The many different styles of gameplay add to the overall gaming experience
Graphics:
What you'll notice as you start the game and go through the menus and watch the intro is that the game's layout is very nice. There is also a cut-scene (comprised of actual movie footage) before and after each of the game's 12 levels . The backdrops and sceneries are just awesome and very varied including a casino, a mansion, pipeline, snowy mountains etc. The animations are cool and the enemies and NPC's look really good. There's a small problem though regarding the NPC's in the game. There's too much cloning of characters. In the casino, all the girls look the same (I think there are two or three different ones) and all the guards in the missile-silo look the same. Some of the guns look awesome, like the shotgun and the Belique PS-100. There are some inconsistencies though, like the jacket sleeve is always black even though in some levels you clearly wear different clothing, at least judging from the movie clip and cut-scene.
82%
Sound:
Very good sound effects that are available in surround, which is cool. You'll hear from which direction the footsteps of the guards are and also how far away. There are a wide variety of gun-sounds and the voice acting is ace. They even got John Cleese in there! The music is, as usual in 007 games, the original soundtrack. There are also other level-based little tunes. And with little I mean very short and repetitive. The music does get a bit boring, but it's always ok.
81%
Gameplay:
The many different styles of gameplay add to the overall gaming experience and the game never gets tedious or boring, except when you retry the same level over and over of course. There is one skiing level, a casino level (Where you only play Blackjack) a level that's awesome after a few brewskies, a few stealth levels, run'n'gun parts, and one undercover level to mention but a few and there are always different ways to tackle the levels although some levels are very linear. There's one level of the game where you infiltrate a missile silo and the graphics and details are just stunning.. There are many gadgets and weapons to your disposal and there's a lot of sneaking around and doing stuff that's not very typical of videogames but when the action is there it's swift and exciting! There's one thing that disturbs me a little and that's the fact that you don't have time to explore as much as you'd like because of area restrictions and/or because you're in a hurry, and the objectives have to be completed quickly. The auto-targeting system works so-so. It has problems acquiring targets at a different height than James, on balconies and walkways above and on stairs for example. This can easily be redeemed by just pressing and holding R1 to get the manual aim. This mode is also used when taking pictures with the micro-camera and when using the grappling hook watch. There are many cool gadgets in the game to use, like videogame rocket-launcher, credit-card lock-pick, cell-phone stunner etc. All this add up to a nice and varied gaming experience. One thing that works well is that at the end of the levels you need to do something out of the ordinary to complete the objectives, for example, you might have to use your grappling-hook-watch on a chain to escape or use your pen-bomb to remove the casing of a nuclear bomb and then use your cell-phone-stunner to short-circuit it to disarm it. Really cool and intense. The horrible AI doesn't really bother me as it's fun to cut down henchmen as they keep running mindlessly into your range of fire!
85%
Lastability:
There are movies and cheats to unlock and after you've finished the game you can always go back and play the parts of the game that you liked the most and since the diversity of the levels is vast, chances are that you will. If you're really hardcore, you'll want to try out all the difficulties. There's also replay value in the cheats that you unlock. I'm just speaking for myself here but I, personally, come back to this game often (well, once in a few years actually but everything is relative right?)
82%
Overall:
A very good game that looks, sounds and plays well.
84%