On paper, 007 Legends sounds like the perfect concept. Using a period of unconsciousness that functioned as a break for title credits in a film, a game's worth of story is presented to the player as though it were 007’s life flashing before his eyes. This simple conceit allows for a game that briefly touches on a handful of standout moments throughout the entire Bond franchise.

As a person that grew up in a home where James Bond was an embarrassingly large portion of our re-playable film rotation, the proposition of ‘The Best of Bond, James Bond’ sounded irresistible to my ears. Looking at the films touched upon, it became apparent that the developers wanted to give each different Bond actor a time to shine with respect to the franchise’s history. My personal favorite Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, mostly remembered as ‘the one with that one-time James Bond actor,’ would finally be getting the recognition that had until now escaped it.

Jumping into the game, it quickly became apparent that the novelty of the broad concept was the only redeeming factor. If you don’t come to the game with a prior adoration or nostalgia for these films, there isn’t much to keep you invested.

There are a few things that must be reckoned with. First, the game quickly lets the player know that it has a formula, and it will not be deviating from it. Each film is broken down into a loop that consists of entering the facility, finding the villain’s lair, investigating briefly, getting out of there. The game makes you do this five times, once for each film touched upon, and then it is over. Any sort of variety really feels like window dressing that doesn’t meaningfully distinguish each film from one another. To further detract from any attempt to distinguish these experiences, the game used Daniel Craig’s likeness for each separate era of the series, the same gadgets are available to you throughout each segment, and the weapons stay the same. One caveat to all of this is the final Moonraker segment, which feels like a breath of fresh air at the final moments of the game, but even that stage is ultimately bogged down by the chunky mechanics persistent throughout the entirety of the 007 Legends experience. By the end, it is clear that what was meant to stand as a testament to fifty years of quality entertainment instead operates as a suggestion that maybe you’ve been watching the same movie in different clothes over and over for the past fifty years. If instead, they embraced the differences of these films, whether it be showcasing each era, styles in clothing, different Bond actors, or different weaponry and technology; it may have felt more like a celebration than an obligation.

Okay, so the story is presented poorly, and the levels blend together. Maybe the game-play could still entice someone to press on. Unfortunately, this too falls short of a compelling experience. The game is clearly a product of its time, presenting a James Bond story within what is essentially a Call of Duty clone. This is not necessarily a bad thing on its own. Call of Duty games have earned their reputation for a reason. Great sound work, careful weapon design that focuses on weaponry that feels good to operate, and some levels that break out of the typical first person presentation to allow the game to feel fresh as it progresses. Here, again, the execution in 007 Legends falls flat. The gun-play is not satisfactory, a lot of the enemies feel like bullet sponges, the weapons simply don’t feel good to use. An added perplexity is presented in the weapon modification system, that allows you to buy ‘upgrades’ that fail to distinguish your arsenal from that which you may find abandoned on the ground. The Q-Branch gadgetry also feels unnecessary and is generally unpleasant to interact with. The odd exception is a spy-pen that is somehow more powerful than any of the other weapons throughout the entire game.

Another bit worth noting are the segments that attempt to break the mold, whether it be the vehicle segments, a skiing segment, or the boss encounters. Each serves to underscore the poor execution of concept, and further distances the player from experiencing life as the titular character, a suave intellectual that always emerges unscathed despite the most impossible of circumstances. The clearest example of these failures at work are in the boss encounters. It is clear that the designers were uncertain how to present a ‘boss’ in a satisfying way. Each of the boss fights are presented through a QTE-esque fist fight that follows the same progression. Through matching your joystick placement with the one displayed on screen, James Bond engages in a fist fight with each villain. After a few punches are exchanged, the villain will appear to be losing. The villain will then pick up a blunt object. Through your matching exercise, James Bond will disarm the villain, and then continue to punch them until their health bar is depleted. This same boss encounter is consistent throughout each level and is only distinguishable by the character you are looking at as you complete the matching exercise.

In the end, as a fan I must say I was very disappointed in this game. Now that I’m done with the experience, I can only help but wonder how this game would hold up for someone with no prior attachment. Without any interest in references to the films, I can’t see a person lasting beyond a level or two. Even as a die-hard, I can’t help but feel I wasted my time. Now as I’m sitting here writing this, I’m also realizing that the game fails to revisit the opening concept: James Bond, unconscious, reliving these memories. Instead of suggesting that something was learned as he comes out of his unconscious state, the game simply ends and we never even learn if he awakens again. This lack of consideration for even the most basic of narrative considerations speaks to the inattention on display throughout 007 Legends.

