Top Five James Bond Games

The 23rd installment in the longest-running movie franchise has breached theaters in the U.K., and many are calling it a grand film. In celebration of that and the 50th anniversary of James Bond, comes what I call the five best James Bond video games on the market. Trust me -- this will be a better ode to Bond than 007 Legends, though that shouldn't be too arduous of a mission anyway. So lock and load your Walther PPK, take your drink shaken and not stirred, and get ready for these five terrific Bond games.

5) 007: Agent Under Fire (PS2, GCN, XBX)

The first of two James Bond games on this list that were not based off of movies or books, 007: Agent Under Fire was a last generation title featuring a Bond not modeled after a film likeness. The game featured run and gun action, plenty of gadgets from Q to tinker around with (or to actually complete missions with), as well as driving and on-rails segments. To say that Agent Under Fire was lacking in gameplay variety would be a lie even a spy like James Bond couldn't say with a straight face. Alongside the solo missions, there was a staple of most Bond games -- full multiplayer. And like any good multiplayer game, Agent Under Fire had the option for bots. Why games made in 2012 cannot have a feature a PlayStation 2-era title had is beyond me, but I'm sure one of my readers out there will set me straight!

4) GoldenEye 007 (Wii)

When you try to create a re-imagining of a classic game, it becomes incredibly difficult to get your game out of the classic's shadow. While Eurocom's 2010 GoldenEye 007 on Wii did not surpass Rare's 1997 classic, it did run close with it, offering an alternate take on the film's story with current Bond Daniel Craig in the driver's seat. Eurocom's retelling of the GoldenEye story was altered with new plot points to make sense in the more modern world. Also, alongside the updated story were updated levels and environments that could be destroyed. The Wii remote added some of the greatest first-person shooter controls on a console with pinpoint precision and accuracy. It was just a breeze aiming and shooting enemies. And when the enjoyable solo campaign was not the player's cup of tea, they could hop online with up to seven other players across ten well-made maps for a license to frag. Why the game is not higher on this list is because this version of GoldenEye felt more like Call of Duty than entirely a Bond game.

3) James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (PS2, GCN, XBX)

Like Agent Under Fire, Everything or Nothing featured a wholly original plot attached to it, but unlike every other game on this list, Everything or Nothing was played in a third-person view. The game would be Pierce Brosnan's last performance as James Bond (I'll always love you in that role, Pierce), shortly after Die Another Day. Joining him was an all-star cast: Dame Judi Dench, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, and Richard Kiel who reprised his role as Jaws. The game had a mix of stealth, cover-based gunplay, gadgetry, and even some well done driving sections in Bond's Aston Martin. I was amazed most by how well EA managed to spare no expense on the production values while creating a game that looked and felt like James Bond through and through. Adding in some two player cooperative gameplay, and Everything or Nothing made for itself an incredibly rewarding Bond experience.

2) 007: The World Is Not Enough (N64)

The second game developed by Eurocom on this list of the top five James Bond titles, 2000's 007: The World Is Not Enough was based on the 1999 movie of the same name (well, nix the 007 part). After Tomorrow Never Dies' negative critical response, Eurocom opted to send Bond back to his first-person lineage as a certain well-known and loved 1997 Nintendo 64 game made popular. The final product was EA's attempt at creating a GoldenEye-like game with mission objectives that needed to be completed in order to finish a given level. TWINE was a fantastic first-person shooter with over a dozen solo levels spanning familiar locales of The World Is Not Enough, and three difficulty settings which added in harder enemies and more objectives to complete. Thrown in for good measure was a multiplayer mode which could fortunately be played with bots as well as human opponents, which offered an immense amount of fun as players hunted one another across the well-designed maps, one even taking place high in the sky on a plane. TWINE was a terrific Nintendo 64 shooter that hit home the point that James Bond was a force to be reckoned with not only in his films but in his video games as well.

