007 Racing

Review

by Jon Thompson

It's probably safe to assume that most gamers have at one point or another dreamed of filling James Bond's shoes, especially when Bond jumps behind the wheel of a sports car filled with gadgets and guns. 007 Racing lets you do this, and it's a great concept for a videogame. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver the excitement one would expect from such an interesting license.

Even with a host of intriguing concepts, 007 Racing doesn't manage to entertain, especially considering its great theme. Jumping into a fast car and blowing things up should fundamentally be an engaging experience, and when people manage to get it wrong, questions must be asked and companies must be held accountable. Such is the case with this title, which has the ideas but lacks the control, design consistency, and smooth, attractive look that the concept demands.

While the cars all have noticeably different handling, they don't control quite as well as you would hope from their expensive and exclusive reputations. Rather, they're all fairly sluggish, with turning and acceleration that misses the mark. They don't feel attached to the road enough, and that really hurts the title, since they are the focus and attraction to the game in the first place.

The weapons aren't as fun to use as they should be, either. For starters, you can hold but one, meaning if you accidentally pick a weapon that you don't want by running over it, there's nothing that can be done to stop it. And aiming is impractically difficult, often making you wish that you had a crosshair to guide you as you fire away.

The missions given to you are certainly varied, but their problem is that the quality is inconsistent. Most of the missions are of the hunt-and-kill variety, and these are generally annoying only because of the game's suspect control. But others, where racing is the predominate theme, can range from thrilling to incomprehensible to just plain dull.

Even the great missions only serve to highlight how disappointing the game is, although they do at least manage to deliver some enjoyment for your hard-earned money. But they won't satisfy anyone enough to justify playing through the rest of the game.

007 Racing looks as if it came out the day after the console was released rather than during the year 2000. Nearly every visual aspect of the game is substandard, from the bulky models, made even more apparent by the smooth sheen that sports cars should feature, to the textures, map design, and so forth. Everything looks downright ugly, which is disappointing when you consider the number of beautiful games released on the platform. What went wrong?

In the end, despite a theme that seemed infallible, complete with Spy Hunter gameplay and some interesting objectives to complete, the control, look, and overall feel of 007 Racing fails to thrill, chill, shake, or stir your consciousness to warrant giving it a go.