 Genre: Third Person Shooter Players: 1-6 |
| If you’re disappointed with every EA PSP game release (like I am), than add From Russia with Love to the same pile. Upon starting the game, you are greeted by a nice opening sequence which seems to hint at good things to come. Alas if only it were so. What follows is a mediocre third person action game with more problems than is worth mentioning. I will mention that the game looks and sounds fairly good, but it still pales when compared to Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. In the other departments the game fails and in some it fails miserably. The camera is appalling and will often hinder your view from what is going on around you. There’s no real way to rectify it apart from running around like a headless chicken. Also, you’ll often get stuck on furniture and other useless objects as you move around in tight spaces. Controls are disappointing with the zoom mode for targeting being practically useless and the targeting system being dumber than a mule. Often it does not choose the enemy closest to you and this provides maximum frustration. Finally, opening doors, turning switches and anything else that requires a message saying “Press X button” have such low tolerability for where you’re standing that it may take you up to five seconds to move into the right position just to open a door! Even if you were to forgive those faults I’ll mention a few more that really “grind my gears”. Bond’s laser watch is given to him near the beginning of the game and yet it is only used twice in the whole game. Same goes with the exploding RC copters. What’s the point of having these additions if they’re not even used? However, the biggest offender of all has to be the first level that you use the rocket pack. The mission requires you to attack a helicopter and you start from the ground. As you move forward and to the sides trying to figure out where to go you just keep getting blocked by an invisible wall on every side. The game requires you to only fly upwards for a long time. Level design like that is even below amateurish. The only good thing to say about the game is the very nicely done in-game cut-scenes. With the game only taking around five hours to finish, I’m sure everyone can tell where the budget for the game was spent. There’s a term in the video game industry lately, which is pretty close to defining From Russia with Love, and that term is “broken game”.   |
| PSP-Spot Score (out of ten) Graphics: 7.3 Sound: 7.8 Controls: 6.9 Gameplay: 6.6 Overall: 6.7 |