With Skyfall becoming the biggest-grossing, most heavily product-placed and most three-completely-different-films-mashed-together Bond movie of all time, clearly the tie-in game, released on PC recently, would be a thoughtful, high-budget affair with a long development cycle and the upmost understanding of what makes Bond Bond. Clearly. 007 Legends essentially retells older Bold adventures but as starring Daniel ‘Mini-Hulk’ Craig and a raft of more modern technology. I knew in my bones that this would be a faithful and careful recreation of the cavalier Secret Agent fantasy, and definitely not a mucky, ugly, by the numbers first-person shooter whose PC version was less console port and more console diarrhea that had accidentally dribbled onto PC.
I put on my best (only) bowtie and went in. Here’s what I discovered in my first and only foray into 007 Legends. Would it leave me shaken or stirred lol zing etc?(more…)
What a waste 007 Legends is. Seemingly timed for release just ahead of the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, 007 Legends is a video game tribute to all things Bond that ends up as more of an insult. Eurocom, the developers of the surprisingly likable GoldenEye remake, handle the development duties here as well, but the gulf between the two games could scarcely be more vast. Where GoldenEye updated old ideas for the modern era, 007 Legends takes current ideas and ages them to the point of rotting.
Fight against such thrilling villains as the Korean guy with the messed up face! You remember him, right? Hello...?The missteps are readily apparent even if you're just scanning the back of the box. Right up front, Activision and Eurocom kneecapped this thing by offering up one of the stranger selections of old school Bond missions you could possibly come up with. The idea here is to cover all of the Bonds that have lived over the years. So there's a Connery, a Moore, a Brosnan, a Dalton, and yes, even the one, singular Lazenby. With this structure in mind, yes, On Her Majesty's Secret Service had to be in there by default, but the remaining choices are nonetheless strange. Goldfinger is an iconic enough Connery, but Die Another Day as your Brosnan movie? And Moonraker of all goddamn things as your Roger Moore? And was anyone really chomping at the bit to experience the myriad thrills of License to Kill?
What's worse, the structure of the game itself essentially robs any of these source materials of whatever thrill there may have been. The game opens with Daniel Craig Bond fighting on the roof of a train with some bad guy, while a female sniper is egged on over the radio by M to "take the shot!" She does, and accidentally hits Bond, who falls far into a nearby river. While floating around aimlessly, Bond apparently starts having flashbacks to those earlier missions. Though of course now, Craig's face and demeanor has been superimposed over his predecessors.
You traipse through these newly Craig-washed Bond stories for a couple of missions at a time, usually infiltrating one villain or another's evil lair, shooting a bunch of guys, then exiting said lair. On its own, that isn't necessarily the worst progression a game can have, but the fact that the aforementioned shooting of guys is so crucially dull pretty much sinks it. Every mission feels more chore-like than exciting. Enemies just kind of wander around the environment until an alarm is set off, in which case they run at you guns blazing. Those are really the only two settings they have, and once they do go after you, they have an uncanny habit of walking into pieces of the level geometry or getting stuck next to a wall. Once you've picked off a few of them from afar, it's actually pretty easy to just run up and melee attack them, which kills them in one hit. Repeat this process across five different mission blocks, and that's the game, more or less.
These Quick Timey fist fights are just about the worst.While picking off hapless bad guys is mostly just boring, other areas of the game are more aggressively unlikable. For instance, there are a few different sequences where you'll find yourself in a "crucial stealth area." This means that you have no choice but to sneak your way through a level section without being seen. While Bond's gadgetry is effective enough about taking out cameras and other automated detection devices, he's afforded no reasonable abilities with which to handle living guards. You can kill them with silenced weapons, or just distract them or knock them out with a dart gun, but you have no ability to move bodies out of sight. You can't even peek around corners, for Christ's sake.
There are times in the non-stealth game where going stealthy might benefit you, such as when you're tasked with sneaking around offices, collecting pieces of intel, or using your smart phone to take pictures and engage some middling hacking minigames. But the mechanics you're handed just aren't useful enough to actually make that a worthwhile option. Most times, it's just easier to start picking guys off from afar, and then blitzkrieg them until there's no one left.
And then there are the fist fights. Oh god, the fist fights. Basically, every level section ends with a boss fight of some kind against a bad guy like Oddjob, Goldfinger, the guy Robert Davi played in License to Kill, and whoever else. These are miserable. If an enemy has a weapon, you have to just dodge and weave until eventually knocking it out of their hand. Then you proceed to press the left and right sticks up or down, depending on what spot the guy is leaving unguarded. That's it. If you have anything that resembles motor skills, you will kill these guys in about 15 seconds. Every time.
