'From Russia With Love' PSP Review
If you were being briefed on the PSP version of the action-shooter title From Russia With Love (originally for the PlayStation 2 and based on the James Bond movie of the same name) by MI6's famous gadget-master Q, he might start by saying "Well 007, we've managed to make it smaller, but we've had to sacrifice a few things." Bond might reply "Such as?" To which Q would answer, "One analog stick." 007 would then dryly state "Let's hope that's not a sticking point."
Maybe he would say something cleverer than that, but let's face it, not all of Bond's one-liners were gold. While we're at it, let's face another truth: Games that started out on the PlayStation 2 and end up on PSP usually suffer a bit from the loss of that second analog stick. Is it a sticking point in this case? The absence causes a bit of inconvenience and knocks the game down a notch from its PS2 counterpart, but the game ends up being a fairly entertaining shooter anyway.
Bond gets quite a bit of mileage out of his "license to kill" in the movies, but since pure action is the order of the day in 007's videogames, you'll be doing a lot more shooting than driving fast cars, matching wits with supervillains, or seducing women. That's kind of a shame, really, but the game has a trick it calls "Focus Mode" that helps it feel like more than a shooting gallery.
After using the left trigger to lock onto a target, you can press square for a zoomed-in view that lets you aim (or focus) on a particular spot. This lets you do things like shoot a gun out of an enemy's hands or shoot a grenade off their belt. Doing this earns you bonus stars, which lets you upgrade your weapons to be more accurate and powerful. The upgraded weapons actually make it easier to mow down your enemies without going to the trouble of finessing a focus shot, which has the side effect of letting skilled players plow through the game without bothering to finesse things. You'll also need to use a gadget such as the laser watch or the remote-controlled Q-copter to remove a barrier, rescue hostages, and fight a few especially imposing bad guys, but all of these are really incidentals.
Focus mode turns out to work quite well with the single analog stick, but it's when you're not shooting someone in a precise area that you'll miss the second stick most. Adjusting your view via the PSP's face buttons is quite slow, and the resulting struggle will have your Bond running into walls and looking less than suave. It's definitely an annoyance and can make it tough to perform close-quarters "disables" where James whips out some judo on nearby henchmen. It doesn't quite wreck the game, though.
The action is wrapped up in a "classic" era Bond aesthetic, with Sean Connery in the lead role shooting his way through the plot of From Russia With Love, re-edited for videogames. As a result, the plot becomes more hackneyed after a few useless scenes/levels are tacked on, a bunch of faceless goons (great for shooting!) are added to the cast list, and you'll spend a lot of time with a jetpack that wasn't actually in the movie. Actually, it's strange that EA didn't just pick the over-the-top spectacle of Thunderball over From Russia With Love in the first place. The result is that the game walks the line between "retro" and "campy" -- frequently crossing over to the camp side for a brisk jog. It's strange, but the Bond personality can still be considered an asset.
Due to what must be technical constraints, some of the console game's more spectacular sequences (no car chases or speedboat chases here, unfortunately) are missing. There are a few concessions though. Ad Hoc multiplayer has been added to the package, which gives the game another notch on its list-of-features belt, but unfortunately it isn't too much fun. It's not that a multiplayer shooter that relies heavily on auto-targeting can't be fun, but because the game's major hook (focus mode) doesn't work too well here, things feel a little too basic. It's worth noting that you can get up to five computer-controlled characters in on the action, and play around with the speed settings for kicks, but the multiplayer mode is still unlikely to be a major draw.
From Russia With Love started out as a rather decent PlayStation 2 title, and the experience has translated to the handheld fairly well despite a few technical problems. It's still an enjoyable single-player shooter with the Bond name, and the multiplayer isn't particularly impressive but certainly doesn't hurt to have. A pretty good port is a far cry from a strong original game, but fans looking for a quick fix of shooting action should find that this game meets the standard.
http://commanderbond...item&item=30185 - Gamespy
