of those "classic" insta-fail stealth missions of yore, irritating beyond belief, and thankfully these don't exist in games anymore. Some of the levels go on forever against uninspiring, confusing backdrops. Yet, as someone who plays PS2 Nightfire annually, I'll admit there's something like novelty in seeing these slightly different, more stringently PC FPS-focused versions of the levels with a roughly similar narrative DNA. The multiplayer is also weird but much more palatable, especially given that there's still support and an admittedly small fanbase for it. Remarkably, I played a few hours of deathmatch and capture the flag while on a work trip with two or three rando human players and bots in 2023, and, even though the whole enterprise is janky and old-fashioned, managed to have quite a bit of fun whooping ass as a cell-phone grappling Christmas Jones. Nightfire fans might give this a try (you can get it for free if you look in the right places), but the console version is way, way better.