EA went all out with the story and presentation of Everything or Nothing, using writers that worked on the Brosnan Bond films as well as getting Pierce Brosnan to actually provide the voice of James Bond, and Willem Dafoe playing the main villain. It also moves to a third person view, which thankfully works well for this game. Even though I played the GBA version first, the story was so weak that this was practically brand new.

It starts off with a cold opening of Bond stopping the sale of a briefcase nuclear missile, which provides a way to get used to the aiming mechanics. You can’t just shoot where you want, you need to lock-on to enemies. While locked-on you can make fine adjustments to go for headshots. The system takes a bit to get used to. After the epic cold opening, we get a great Bond opening credit, with a great song to go with it.

After a brief tutorial showing you the other main aspects of the game, Bond gets sent to investigate a building, but you skip to Bond setting off a bomb and escaping, using the rappel mechanic, which lets you navigate up and down walls with ease. It’s an epic set piece and it’s moments like this where this game feels like an early Uncharted game. When the game flows, it flows really well.

Once you reach the ground, you get a vehicle section.

One little thing I appreciated about this is that you start out on foot and get into a car. While you can only get out of cars at certain points, it does help with the feeling of controlling Bond and not just a car -it merges the two gameplay styles well. The car handling doesn’t feel quite a smooth as Nightfire, but is still enjoyable, especially the more open stages later on.

Catching up to a train, you then board it and take out Jaws. While this game has a lot of levels, many are short, which really messes up the pacing of the game – going through the stats and saving takes ages. It doesn’t help that some levels just seem to end abruptly, sometimes in the middle of a room with no cutscene. The game would be a lot better if you could paly from start to finish without having to return to the save/mission select menu.

With your target fleeing on foot, you give chase in a helicopter. It’s a Star Fox-style on rails segment, but is a lot of fun and has some very impressive moments as you shoot through Egypt, causing a mass amount of damage to culture in the process. It ends in a nifty boss battle. You save the nanobots and give them to your partner, who hands them over to Dafoe of the film, a student of Max Zorin.

The next mission is “MI6 Interlude”, which is just a cutscene briefing you on the next part of the mission followed by Q explaining your gadgets – although oddly, he already explains them in the menu at the end of the previous mission. This kind of “interlude” pops up multiple times and it’s disappointing that you don’t get to walk around or test out your new toys.

Investigating the disappearance of 003, Bond heads to Peru, having to sneak by corrupt police using the stealth mode of his car. This map is fairly open, and there are multiple routes you can take. Bond tracks down a geologist that can help direct him to the Plantinum mine he needs to find.

These mine missions are probably the weakest part of the game, with some tedious level design. The gunplay mechanics still make it enjoyable. Though a few levels, you’ll find 003 but fail to save him. In your escape you’ll encounter one of the few sections where you need your thermal imaging, which is handy for highlighting enemies. This section is also when my frustration with the targeting system surfaces, as shooting things like explosive barrels is a massive pain. You have to use “bond sense”, but it doesn’t like to target what you point at half the time.

As you escape, the villains throw the Bond girl, Serena, off a cliff. This is a very cinematic segment, but is by far the most difficult part of the game, requiring perfect moment and timing. You really need to start moving forward before the cutscene ends to have a chance of succeeding. Aftet this you take control of a tank – but unfortunately just the guns. After this an impressive motorbike chase as you board an MI6 plane as it takes off.

Off to New Orleans and there’s a new little open world driving section. You have to steal a truck to sneak into their warehouse to investigate. You then discover that your ally in the area, Mya (played by the singer Mya, who performed the song for the game) is in danger, and you have to race to save her. I was impressed that the game let me fail in the way it did: I didn’t think of stashing Bond’s car in the truck, so I couldn’t defeat the cars I needed. I had to quit the mission and start again to do it correctly, but I like that it doesn’t spell it out to you.

The next few levels are a bit of a detour as you chase Mya and eventually rescue her in a boss fight, having to flee in a limo with a bomb attached to it. You go get to use a remote control car to blow up a huge warehouse and then investigate the secret base where you discover what is actually happening: these nanomachines are programmed to dissolve metals. The villains plan to weaponize it and attack cities (a bit more ambitious than “shields” from the GBA version).

After destroying the manufacturing plant, you need to catch up to Jaws, who has escaped with a truck full of these nanobots, leading to a great chase scene as you rush down a highway in a motorbike, using the bike’s sliding gadget to dodge under tankers and then its flamethrower to melt the truck’s tires. With the full plan discovered, it’s time to head back to Peru.

Bond wants to meet the villain, Diavolo, face to face. Luckily for Bond, he has a policy of meeting winners of a rally face-to-face and there is one happening soon, so Bond stealthily murders an entire hotel to take the driver’s racing suit and proceeds to win the race, which is a lot of fun, then heads to the meeting. Diavolo knows that something is up right away (possible due to all the deaths, or the fact that he knows what Bond looks like) and both fail to kill the other. Bond does learn that Diavolo wants to take Russia first.

After Bond escapes in another car chase, he heads to the secret facility in Peru, but ends up getting knocked out by a dartgun. We wakes up strapped to a wall, with a giant drill in front of him. You get to perform the escape yourself, which is nice, before you sabotage the facility and escape. Time to head over to Russia, where Bond steals a “platinum tank”, equipped with shells and metal-eating nanomachines.

And this time, you get full control of it. This is a very enjoyable mission as you disable a bomb, destroy some supports holding up a road and then proceed to melt a helicopter. The helicopter is holding a giant statue of Diavolo, which smashes through the wall, creating a sinkhole that takes out all of the tanks. M contacts Bond to let him know that Diavolo has fled to a disabled nuclear missile facility.

Another cool repelling sequence as you dodge lasers and then fight Jaws for the finaltime. You make your way through the facility to the control room, where Bond discovered that the disarmed nukes have now been equipped with more nanomachines. You shut down the launch and blow up Diavolo in a rather anticlimactic way.

But he’s not dead yet! As you take the lift back up, Diavolo comes up in a fighter jet in a very difficult battle (especially due to the limited amount of rockets and the difficulty of aiming them). You blow up a payload of nanomachines and the jet crashes and explodes.

But Diavolo isn’t quite done yet. He escapes and sets off a final missile, directed at London. You fire a few rockets at him in his tower (so his final death is once again anticlimatic) and take out the missile, saving the world.

Everything or Nothing is a very fun game, but does feel disjointed to how the missions are cut up into small chunks. I personally prefer Nightfire, but they’re both great games. Everything or Nothing is a great early example of a game trying to be a more cinematic feel, and it pulled that off really well, making this game feel like an adaptation of a film that never existed.