1) GoldenEye 007 (N64)

After you have rolled your eyes and said "how unoriginal of a choice for number one", get cozy and read why I have picked the 1997 classic as the number one Bond game. GoldenEye 007's history is quite interesting. It started in development going towards an on-rails shooter. The development team then shifted gears toward making something more akin to a first-person shooter. The fruits of Rare's labor turned into one of the most successful Nintendo 64 games and one of the most important console games in industry history, despite being released two years after the movie it was modeled after. It made first-person shooters on home consoles a viable idea, and Halo, Call of Duty, and all FPS games that followed it have GoldenEye 007 to thank. Like the game it inspired, TWINE, GoldenEye 007 had various solo missions that could be played on one of several difficulties. The harder the difficulty, the less ammo was around, the more bullets enemies could withstand, and the more objectives needed to be completed. And that multiplayer mode that became the popular go-to attraction at many a slumber party? It was added in late in development as if it weren't important at all. It seems every James Bond game has to live up to the standard GoldenEye 007 created. That's for good reason, too. As Carly Simon so famously sang, "Nobody does it better."

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We have reached the end of our mission. Time for us to part ways until next week. In the meantime, feel free to list what James Bond games you have enjoyed the most over the years.

SPC Soapbox - 10/25/12 Wii U Demo Impressions, Change, and Graphics Over Gameplay!?

The last time I stood on the SPC Soapbox was back in August. It was also the first time as well. If you recall, the long-running SPC Mailbag turned into the SPC Soapbox. Regardless, today I have three more topics I'd like to briefly discuss that ordinarily would not be long enough to make for an appealing article by their lonesome. Today's topics include my first play session with the Wii U, why gamers need to make up their minds about change, and a disturbing debate I heard in my game theory class.

Wii U demo impressions

After an appointment this past Tuesday I drove home a different way just so I could stop by my local Best Buy. I was interested to see if Style Savvy: Trendsetters was in stock, but I had an ulterior motive in my trip. I wanted to see if the Wii U demo station at the store was up. Although it was facing the back of the gaming department, an employee there told me that the station was a popular attraction. Note that Nintendo hasn't really advertised their new console to the general public as of yet. Thankfully, because I was there on an afternoon on a school day, the demo station was wide open for me to try out the system without any sort of wait.

I grabbed the Wii U GamePad and immediately I was surprised at what I held. The GamePad was incredibly lightweight. I had read impressions that the controller was such, but I did not think it would have such little heft to it. The controller fit my hands perfectly, and it was comfortable to use for the duration I spent with the unit. I slid my finger across the various game boxes on the screen and came across Rayman Legends. Conveniently enough the game was the only one with a demo on the Wii U demo station. Odd as the game does not come out until next year, but I wasn't complaining.

I entered the timed demo and selected a castle stage, one that was shown on the E3 2012 stage. I started off as the new character Barbara, and if you have played Rayman Origins, you will feel right at home with the controls. Everything is as tight and as smooth control-wise as that game. However, Legends is all the more gorgeous, much more so than its predecessor. It was just awe-inspiring and something I had to sit back and marvel at for a few moments. No hyperbole here, folks. It's just a darned beautiful game.

I eventually reached an area where Rayman was, and I was forced to switch to Murphy, a character controlled with the Wii U GamePad. While the CPU controlled Rayman, I helped out by slicing ropes with my finger, rubbing enemies to make them ticklish and vulnerable to Rayman's attacks, sliding platforms around, and spinning objects with the GamePad.

Speaking of spinning objects, there was only one problem spot I had and that regarded a bonus area. You have to tilt the GamePad to spin a circular maze around while your AI-controlled Rayman has to get through it. I kept reaching the middle of the maze, but Rayman would just dangle from the chain, not really going anywhere. He kept falling off the chain, leading to his demise, before I could situate the maze correctly. That could have been an error on my part, not knowing what to do, but it was frustrating enough that I just said "forget it" and moved on with the demo.

I finished the first level of the demo, but I did not have the time to try out the second level. It was the running level set to heavy metal music shown in this E3 2012 presentation. Overall, I enjoyed my time with Wii U and Rayman Legends, and I think the game sold me on the system. I'm sort of glad that the game was delayed, solely for the reason that it doesn't have to compete directly with New Super Mario Bros. U this holiday season. I just hope Ubisoft gives the game the same amount of love around release as it is giving the game now.

The hypocrisy of change

Gamers are creatures that just confuse me on a daily basis. I've made fun of them enough and gave my piece on how they can really disgust me (Bayonetta 2, "I'm not a gamer" ads, message board communities like NeoGAF, entitlement issues, etc.), so there's no use going into that.

