Nostalgia Sunday: James Bond 007: Nightfire

James Bond 007: Nightfire

I don't remember how I got this, but I was lucky to have it. The story was good, the gameplay partially too, but it all got topped by the multiplayer mode. I even bought a Multitap for my PS2, so we could play with four people. So many hours played, we created the mode "Snipertown", which was basically only sniper rifles on a map called Ravine. The map had 2 mountains, connected by a skyrail. So much fun...

The Story:

At the beginning, you start in France, where you have to protect Dominique Paradis with a sniper rifle from a helicopter, who is chasing after a truck with a stolen nuclear weapon. After you catch the truck, the real story begins. The story focuses on a multination corporation known as Phoenix, which is supposed to have been contracted to dismantle nuclear missiles and clean up nuclear power plants around the world. But Phoenix's intentions are, of course, evil to the core, and the company's leader intends to overtake an orbital missile defense platform and use it to essentially destroy the world. Your part, or better, Bonds part is it now, to stop Phoenix and save the world.

The Game:

The game offers you a variety of weapons to choose from, if you can find them in the levels and has also a large varitey of different places and missions you will visit in the campaign, like shown in the above picture. You'll visit Japan, Austria, the South Pacific and even Space. The controls would be something you'd have to learn these days. Todays standarts are left analog stick controls the movement and the right controls the view. Not in this game. You'll walk forward and back, and turn left and right with the left analog stick, and walk left and right, and look up and down with the right analog stick. Weird indeed, but it somehow worked.
Like said at the beginning, the multiplayer was AWESOME! The levels were cool and so were the weapons you could use. Nothing could go wrong. There was no internet for the PS2 back then, so it was all splitscreen. I miss those good old days.

Prequels and Sequels:

I never played the prequel Agent Under Fire, even though I wanted to buy it. But you know, money was short as a kid. A friend of mine had a Nintendo 64 and the game "The World is not enough", which also was awesome. Nothing tops splitscreen multiplayer. Of course there was "GoldenEye 007" before that, but guess what. I never played it. I always hear, it's the best 007 game, but I had my fun with the others, so I think I didn't miss out on something.
After Nightfire, if I remember correctly, the 007 games went Third Person with "Everything or Nothing". I think that was a bad move. I rented the game and played through on one weekend. It had coop too, but it just wasn't the same. 
Activision recently released a remade version of GoldenEye. I played a demo at Gamescom 2011 and the demo from Xbox Live, but it didn't really appeal to me. I guess it doesn't have the same charme as back in the day.

I don't know, if the new GoldenEye was a success, but I hope they will make another 007 game, with a great new story, not from the films, and in first person. Just like Nightfire was.