What You Want in The World is Not Enough N64

We love TWINE for the N64, as you know, and more than that we love games with replay value. TWINE has some fairly challenging time cheats you can beat to unlock additonal characters, weapons, maps and modes for multiplayer (w/ bots or without, though we prefer with). I have managed to get through most of them, though there are still a few that have eluded my grasp. If you take a look at GameFAQs portal for TWINE, you'll find a bevvy of tasks that seem nearly impossible to complete. If you want to prioritze them, I suggest tackling the following challenges, all of which will add fantastic maps and a nice weapon set to spice up your multiplayer options:

Unlike Renard here, who obviously feels no pain, beating
 these time cheats requires a high threshold for pain (at least
for emotional pain).

• The Air Raid multiplayer map. This is by far my favorite map in TWINE. A bit small, but totally worth beating the "Masquerade" level on Agent in under 3:05. If you need help in doing this, here's a video to help out:

• There's also the "Wildfire" weapon set, which you earn by beating "City of Walkways II" on Agent in under 3:00. Now, at least this one is on Agent: had it been on double-o, that helicopter at the end would have prevented even the most seasoned agents from earning this unlockable. Take a look at this if you need a spot of help:

• Finally, you can play the excellent Forest multiplayer map by beating "Night Watch on 00 Agent in under 2:20. I know this sounds insane, and for the longest time I believed it to be impossible, but watch this video and it will, at least, seem somewhat possible. I got it eventually, but you have to keep trying because Gabor appears in random places, and usually at the most inappropriate moments. This level is one of the best for Capture the Flag matches, so it's a must-have:

Thoughts On Scene It? 007 Edition

In lieu of a more traditional review of this DVD board game, I've decided to share with you a few quick notes on Scene It? 007 Edition. I was quite pleased to finally find this thing, and for the most part, it didn't disappoint. Here's a few thoughts on the game, based on my familiarity with the subject matter and the mechanics of Scene It?:

• First of all, 007 fans should only pick this up under the assumption that you anticipate finding willing and capable opponents to play against. Admittedly, it's fun for a while to run roughshod over the other players because you've seen every film in the series, but this soon becomes boring and there's no way to turn up the difficulty on your friends.

• As for the difficulty of the trivia, there's a good balance between questions drawn from inside and outside the films: that is, questions about the films' characters and plots are offset by questions about actors, directors, and theme songs. Furthermore, these questions range from the textually obvious (i.e. who played who in what film) to minute details which require considerable familiarity with the film. As such, it becomes obvious throughout the course of several games which films your friends/family members are more familiar with; for instance, I was swift in answering detailed queries on the plot of The World is Not Enough (or anything starring Pierce Brosnan), but struggled to recall the principle players of The Living Daylights, besides star Timothy Dalton. Still, the game is careful not to overwhelm casual viewers of the series with minutia, while at the same time keeping obsessed fans interested. It's a sufficient balance to insure broad appeal at your next party.

• Obviously, 007 Edition features clips from all official films in the series, from Dr. No to Die Another Day. They vary somewhat in length, but in general they are carefully selected and fun to watch or re-watch, as the case may be. My biggest problem with the clips is the volatile nature of the questions which follow them: too often these questions have little or nothing to do with the preceding clip. After watching a clip from TWINE, in which Bond and Christmas Jones escape from the exploding blast pit, I was asked, "Who played Electra King in this film?" Points for sticking with the same film, I guess, but minus several million for totally ignoring the content of the clip. On the other hand, these clips are sometimes followed by questions which only necessitate a player's attentiveness to seemingly arbitrary detail, such as the color of Bond's shirt in For Your Eyes Only. Rarely do the clips justify themselves within the game; instead, they only seem to be there for the purpose of visual distraction, and this is a complaint I often lodge regarding the various Scene It?s.

Nonetheless, if you have a cadre of pals willing and able to challenge your exquisite knowledge of 007, this edition of Scene It? is worthwhile. Daniel Craig was nowhere to be found in my somewhat dated version, but there's a Casino Royale Collector's Edition that brings things a little bit up-to-date.

Nobody Reviews It Better: The World is Not Enough (1999)

Nobody Reviews It Better returns once again, this time with Chicken Man's look-in on the third Brosnan-Bond, The World is Not Enough, one of the most prominent films in the CRN firmament. Brosnan was probably at the peak of his powers as 007 in this one, even if the material surrounding him was, as C-Man notes, uninspired. Considering the prior two films in the series, Brosnan put together a string of absolutely solid (or better) performances before nose-diving with his final film, Die Another Day, something which Thrasher will take up later this week. For now, though, enjoy this latest installment in our lead-up to November's Skyfall.