All these gameplay issues would be a bit less egregious if the missions you were presented with were, well, better presented. Daniel Craig isn't around, so you've got a goofy soundalike mumbling his way through conversations with other poorly voiced characters. The actual context for each story is all but lost in translation, as well. You're just dropped into the mission, given a quick briefing, and off you go. Over the course of each mission, how much of the actual plot you'll get varies wildly. Goldfinger, for instance, does an okay job of setting up the titular villain's plan, but On Her Majesty's Secret Service does a terrible job of explaining why you're there, who this woman you're rescuing is, or why you should care about any of it. It's perhaps expected that people just know this stuff, but considering most of these movies are at least 25 years old, that's a weird expectation.
If a game can't even make the act of shooting bad guys fun, why even bother?Worse still, the game has no ending. Not yet, anyway. The Skyfall portion of the game isn't on the disc, which means that when you complete the last mission, the credits just roll, without even a "See the thrilling conclusion in Skyfall! Coming as DLC this November!" message to explain what's happening. Yes, you will get the Skyfall mission as DLC in a few weeks, and for free. Still, considering how abrupt the game's current ending is, one gets the impression this was a last minute concession made to please MGM, and not by original design.
The one, solitary nice thing I can say about 007 Legends is that its multiplayer is solid. Not great, or even particularly good, but functional. Up to 12 players can play online, and the game does at least include the split-screen four-player multiplayer mode GoldenEye fans were so very fond of. If the guns and maps were more interesting, then it might actually be a reason to potentially pick this game up on the cheap later on. But they aren't, and thus it is not.
The idea of an anthology-like tribute to Bond films of the past isn't a bad one, but 007 Legends wastes whatever potential for fun there might have been. Instead, all Bond fans are left with is a heavily rewritten, Cliff's Notes version of some great (and not-so-great) films with a bunch of forgettable shooting and stealth sequences shoved into the mix. Ultimately, nothing 007 Legends offers is worth the effort of trudging through it.
If you’re in the mood for a little James Bond you’ll be happy to see that 007 Legends is releasing today on PlayStation Store. Even better, if you’re a PlayStation Plus Member you’ll receive 10% off the purchase price during launch week. If that’s not to your liking, there’s also DOOM 3 BFG Edition, complete with DOOM, DOOM II, DOOM 3, DOOM 3: Resurrection of Evil and the Lost Mission. For a more family-friendly experience, both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune are hitting the store today.
Of course, if you own a PS Vita you’ve probably been looking forward to Silent Hill: Book of Memories. Well, the wait is finally over — the game is available for download now, so go bunker down with the creepy survivor horror.
Aside from the discount on 007 Legends that I’ve already mentioned, Plus members have quite a few treats this week. PAYDAY: The Heist joins the Instant Game Collection, there’s an exclusive beta for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale and you can purchase The Unfinished Swan a week before anybody else. On top of all that, there’s a massive Halloween sale, so stock up on games while they’re cheap!
As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments below. You can also chat about this update in the PlayStation Community Forums.
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Instant Game Collection PAYDAY: The Heist Exclusive Beta PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale (PS3) Exclusive Early Access The Unfinished Swan — $14.99 Discounts 007 Legends (10%) – PS Plus Price: $53.99007 Legends is a videogame celebration of the James Bond film franchise’s 50th anniversary, featuring five classic Bond movie-inspired missions along with a downloadable mission based on the next Bond film, Skyfall.
Skyfall is an integral part of 007 Legends story, the action from the film bookends the other missions and we’ve built the overarching narrative of the game around a pivotal event that occurs early on in the film. EON Productions, the production company who produce the James Bond films, have been fantastic partners to work with, granting us exclusive behind-the-scenes access to many of the film’s stunts and action sequences, allowing us to recreate those breathtaking moments you’ll see on the big screen within the game as fully interactive segments within the game. During the Skyfall mission, we visit two striking locations that have been faithfully recreated from the film, as well as some fantastic acting talent including Daniel Craig as Bond that will appear on the big screen when the film is released on November 9th, 2012.
As a special PlayStation Network exclusive, two of the main characters featured in the film Skyfall, — MI6 field agent Eve (played by the actress Naomie Harris) and the assassin Patrice (Ola Rapace) — are available as multiplayer characters, each with their own special features and abilities. To re-create these two characters we were given special access to the wardrobe and armory departments of the film and took high-resolution digital scans of the actor’s likenesses to ensure that what you see in the game is as close to their real-life appearance as possible.
The films that make up the other six missions featured in 007 Legends are Goldfinger (1964), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Moonraker (1979), Licence to Kill (1989), Die Another Day (2002) and Skyfall (2012). If you’re a keen Bond fan, you’ll have noticed a pattern to the movies that we’ve adapted for 007 Legends – one movie from each of the six actors who’ve played Bond over the last 50 years. This was a way for us to pay homage to not only the original actors, but also to all of the other cast and crew who’ve been involved with the various eras of Bond over the last fifty years.
