You would have thought that 23 films from the Bond franchise would allow plenty of material to make a kick ass video game, especially with the latest instalment: Skyfall doing so well, apparently not. 007 Legends is best described as a Call of Duty game, covered in James Bond style camouflage. To put it nicely, the game is abysmal! Not the way 50 years of Bond should be celebrated!
Gameplay
The game starts with a scene from the latest movie Skyfall, with Bond fighting on a train, getting shot and falling into a river. While unconscious, Bond has a series of extremely detailed Flashbacks that create the structure for 
the games missions. There are six in total: Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Licence to Kill, Die Another Day, Moonraker and the Skyfall mission being released as free DLC for the release of the film.
The idea would have played out wonderfully had the missions been a trip through the history of the Bond franchise; however each movie has been updated to modern day, so fans are instantly irked when playing through Goldfinger only to see Bond pull out a smart phone and drive off in an Aston Martin DBS instead of the original DB5. There is also a serious lack of effort in most parts. For example, you play through all the levels as Blond Bond, and Daniel Craig’s physical likeness has been used (well done) however he has been voiced by someone else, making him sound nothing like the “Bond” we are used to – not even a hint of similarity, making the whole experience feel rather off.
There are some cool moments, if you can get over the bizarre creative choices, such as the laser scene in Goldfinger with the famous “Do you expect me to talk?” scene. However the action just simply isn’t at an acceptable standard for a game in 2012 – especially considering how 007 Legends shamelessly rips off 
ideas from Call of Duty including the controls, gameplay and set pieces that are seemingly lifted from one franchise to another.
Each mission follows the same structure, forget about using Bond’s charm and intelligence to get you through, you just blast the living daylights out of everyone in sight until you have a room full of burning corpses. Then you whip out your smartphone to do a little detective work and then go back to square one and start blasting people all over again. The game suffers equally when it attempts to deviate away from the mind numbingly boring shooting – the stealth mechanics in this game are bloody awful! How can you be ‘stealthy’ when you can’t peek around corners or hide bodies? That coupled with enemies that are alerted at every pin drop means it’s pretty much impossible to stay hidden – incredibly frustrating when you have a section that requires you to complete it using stealth or else you instantly fail.
Graphics
The character animations are decent, some attention has been given in production and the likeness of Bond to Daniel Craig is obvious. In all honesty, the game doesn’t do too badly graphically, it has a feel of ‘lowest settings on PC’ feel to it and some areas have been well thought out and are quite nice too look at. Just don’t go expecting Skyrim-esque detail, because there isn’t any.
Overall
007 Legends should have been every Bond fan’s perfect game, a trip through vintage Bond with all the best bits thrown in. Sadly, this is not the case. This game is a lazy, half-assed attempt that Eurocom hoped would do well simply because of the ‘Bond’ name attached to it, but in terms of a good game, or even a 007 game, it is just an insult.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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