However, there is this concept of change and innovation that some gamers get hypocritical about. Some gamers say they want change in franchises so they don't get stagnant. Nintendo fans are notorious for this. Don't change much and it's a rehash; change a lot and it sucks now. So it seems like gamers want change, but at the same time they want to play the same games they grew up enjoying. How does a developer satisfy such an insatiable group? Perhaps I'm building strawmen here, so if I seem like I'm blatantly doing so, I apologize. It's just... freaking gamers, man.

The baffling mindset of some Western gamers and studios

If you haven't been a frequenter of SuperPhillip Central, then you don't realize that my site only gets half of my time. The other is devoted to college as I am a university student. One of my classes this semester involves game theory and design. One evening our class had a debate on something DmC Devil May Cry director Hideaki Itsuno said in an interview about how Western developers focus on visuals first and then gameplay. Somehow it got turned into a debate on whether or not graphics are more important than gameplay.

Something inside me was enraged after hearing some of the opinions, and not just opinions -- popular opinions within the class. It had little to do with people agreeing with the opinion that graphics should be the most important part to a game.

Which is a reason why I found someone bringing up Battlefield 3 to be so funny. This is besides the ignorance that is popular with a certain group of gamer that somehow Nintendo is the one that makes the same games over and over again yet many carbon copy FPS games are given a free pass for being basically the same games with a new coat of paint and IP attached to it. (Just how Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Super Mario 3D Land are the same is beyond me when one deals with gravity-based platforming, one is 2D, and the other is a mix of 3D and 2D gameplay. Perhaps we're thinking too shallow and only talking about story?) Regardless, when it concerns Battlefield 3, the argument made was that graphics were more important because all of the aircraft and tanks resemble what they look like in real life, and thank goodness for that! Thank goodness each airplane and aircraft is 100% faithful to the real things, and thank goodness each marine moves just like real-life marines do. Who cares if the gameplay feels to me like the same old derivative first-person shooter stuff we've seen hundreds of times already? Just as long as the visuals create an experience, the gameplay can be an afterthought! That is what I took from the debate. I don't know if this person really believed what he was saying (i.e. graphics are more important than gameplay, mechanics, a game concept. etc.) because he was forced to argue a particular viewpoint, or if that is what he truly believes.

But that wasn't what even angered me. I couldn't care less what some random person has to say. What angered me was the realization that this type of thinking that graphics should be front and center and everything else should come after is shared not only by many Western gamers (and wrongly so), but it is the mindset of so many Western developers. No wonder some of the West's games generally bore me because they are more enthused with creating a pretty package that runs in 1080p and 60 FPS instead of making something fun. How I yawned playing Killzone, Halo, Gears of Bros -- I mean Gears of War -- and other Western games. Don't get me wrong -- the West also does awesome stuff like Batman: Arkham City, LittleBigPlanet, Rayman Origins, Uncharted, and Mirror's Edge, for starters, but sometimes it can be perceived as too few and far in between.

Furthermore, when did some "gamers" make it that having an experience in a game is exclusive to being immersed in it by visuals? Am I messed up because I get immersed in a game by compelling gameplay? That was a rhetorical question if you're playing at home. That isn't to say that only gameplay or graphics can immerse a player or give them an experience. No, both do whether a person realizes it or not.

It's this increasing mindset by the West that video games should be built to be visual powerhouses or artistic delights first and vessels to show off compelling gameplay and design AFTER is what is so maddening to me.

Rayman Legends (Wii U) Toad Story Trailer

Watch five players (one being Murphy via the Wii U GamePad) work together to get through this forested area with wind tunnels, trees, and vines. Rayman Legends is looking like a sensational game. It is just a shame it was delayed worldwide until early next year. Perhaps it's for the best so that New Super Mario Bros. U does not overshadow it.

Nintendo 3DS Sizzle Reel - October 25th, 2012

Nintendo showcased a myriad of titles during their Nintendo Direct presentation, and what better way to do so in a flash than a sizzle reel? Such games featured include Paper Mario: Sticker Star, the first footage of the 3DS version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, among others. The 3DS library is shaping up. Here's hoping the prices become more affordable.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) Debut English Trailer

The Animal Crossing series takes a huge step forward with New Leaf, offering customization like never seen before. You are the mayor, the make the decisions, and you get to make your village your way. This first English trailer shows off just a sample of what can be done in this newest iteration of the popular life simulation series.