"I heard you hated Mamma Mia! too."

We have reviewed The World is Not Enough before. This was several years ago, but my opinion of it hasn't changed much (though I hope my ability to communicate has). As expressed previously, this is truly an action-heavy Bond film. It involves a bank escape via window, a boat chase, a skiing ambush, a gunfight in an underground nuclear research facility, a bomb defusal/chase inside of an oil pipeline, a face-off against buzz-saw wielding helicopters at a caviar plant, and a takeover of a submerged nuclear submarine. It seems as though Bond has adapted to the audience attention spans of the times. The Bond girls, as well. In the case of Christmas Jones, I find myself less impressed with Denise Richards these days, but she had amazing self-awareness for a Bond girl in that she even acknowledged the possibility that one could form jokes about her name. And, as Thrasher so astutely observed, the plot is predictable, and I would even go so far as to say uninspired. As was the case with The Spy Who Loved Me, the villain is an "anarchist" who wants to use nuclear subs to blow stuff up. This seems simply lazy to me, as it explains nothing in terms of their motivations. Instead, they are just one step up from the balaclava-wearing Molotov-throwing stereotype of anarchists. It is a misrepresentation of those who advocate non-aggression in human relationships and ironic considering the only use of a nuclear weapon in history has been by a state. Other than that, a villain who has no sense of touch or pain is very interesting and almost embodies the physical equivalent of a totally non-empathizing sociopath. This is how Bond villains should be (though "Dr. No" and "Goldfinger" might make better movie titles than "Renard"). He is a fitting adversary for Bond, who it seems struggles with his own demons of being a hired killer while also dealing with the aftermath. As he says to Renard, "I usually hate killing an unarmed man..." contrasting the lack of emotion Craig-Bond claims to have towards ending lives. I must say I find the former more interesting. There are enough Rambos for whom "killing's as easy as breathing." Make no mistake, TWINE is a great Bond movie and an even better video game. Sadly, though, this is Desmond Llewelyn's last hurrah as Q, with John Cleese being his short-term replacement. Q leaves us with some of his best work: his retirement fishing boat, winter coat with side curtain air bags, and a decked out BMW Z8 with remote control and guided rockets. He should have been working for Toys'R'Us rather than MI6. Clearly, grad student Q has big trousers to fill in the upcoming Skyfall. Can he do it?

"Now pay attention, 007." *Record scratch*
"My name is Q, and I make the toys
You're on a secret mission... now make some noise!"

PS1 Review: 007 Racing (2000)

 

It's not a bad idea, right? Perhaps 007 Racing is somewhat misleading as a title (it's not as if Bond has joined a Formula 1 circuit), but it's a bankable project theoretically. In execution, however, things fall apart rather quickly. Remember, 007 Racing was released on PS1 roughly a year before Agent Under Fire arrived on PS2. AUF had a much more refined "racing" component, thanks in no small part to the first draft sensibilities of Racing. There's not much of a story going on here, just a collection of mission briefings and vague allusions to the films. Similarly vague mission objectives present frustrating and artificial levels of difficulty. Replaying the missions so often (while Q repeatedly yaps in your ear with the same three or four disapproving soundbites) wouldn't be problematic if the graphics didn't insist on muddying the waters even further. Everything is so pixilated and poorly animated that it all becomes a nauseating, low-speed blur. Furthermore, there's little sense of urgency or speed; proceeding through the missions at little more than the pace of brisk walk is not only enforced by the cramped level designs themselves, but it's strategically necessary as well. More often than not, missions devolve into a demolition derby with stinger missiles that routinely do more damage to your Astin Martin than your adversaries. And it's not as if your car handles like a dream, either; it's slippery at "high" speeds and prone to ignoring your button commands whenever. It's hard to say which of these aspects make 007 Racing so difficult, but their gestalt certainly makes you want to turn it off with the quickness. This is not Spy Hunter; stick with that one instead.

Artistic rendering of 007 Racing.

The World is Not Enough 100%, and more

PS1 TWINE, that is. Sure, it's nowhere near as good as its classic, award-winning N64 cousin, but it still works quite well on its own. As I noted in my review, if nothing else, I love the Russian Roulette stage. Besides, the PS1 version has to be one of the only decent first-person shooters on that system, which wasn't known for producing them beyond the Medal of Honor series. Alas, there's no multiplayer mode, so all that you get for achieving high scores on any particular level are cheats, such as All Weapons, Invisible Bond, and my favorite, Power Goons. Still, though, I have what Chicken Man once called the Curse of Completionism, and so I just had to see this one through. It was far easier than I anticipated. Missions scores are calculated in four ways: Efficiency, Accuracy, Health, and Time. Most levels are short if you know what you're doing, armor is plentiful (even on the hardest difficulty setting, 007), auto-aim makes marksmanship a breeze, and I'm still not totally sure what efficiency is supposed to imply, and I routinely had low scores in that category. If you don't dally around, always use your Wolfram P2K, and keep yourself clothed in armor, piece of cake, you'll have this one 100% in a day or so.

