Nightfire on XBox

With the impending Skyfall only mere days away from blowing gloriously across the screen of my local theater, I've been jonesing for a bit of Bond.  Looking around Half Priced Books yesterday after work, I ran across the old XBox James Bond game, Nightfire; which they might as well have been giving away for three bucks.  Of course I pounced on it, having come across an old XBox a couple of months ago on the cheap.

The obvious question one always asks himself when grabbing a Bond game they've never played before is "Is it as good as GoldenEye."

The answer is no.  In fact, the answer is always going to be no.  GoldenEye came out during a special time in all of our lives, that special time being that GoldenEye came out.  I remember looking forward to that game not because of the buzz surrounding it (I was pretty immune to video game buzz in those pre-internet days), but because it was a game based on that most awesome of Bond movies, GoldenEye.  That movie was my gateway Bond movie.  The first one I saw that led to vigorous viewings of all the others.  Pierce Brosnan is my Sean Connery if that makes any sense.

The fact that the game turned out to be one of the most historical console games in history is just icing.  I had no concept of First Person Shooters.  I just know that I felt like Bond ripping through my favorite Bond movie shooting Russian bad guys in bathroom stalls.  My life was complete.  And that's not to mention multiplayer.  I wasn't exactly what you would call "Awesome" or even "Somewhat Decently Good For A Three Year Old Type of Way".  I still had fun, even though we knew this guy Donald who would always kill us within .5 seconds flat of starting.  That was a bit annoying.

But Nightfire is the game I'm playing now, not GoldenEye.  And while it will never be what that game was to me at that time in my life, I must admit to only playing one level so far; so things can change.  The one level was fun, I will give it that.

The thing that throws me off is that Bond in this game was so computer generatingly crafted to look exactly like Pierce Brosnan, they must have used all the money on the technology to Pierce Brosnan-ize Bond's look that they couldn't Pierce Brosnan-ize his voice.  Not even close.  I would venture to say he almost doesn't sound British (Not that Brosnan is technically from England, but you know).  It almost wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't already have Everything or Nothing for my Gamecube in which Bond is so Pierce Brosnan'd into the game, he actually shares the actor's voice.  As a result, that game feels like the extra Brosnan Bond we never got to have. (sigh)