As I reflect on James Bond as a character, and consider the characteristics that have lead to his status as a cultural icon. I realize that the James Bond contained within 007 Legends fails to capture almost any of the appealing aspects of one of the longest running film franchises of all time. It's honestly impressive.

For the 50th Anniversary of James Bond films, Activision decided to make a game to celebrate Bond’s history. 007 Legends takes us through six stories, one from each Bond actor. This sounds like an amazing premise, yet the came was panned by critics when it came out. Is it really that bad? I decided to play this one on a Wii U, for reasons that I’ll get in later.

The game starts during Daniel Craig’s Skyfall, as Bond fights the assassin at the start of the film and Eve is ordered to take a shot, hitting Bond. As he falls down, he starts having flashbacks. This Bond is a reboot, so hadn’t experienced the previous films, but I’m fine with creative licensing to frame it in this way.

Bond wake’s up in an apartment to find a body coated in gold – we’re in Sean Connery’s Goldfinger, a good choice for a game like this. However, there’s also a modern mobile phone, which is the first troubling sign.

Unfortunately, these are Daniel Craig retellings of these films, similar to the previous GoldenEye, with modern settings. This does change what films are suitable for Daniel Craig’s Bond due to different styles, although Goldfinger causing a financial crisis does seem like something that can be adapted. To make matter’s worse, they couldn’t even get Daniel Craig to provide the voice, and the soundalike sounds quite bored.

The gameplay, for the most part, is the exact same stiff combat from GoldenEye. Most of the weapons are the same, too. For the Wii U, the game forces you to use the Game Pad, but all it offers is a useless inventory screen (the guns don’t even have unique icons) and an optional way to control the hacking minigames.

As Bond heads to Goldfinger’s headquarters, Tanner is orders him to find evidence of Goldfinger smuggling gold and to “remain undercover”. In a first person cut-scene Bond sets off a massive EMP from his phone, causing massive explosions, before he jumps onto a truck and rolls into an airfield, ready for you to shoot your way through legions of his men.

After blasting your way through enough of the facility, Bond asks Pussy Galore for help, who is very quick to side with him. You get to investigate Goldfinger’s office for clues, solving a few simple puzzles, such as scanning for fingerprints to work out combinations (although the last one is the “strongest”, and I think it should be the other way round). These are easily the best parts of the game, but it would have been even nicer if they were based on the aesthetic of the original film.

After making it out of Goldfinger’s building, but gets captured but convinces him to keep him alive during the crotch laser scene. As Goldfinger attacks Fort Knox, Felix Leiter ambushes and frees Bond. While the Daniel Craig era was the first to have a consistent actor for Felix, this game goes back to the old tradition of recasting the character, although this is a very different version to the one Craig’s Bond has previously met.

After fighting your way inside Fort Knox, you have to don night vision goggles. You can’t take them on or off when you want, and you can clearly see that the lights are on, so it makes no sense. You can’t even see enemies easier, it’s just a grainy sepia filter. All I can think of is that this is an attempt to make it look like an “old film”, but why do that with the modern setting? The section wearing the mask goes on for ages, and it doesn’t even change how enemies act.

You fight though the vault, have a quick time event fight with Oddjob and stop the bomb. Apart from the initial looks, the levels are just really dull in layout, and quite often the game will have enemies infinitely respawn. There are also many times where the game tells you to hurry, and it’s up to you to guess if it actually means it. Sometimes you’ll fail for not being quick enough, other times it leads to death and you’re actually supposed to take your time. At the end of this mission, you do get a first person cutscene of the end where Goldfinger attempts to kill Bond but gets sucked out of a window, but it then fades to black as the plane is crashing with Bond and Pussy Galore still on board.

For George Lazenby, there’s no choice, so it’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It starts off as Bond gets attacked while skiing. At first is feels pretty good, but you’ll then get a message saying that you’ve lost “Theresa”, who the game never properly introduced to. This section is utterly horrible as any mistake means failing the mission. You have to take out a few helicopters and guards along the way, but the main difficulty is dodging everything. Bond eventually falls over and wakes up to find Theresa captured, Bond calls someone for help and says that it’s strange for a spy and criminal to work together – while Goldfinger had a full plot, the rest of these tend to presume you’ve seen the films recently.