We certainly hope you're enjoying the current deluge of Bond coverage on Code Redd Net. In addition to the ongoing Nobody Reviews It Better series, we have an upcoming podcast on the subject, as well as our continuing interest in the forthcoming Skyfall film and the accompanying 007 Legends game. Stay tuned for more.

Nobody Reviews the Games Better, Either

Now that our James Bond retrospective film series is in full swing, I thought I would take this time to remind all of you of the considerable collection of Bond game reviews we have just hanging around Code Redd Net.

First, and certainly foremost, we have my review of Everything or Nothing, a game which cleaned up at the Code Redd Net Awards in November, winning both Best Co-Op Multiplayer and Best Bond Game honors. Not only that, but Chicken Man and I put it on our respective Top Ten Video Games lists in February. EoN is truly one of the most honored games in our history, and deservedly so. Get yourself a copy.

Chicken Man has the unofficial EoN "sequel," From Russia With Love, covered for PS2.

You can also read a few archival pieces from the Geocities days, specifically our reviews of Agent Under Fire and Nightfire.

If you're in the mood for The World is Not Enough -- and really, who wouldn't be? -- you can always check out Chicken Man's thoughts on the N64 TWINE, or my own on the PS1 TWINE.

Boy, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent sure was horrible, wasn't it?

And should you get sick of gushing praise, you can refresh yourself with the faint praise in my Quantum of Solace, GoldenEye 007, Blood Stone, and Tomorrow Never Dies reviews.

We even dedicated a whole podcast to the subject! To make things easy, here's the episode embedded:


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Code Redd Net Home Video Presents... CRN Podcast DX!

Remember our fancy schmancy YouTube channel? Ok, sometimes we forget about it too, but that's going to change. We just uploaded our first video in many months, this one a video supplement to the first episode of the CRN Podcast. Enjoy, and don't forget to subscribe and leave us lots of feedback so we can get better at this kind of thing.

Our First Podcast

The Next Generation continues to expand our horizons, so to speak: Code Redd Net finally has a podcast, available through Podbean at http://crnpodcast.podbean.com. Embedded below is our first episode, subtitled Rise and Fall of the AI Bot. Fans of multiplayer shooters should be especially interested. We would love to hear your feedback on this first attempt, as well as suggested topics for future episodes. Soon the CRN Podcast should be available through the iTunes store. Until then, you can subscribe to automatically receive the latest episodes, or you can listen through the dedicated Podbean player at the bottom of this page.

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Finishing the Archives: The World is Not Enough (1999), Spider-Man (2002), and The Italian Job (2003)

Every Friday (or Monday, alas) 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.

Let's just kill this weekly feature once and for all, shall we? Only three more movie reviews to go. First up, we have The World is Not Enough. I already wrote a piece on why I thought TWINE was underrated, so here's our original, sophomoric thoughts (Chicken Man first, and then my own thoughts):

"The World is Not Enough, the 19th Bond movie, is probably the most action packed Bond movie yet or until #20 comes out. As Thrasher and Chickenman have said, we like movies containing action & comedy, and with some cool boat chases and shooting scenes, with some wise cracks this movie makes a must-see. In TWINE an evil anarchist named Renard steals plutonium to blow up Istanbul. Bond's mission is to protect Sir Robert King's daughter, Elektra. And use her as bait to find Renard and his plans. His chase leads to Valentine's (back from Goldeneye) casino and beluga plant. In attempt to stop Renard from stealing the bomb, Bond runs into a stunning IDA physicist, Christmas Jones. If you have not seen it, we highly think of this 007 flick, not just because it's Bond, but that it's 007 Licence to Kill action."

"Being the 19th Bond flick, this title had a lot to live up to. In the action department, this film delivers. 007-isms abound, and the action is almost non-stop, with some awesome stunts. Believe me, the boat chase is pretty friggin', good. Other than that, the plot is predictable, but still good stuff. But what 007 flick doesn't have any Exotic women? None, and that's a good thing. If you ask me, Denise Richards in a tight T-shirt is the best part of this movie. Action junkies, go wild."

Scathing. Insightful, truly. I speak of my own review only, of course.

