The World Is Not Enough is one of my favorite Bond movies, and this game is very solid effort too.
Unsurprisingly The World is Not Enough is a first-person shooter in which you recap the events of the movie as Bond himself. The missions feel disconnected but have great variety to them. On some you are chasing a villain through streets full of goons, on others you are sneaking around in small open areas, on the next one you'll be rescuing hostages. There is also a casino level and some primitive social stealth sections along with a couple of bosses. None of the 11 missions take more than 10 minutes to complete, making this game a really short experience. However I don't consider that really a negative because as it is the game is great for some short gaming sessions. Rushing through the game listening to Bondish tunes is entertaining time and time again. What's more is that the game tracks your progress on levels and awards you stars for effiency, accuracy, health and time spent. Gaining all the stars and thus earning Golden pistol award is quite a challenge, but achieving it on each level gives you access to cheats. Earning all the cheats multiplies the length of the game, and demands a lot more from the gamer. Talking about demands, the game doesn't feature checkpoints which means conserving health is important.
A word of warning however is that TWINE isn't a real FPS. The controls aren't the usual ones requiring great precision with aiming. Instead by default you only move crosshair horizontally, and whenever the reticle is near enough an enemy, the reticle locks onto the enemy. Once again this isn't a bad thing because the thumbsticks of PSOne are terrible, and you still need to keep the enemy very near the center of screen or you will be shooting at walls. You can shoot vertically in a manual aiming mode, during which you can't move, but it's rarely useful. Speaking of shooting, this game doesn't necessarily have that much shooting for a FPS either. While you can go guns blazing on most missions, complete with the ability to strafe, sneaking is usually a very good option too and is often required. The A.I. isn't perfect, but crouching makes you quiet and capable of moving unnoticed. You can shadow enemies and either slip away or stun them with a stun gun, or use your silenced pistol to take a clean quiet headshot. This is even encouraged, if you want to earn maximal number of stars you need to be stealthy. Bond wouldn't be Bond without gadgets, and there are plenty of them too.
Summary:
It surprises me how Goldeneye became such a hit, while The World is Not Enough is widely neglected. Graphically TWINE is solid Playstation quality and despite being a brief ride, the variety and pacing makes it quite replayable. It's great fun whether you are running, strafing and shooting goons with rockified Bond theme playing in the background or if you are sneaking around out gathering intelligence and knocking out guards. Playing through the game going for better and better runs is a nice challenge. The only real downside is that the developers weren't able to get more than a couple of authentic actors to lend their voice. The World is Not Enough also lacks multiplayer compared to Goldeneye. The game is mighty short, so if replaying games isn't your thing then this game might not be worth the 1-3 hours of the initial playthrough.
***
7/10