Pierce My Brosnan and Color Me Frustrated
While it has the obligatory arsenal of weapons and gadgetry, there's no feature that's likely to make your jaw drop. The missions play pretty nicely, although even on the easiest setting you'll probably have do each level a number of times before passing it. This is my major gripe with the game, the intro mission gives you a false feel for what the action is really like. You can run about like a god with bullets virtually bouncing off you, without ever really being in any danger of dying. Then there's the training mission. The next mission, seems to be on a-whole -nother plain. Baddies swarm from all sides and mow you down pretty quick.
Once you get a feel for the action and what to expect, it's do-able. But I get rather frustrated at doing the same thing over and over again until figuring out the path of least resistance. In a nutshell, I basically feel like I'm running to the finish line of each level, desperately trying to get there without getting my brains splattered yet another time and having to endure the intro cut scene (it is skipable, but still, playing it once is enough, isn't it?)
Other gripes include baddies who, once they've seen you, dig in behind crates or boxes and don't come out till you make the first move. Lock on and shoot as much as you like, but you'll never land a shot. Bringing me to my other major gripe, the target lock only works on stuff in your field of view. So if you're hiding up against a wall peeking around the corner, anyone who comes around that corner or from the front in no longer visible. Leaving you very vulnerable to attack--and given the speed at which a SMG-toting enemy can mow you down--very vulnerable to death before you know what's going on.
The game is not without good features, however. Finding Bond Moments is always fun and the driving missions are a hoot at high speed. Having the action pause while selecting a new weapon is pretty cool, but I find that I run out of ammo pretty quickly and get stuck using a Desert Eagle quite often.
All that said, I still like the game, but only in small doses as I'm easily frustrated and prone to bouts of high volume swearing. I reluctantly recommend it to Bond fans and lovers of the genre. I guess it's more suited to the patient gamer.