The updated version of Blofeld’s lair looks really nice but doesn’t help with the actual gameplay. It starts off with a turret section before you make your way into his base. Going into the secret part, you don’t get to see any details as Bond puts on his sepia filter again. After going though the “madman” architecture of a few circular bedrooms connected to each other, you rescue Theresa and the other guy takes her away. You chase Blofeld and have a quick time event fight in a cable car. One thing to note about the quick time event fights is that Bond continues fighting after you “win” – the final part of is something you never have control over.

The final cutscene has Bond and Theresa driving after getting married, getting shot at and Bond having a very unemotional response as Theresa is dead. Considering they only had two lines between them in the game, it’s odd that they kept it in.

Saving Roger Moore until later, it’s Timothy Dalton’s turn next. A revenge plot against a drug lord is a good fit for Craig’s Bond, so Licence to Kill is a good choice. It opens with Felix having been shot (and his wife dead) and Felix asks Bond to help one of his undercover agents investigating Sanchez, so Bond fights through a temple before finding his secret base.

This seems like a good place to talk about the stealth mechanics. They’re based on the same “once alerted, enemies always know where you are” terrible stealth on GoldenEye, but with two changes. First, if guards get shot while cameras can see them, it will cause an alert, which is a good change as you can take cameras out. The other change just destroys the stealth mechanics completely: bodies stay and if another guard ever sees it, everyone is alerted to your exact location. There’s no investigation or time for you to take out the guard spotting the body, and there’s also no way to move bodies. So stealth is just something you can attempt, but it will never last long.

Going through the base, you also have some forced stealth sections. These are thankfully short as they’re horrible, and I’m pretty sure that one of the scientists here could see through one particular wall.

After investigating Sanchez’s office, meeting up wit Pam and setting up some explosions, it’s time to escape. There was a section in the helicopter hanger that I thought was broken, but it turned out that you needed to kill all the guards in a section you can’t walk to, and there was one hiding behind some crates with a leg visible.

We actually get a car scene! In this section, you casually drive for a bit as enemies shoot rockets near your 4×4. Once you slowly catch up with Sanchez, the game takes over – although you do get to do some slow motion shots as a couple of shows now take out any vehicle. It’s time for another quick time event boss fight with Sanchez as the cool stuff is once again not something you have any input on. Bond sets off an explosion as he walks away from it so you can’t see it.

Next up is Peirce Brosnan’s turn. They already did a full game of GoldenEye, so it was one of the other picks. Die Another Day was the only one to not get a video game adaptation so I think that’s why they chose it, but I really think that Tomorrow Never Dies would have worked really well with Daniel Craig (especially if you link Carver to the mysterious organisation from the previous films).

You get a brief section meeting Jinx in the ice palace and taking some photos, I was imaging how great this level would look in a firefight with the ice being damaged, but for now we investigate the big dome nearby and break into the office of Gustav Graves. In this version, we only know he’s a businessman and his rant turning into helping North Korea is odd as we have no idea if this Bond even knows the character’s real history (incidentally, Miranda Frost has been written out).

After a really annoying chase where there are loads of guards, snipers and lasers from space, we end up in the ice palace where it turns out ice in invincible. With the environmental destruction of Quantum of Solace, this level would be amazing, but the levels in 007 legends are just a static background.

We do get the car chase on the ice, though. The handling starts off pretty as you’re sliding everywhere bad before Tanner orders Bond to turn on his traction tyres, then later telling Bond to turn on his threat detection and then missiles, which reminds me of Metroid: Other M in a bad way. To fight Zao, you have to wait for your missiles to lock on before firing, then Bond takes him out in a cutscene. You then have to race to get on a plane as cargo crate home in on you and, again, the game takes over before you reach the ramp.

I really was expecting the handholds to get taken off the “fighting” sections at some points. You push up/down on the sticks to perform a high or low punch with that ends, and the enemies all block in awkward ways to make it very obvious where you need to hit, yet the game never removes the prompts telling you exactly what to press. After this, Bond takes out Graves (you don’t even get a QTE to do the final action) and you hurry off the plane.

