Less hollow volcano bases, more shoot-men-in-the-faces. Like all the Craig-fronted games, Blood Stone suffers from the more serious tone and ends up unmemorable, almost as if ashamed of the past antics of 007. A third-person shooter with a plot based around diamonds, Blood Stone is more Splinter Cellthan Goldfinger, but gains a place in this list by including multiple vehicle sections, though they are linear and the vehicles lack any gadgets.

Similar to the GoldenEye remake, Blood Stone lacks most of the things that make 007 unique.

The story is nicely updated (though the characters are shorn of much that makes them memorable in their original incarnations), the gunplay is solid, and a late-game stealth mission through the villain’s base recalls Eurocom’s best work on Nightfire.īut perhaps its greatest lesson is that 007 needs his gadgets, his martinis, his “Bond, James Bond” lines, and his vehicle missions to be memorable. The games devolved from varied gameplay in exotic locales to Call of Dutyrip-offs about shooting and blowing things up in generic locations.Īnd yet, given these limitations (and the pressure of living up to the original game), the GoldenEye remake is not entirely bad. The takeover of the Bond game licence by Activision from Electronic Arts was the beginning of the end. But what about the rest? Reload your Wolfram P2K, set your remote mines, and join us on a journey through the Golden era of Bond games. With its varied objectives, enemy guards filled with character, and legendary multiplayer, there is no topping GoldenEye.

READ MORE: ‘Battlefield 2042’ preview: cracking fun, but oversimplifiedĪnd yes, we know 1997’s GoldenEye on N64 is the best James Bond game of all time.

From 1997 to the early 2010s, almost-yearly video games helped fill the (much shorter) gaps between movies featuring capitalism’s favourite secret agent. With long delays between the releases of James Bond movies and games these days, it may be hard to imagine a time when we were swamped with 007.

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