Each movie-inspired mission features multiple levels and you’ll experience moments as diverse as fast paced skiing, gadget laden car chases, daring helicopter assaults, space shuttle launches and combat in zero gravity. Alongside high intensity first-person action, 007 Legends also allows the player to really submerge themselves into the world of James Bond. A range of user upgradable gadgets are available, offering you the choice in how you achieve your objectives; do you go in guns blazing or use the radar in your wristwatch to plan a route past the guards, then use your distraction and tranquilizer darts to take down the opposition without raising the alarm?
Alongside the rich single-player campaign, 007 Legends provides a great selection of multiplayer content and game modes, including the classic four-player split-screen game mode. There is also another single-player game mode with an online leader-board component, MI6-Ops. In this mode, you’ll have missions for Bond, as well as some of the other story characters from the game, with the setup for these missions inspired by events from the main story. Now you get to experience the action through another pair of eyes and, in some cases, through the eyes of the villains.
When designing the game, we wanted each mission to have its own unique flavor and feel. 007 Legends will take you on an adventure that spans the globe, and then up into space. From palaces made of ice to the underground vaults of Fort Knox, the hustle and bustle of a market in Istanbul to the snow-capped peaks of the Alps and the dry arid ruins of an ancient Mexican native settlement.
Throughout the development of 007 Legends, we worked very closely with EON Productions and screenwriter Bruce Feirstein to re-imagine these classic stories that we all know and love. The task of bringing 007 Legends to life fell upon the shoulders of a highly talented cast of over 60 actors, who provided the voices, performances and likenesses of the characters in the game. A number of stars have reprised their roles from the original films – Michael Lonsdale, Carey Lowell, Richard Kiel, and Toby Stephens.
As a lifelong Bond fan, developing 007 Legends has been a fantastic experience, we’ve had a hugely talented and passionate team of developers at Eurocom dedicated to the title. We, along with our partners at Activision and EON Productions, hope you enjoy the unique experience that is James Bond in 007 Legends.
By now, you should have already tackled NFL Blitz which came in free for Plus members earlier this month. You should also make sure to download one of the best fighters in the genre, King of Fighters XIII, which is also free for Plus members. With tomorrow’s PlayStation Store update, you’ll want to get your blueprints out and cover up those fingerprints because you’ll be robbing some banks (in video game form of course) courtesy of PAYDAY: The Heist, coming free to Plus members! You’ll also be able to get Unfinished Swan before anyone else this week. That said, there’s much more so let’s get to it.
Don’t have PlayStation Plus? Go to the PlayStation Store on your PS3 or click here to get access.
October 16th PlayStation Plus Update
Free for PlayStation Plus Members
Dive full force into six heists of co-op madness, fighting off cops, stealing large sums of money and embarking on the ultimate high-intensity, first-person shooter adventure. You can play all the ‘heists’ solo if you like, or team up with friends on your friends list, or get your matchmaking on and work together as a group to pull off the crime. The Unfinished SwanExclusive Early Release; Price: $14.99
The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game that begins in a totally white space; but as you throw globs of paint to explore the world, you’ll discover that the surreal, unfinished world that you inhabit is more than meets the eye. Plus members will get to be the first to discuss what this game is all about with the gaming community; so don’t miss out. The game will be released for all of PSN on 10/23. PlayStation All Stars Battle RoyaleExclusive Beta Access
It’s time! We need your help in getting PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale prepped for showtime when it releases on PS3 and PS Vita on November 20th. Get a taste of the full game with 2v2 and 4 player online tournaments and choose from Kratos, Sweet Tooth, Radec, Sly, PaRappa and Fat Princess as you fight in Metropolis or Hades for victory. You’ll also get to check out the Cross Play functionality since this beta access works for both PS3 and PS Vita! The beta ends at 10/30 at 11:59pm PST, so get in while you can! 007 Legends10% Discount (Regular Price: $59.99, PS Plus Price: $53.99)
As part of the door busting Day 1 Digital event, Plus members can snag the lowest price around on this new PS3 Full Game title, releasing the same day on PSN as it is at retail. Gamers and Bond aficionados alike will become James Bond reliving iconic and intense undercover missions from throughout the entire Bond film franchise including ones from the upcoming new Bond movie, “Skyfall”. Caravan of the Dead – PlayStation Store Halloween SaleVarious (spooky) Games and Add-Ons With Extra Discounts for Plus Members