Moving on now to our review of Spider-Man (once again, Chicken Man, myself second):

"Spider Man, co-created by Stan Lee, stays closely to the original comic story except for a few instances. If you're a fan of the comic a fairly recent comic entitled "Ultimate Spider Man." There is also "Peter Parker/Spider Man," "The Amazing Spider Man," and "Spider Girl." About the movie, a totally rad experience if your sitting in the front row. Tobey McGuire was also in Star Wars Episode I as Jar Jar Binks (according to the SNL episode he was in). In the box office it was a total blowout the first weekend. Thrasher and ChickenMan think this is your best bet for some action and somewhat of a drama. We call it draction. Spider Man 2 is believed to come out by 2004, so we'll wait until then."

"Based on the comics published by Marvel, this film had the potential to be a special effects masterpiece. It's that and so much more. To be exact, this flick is the first big blockbuster of 2002. Great CGI (Computer Generated Images) scenes of spidey doing what he does best. Make sure that your theatre has great audio capabilities, because if it does, your in for one great movie experience. The story, while it strays off the comics a little, fits perfectly into the big screen. Toby Maguire is great as Spidey, although the movie lacks some of the famous Spidey-wit that the web-slinger is known for. I must say, this is the greatest super-hero movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing. And if you pay close attention, Stan Lee makes an appearance. All in all, go out and see the movie, that's my best advice."

My best advice, indeed.

Finally, here's what Chicken Man had to say about The Italian Job:

"This movie had a great cast, some of my favorite actors like Seth Green, "Turkish" from The Transporter, and Jack/Steve from Fight Club. The plot was cool and fresh from what I've seen of late. It had some great cars in it like the Vanquish, BMW M series, and not to mention the Mini Coopers. I myself played the game before the movie and it didn't take anything from the experience but added to it. The best movie I've seen since Shanghai Knights. You know, it's a special feeling when you're in the theatre and watching a movie and you know you're gonna check this movie out again when it comes out. As I've seen, if you can make a game out of a movie a lot of the time it's pretty good. I've had my fair share of disappointments, but this is not one of them."

And that's a wrap. Look out for a new (non-weekly, but recurring) feature, called Retroness, in the very near feature.

The World is Evidently Not Enough

All 007 fans have favorite and sentimental favorite films in the series, and the difference is significant. At Code Redd Net, our sentimental favorite is certainly The World is Not Enough (1999). By no means a perfect film, TWINE is nevertheless one of the more underappreciated entries among both the popular press and Bond aficionados. Take a look at these "Best of Bond" countdowns from Entertainment Weekly and IGN. TWINE is, respectively, the worst and fifth worst Bond film to date, according to these websites. Why the hate? Perhaps we're prejudiced against Roger Moore and his sleezy take on the series, but we do have reasons for promoting this underdog. What might they be? Check out our Christmas Jones and Garbage-free list below:

1. Extended and exciting pre-title sequence that is directly part of the main plot.


2. The boat chase.


3. The plot itself is interesting and surprisingly psychological for a Bond narrative.


4. Strong villain in Electra King (Sophie Marceau) and her relationship with the terrorist Renard.


5. Same goes for Renard (Robert Carlyle), and his relationship with Electra.


6. Last film featuring Desmond Lewellyn as Q.


7. Judi Dench as M in a role more important than simply delivering expository info.


8. Bullion

N64 Review: The World is Not Enough (EA, 2000)

Following the disappointing Tomorrow Never Dies game, TWINE for N64 is a true successor to the legendary GoldenEye 007 (though many would likely disagree). Some things are better, some things are not. However, as I try to list in my mind the things that made TWINE better (AI bots in multiplayer) and features GE had that it did not (cheats, extra levels, 007 mode), I find that the list of differences between them is rather small. In both, you play as James Bond in the first person, you wield firearms, you play with gadgets, etc. They share the important things. So why is GE so often touted as the far superior game? This is my theory. At least for myself, and I'm sure for many, GE was the first FPS that I'd ever played and therefore set a standard. Going back to it gives a sense of nostalgia, which can often be powerful in shaping attitudes towards games (objectively, a game like Winback might not impress more modern players; to some of us, it is like a little bit of heaven in a disaster area). Also helping GE to attain legendary status were the crazy glitches, which gave us another reason to keep playing it. But another thing is important as well. I believe that sequence is important. The degree to which we are let down by an inferior sequel is of much greater magnitude than the excitement we would feel with a superior one. For example, I would suggest that if TWINE had been released first and GE after, the feelings of GE superiority would not be to the same degree as the disappointment some feel over TWINE. It seems we have a greater disposition towards negativity than optimism. The point: TWINE for N64 is a fine game and more people would recognize it if it weren't for GoldenEye 007's shadow.