James Bond: Top Agent
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| James Bond: Top Agent

Fast cars, beautiful women, exotic locations and international intrigue. Yep, just another day in the life of a Pocket Gamer correspondent. But of more relevance (and plausibility) to you, dear reader, is that we've just described the key appeal of one of fiction's most beloved creations. Men want to be him, women want to be with him – it's our very own James Bond.

It's these very same ingredients that make the Bond property so hotly desired among games creators. Acquire the rights to the name and you have a ready-made universe bursting with distinctive characters, breath-taking action and wildly inventive gadgets. It's a veritable license to thrill.

Of course it's a double-edged sword, and with the James Bond name comes an obligation to do it justice, to make the experience as smooth and effective as the MI6 agent himself.

James Bond: Top Agent presents a unique take on the Bond universe. Rather than taking the obvious route in making a flashy, fast paced action game Sony Online Entertainment has opted for a more thoughtful, considered approach.

The game comprises a series of one-on-one encounters featuring our Martini-sipping hero and a collection of hired goons and recognizable henchmen. The first boss battle, for example, is against the metal-gobbed Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

This is no button-mashing beat 'em up, however. Prior to each round you are shown the Room View, which displays the area in which battle will commence (the usual Bond mixture of war rooms and exotic locales), as well as the combatants and any objects littered on the battlefield. You're then taken to an equipment screen, where you need to select from a variety of knives, guns and gadgets to take into the battle. Each item possesses its own attributes and imbues Bond with unique abilities.

The following screen is perhaps the most critical, as it's where you select which moves you wish Bond to perform and in which order. With only five slots available you must choose, by way of example, whether to go on an early and direct offensive by selecting a flurry of physical attacks, or perhaps a more balanced and defensive move-set incorporating parries and other evasive manoeuvres. Of course, Bond being Bond, there's also ample gunplay and gadgetry to consider.

Once you've selected you take your load-out into battle, where each of your predefined moves is pitched against your enemy's. If you've opted to take a shot at your adversary with your pistol and he has chosen to take cover behind a handily placed barrel during the same turn, the likelihood is your shot will miss. The winner is the one who has inflicted the most damage to the other over the five turns.

As you may have guessed, there's a heavy slice of luck involved with each encounter in James Bond: Top Agent. Whilst your attacking options increase along with your abilities (you unlock additional weapons and equipment as play progresses) you'll never feel like you're really affecting the outcome of any of the battles. With the successful landing of attacks seemingly determined by an invisible dice-roll, it can leave the whole system and indeed the whole game feeling somewhat random and unsatisfying.

Which is a shame, because there's a lot to praise about the game. The graphics are lovely, from the bold menu screens to the detailed scenes and characters. Conceptually, also, we have to applaud Sony Online Entertainment and Javaground for having the guts to NOT churn out yet another action platformer. If they had conspired to create a Bond experience as satisfying and empowering to play as it is pretty and original, we may well have been heralding this as a classic worthy of Ian Fleming's creation.

What we have here, then, is not so much representative of James Bond, but rather more like Q – full of novel ideas, some of which work well and still others that misfire badly.

James Bond: Top Agent

Colourful and original, James Bond: Top Agent is fundamentally hampered by its reliance on luck
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.