Time to celebrate Halloween with some of gaming’s most outlandishly ghoulish titles. This sale is for all of PSN, but Plus members will have the best discounts; many from 50% – 75% off the regular price. Find great games like the Costume Quest complete bundle for just $3.75, inFAMOUS Festival of Blood at a steal of a price at $2.50, and Dead Space 2 at $9.79. The sale ends 10/30. Here’s the full breakdown: Game PSN Sale Price Plus Sale Price Dead Space 2 $13.99 $9.79 Call of Duty: Black Ops Rezurrection: Content Pack $10.49 $7.34 Dead Rising 2 Off The Record $13.99 $9.79 Plants vs. Zombies PS Vita $10.49 $7.34 Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City $34.99 $24.49 Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack $5.59 $3.91 The House of the Dead Bundle $21.99 $15.39 Zen Pinball 2 PS Vita Monsters Bundle (The Paranormal, Sorcerer’s Lair and Plants vs. Zombies) $5.99 $4.19 AMY $4.99 $2.50 Costume Quest complete bundle $7.49 $3.75 Dead Nation $7.49 $3.75 Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime $2.49 $1.25 inFAMOUS Festival of Blood $4.99 $2.50 Monster World IV (Plus Price: $1.00 – 80% off) and SEGA Rally Arcade (Plus Price $2.99 – 70% off the regular store price of $9.99)Exclusive Discounts for Plus Members
Our friends at SEGA once again deliver gaming goodness at a price you can’t resist. With the Master System classic Monster World IV and the more recent arcade hit SEGA Rally Arcade seeing deep discounts. I encourage everyone to check out these titles.That’s it for this week. Make sure you check out tomorrow’s PlayStation Store update post to see all the details for this week’s Plus update, and come back next week when we’ll have more great Plus news to share. See you in the comments!
In celebration of World Bond Day, Activision has revealed the intro credits for the forthcoming 007 Legends videogame in anticipation of its launch on 19th October. The trailer pays homage to the legendary intro credits of the Bond films and features theme music and visuals from the six missions of the game which include Goldfinger, Moonraker, License to Kill, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Die Another Day and this year’s Skyfall.
A first-of-its-kind Bond gaming experience, 007 Legends ties together five classic Bond movie-inspired missions, plus a sixth mission based on this year’s highly-anticipated movie, Skyfall.
Combining state-of-the-art spy gadgets, an arsenal of weapons, sleek vehicles and exotic locations, players can experience what it’s like to be Daniel Craig’s James Bond and relive the world famous spy’s most iconic and intense undercover missions from 50 years of the Bond film franchise.
007 Legends is rated PEGI 16 and due for release on October 19th for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and download on Windows PC. The release date for Nintendo Wii U is TBC.
Click here for more info, and to pre-order PSN Day 1 Digital titles
The month of October is an exciting one for PS3 gamers, with a plethora of AAA titles hitting store shelves over the next four weeks. I’m excited to announce today that eight of the hottest upcoming titles will be available on PlayStation Network the same day they hit retailers through a new program called PSN Day 1 Digital!
To celebrate the launch of this new program, we’re giving you access to participate in “digital game launches,” so you can get your hands on great games releasing in October, without having to leave home. We’re also giving you the chance to pre-order select games ahead of their release date and offering 10% discounts on a number of titles for PlayStation Plus members.
This new program aims to bring you the best PS3 titles digitally through PlayStation Network. Throughout the month of October, we will be offering the following titles for download on day 1:
Resident Evil 6(Available for download on October 2nd – $59.99)
NBA 2K13(Available for download on October 2nd – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
Dishonored(Available for download on October 9th – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
DOOM 3: BFG Edition(Available for download on October 16th – $39.99/$35.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
007: Legends(Available for download on October 16th – $59.99)+
Medal Of Honor: Warfighter(Available for download on October 23rd – $59.99)
Need For Speed: Most Wanted(Available for download on October 30th – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
Assassin’s Creed III(Available for download on October 30th – $59.99)*
* Available for pre-order
+ 10% discount for PS Plus members during first week of availability
We have more exciting info on all these titles to tell you about in the coming weeks, so be sure to check the PlayStation.Blog each week for in-depth posts on these games. And let us know in the comments which Day 1 Digital titles you’ll be downloading on release day!
The screenshot continues the proud tradition of crap villain introductions. The headline refers to the list of Bond films and their villains that are being recreated in shake and stir ‘em up 007 Legends, a list maintained by a pretend version of Daniel Craig, voice by the actual Daniel Craig who sounds like he’s doing a rushed and rubbish impression of himself. Clear enough? Legends will construct a bridge of continuity between On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Goldfinger, Licence to Kill, Die Another Day and Moonraker. The last mission apparently covers some Skyfall happenings, so there’ll be at least one surprise. Here’s a video of the Goldfinger scenes, which are extremely unsurprising.
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