For Roger Moore, they can certainly pick a more down to Earth film that Daniel Craig would suit, so obviously they went with Moonraker. Here you fight through a few corridors, investigate a toxin, then have a detour through some more corridors to turn off some sentry guns to investigate Drax’s office. You then have an annoying stealth section and then have to kill off a few waves of enemies before Jaws turns up for a QTE event. You defeat him, but Drax captures you before you escape, making it onto a shuttle.

On the space station, you have a string of forced stealth sections which, like the License to Kill ones, are just really annoying. Then you have to stop pods from being launched by looking for big numbers and putting the codes into a keypad. Bond gets captured, but turns off the artificial gravity.

Now, while it would be better with Roger Moore, this is more like it: a zero gravity laser fight. Moving around is quite good, although the floating objects are completely static. The moonraker laser also just looks like a regular gun. You get a slight detour into space to shoot a few turrets before you deal with the arms loading the pods loaded with toxins, in a scene that’s far less impressive copy of Nightfire’s ending.

After planting a bomb in some glass, a cutscene takes over as Bond throws Drax out of an airlock and it fades to black as the space station starts exploding.

If you play this game on PC, 360 or PS3, then the credits will roll. The end of the game was free DLC that came out after the game initially released. While people who added the DLC to their account at the right time can download it, there’s no way to get it – I couldn’t even find a pirated way to get it. The Wii U version came out later, so the end of the game is actually on the disc.

The game abruptly cuts back to before the start of Skyfall – you go straight form the Moonraker base exploding to this – as two unknown people are dead and Bond has to chase the assassin – a man called Patrice. You chase him over some rooftops, but you can’t actually hurt him. After a while, you’ll get onto a motorbike for a vehicle chase.

Remember the awful skiing section I talked about? The motorcycle chase is a worse version of that, with random cars trying to swerve into you. It’s completely on rails, so you’re just swerving form side to side. Eventually, Eve blocks his path and you follow him onto a train with the last QTE fight of the game. We see Bond get shot and then waking up on a shore. What he’s been through never gets brought up as this game isn’t really about Bond himself, or what he’s been through, just “this is like X film”.

The strange skyscraper with all the internal glass walls is the next mission. Bond stops Patrice from assassinating someone and it’s time for a really dull boss fight as Patrice is a bullet sponge. You hide behind cover, pop out, shoot him and duck back down. Half way though he’ll run upstairs and you’ll repeat it again. He’ll set off a smoke grenade and you’ll investigate. The game takes over as Bond ends up throwing Patrice off the building. He calls M, who apologises for ordering the shot, and Bond is fine with it. With the assassin killed, the job is done.

Yup, that’s all we get of Skyfall. The film’s villain doesn’t make an appearance at all, and the film’s climax would actually suit a game of this style.

007 Legends is just a really poor cash in that likely stated with a good idea, but just has dull gameplay and tedious level design. It also loses out on nostalgia by having a modern day setting instead of the retro settings, with all the cool gadgets replaced with a product placement mobile phone. The films chosen aren’t even picked well for Daniel Craig, and there’s no actual narrative linking them together in any way meaningful. With a game of this quality, it’s no surprise that there was no proper James Bond video game for a while.

This is a really great concept and as a bond fan it’s so cool to play through things from the films to the score music
That’s about all I can compliment the game for. The gameplay and level design is awful, as are the boss fights. The stories are so rushed and it feels like they just have a checklist of film references to make. Also the decision to have them all be in the craig universe is a bit bizarre, not sure his films’ style translates to moonraker and die another day.
It’s a great concept, and I hope we get an opportunity to get to play through more events from the films, but I don’t have all the time in the world for this one.

This game seems to get a lot of hate, and honestly I'm not sure why. Ok, it's a very average FPS, but as a big James Bond fan, I really liked the added twists. First, you get to relive a bunch of famous scenes from several movies, such as the iconic "Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" and fighting Jaws and blowing Drax out the airlock from Moonraker. I also really liked that there were puzzle elements that needed your gadgets to overcome, driving levels, and climactic fist fights with the villains as well. It wasn't Half Life 2, but it was a fun diversion and I'm glad I played it. Give it a chance if you are a Bond fan and just want to have some fun.

Remember when James Bond games were more than just generic CoD clones? Yeah me too, good times. Unfortunately those times are long gone.

This was the last and final Bond game and basically what killed the license as a video game property.

That alone makes me hate it.