007 Legends (2012)

I think nailing my hands to my knees would be more enjoyable than this cheap, cash-grab shovelware. The Bond franchise has polarizing results when it comes to video games, but even dull fare such as James Bond 007: The Duel seems quaintly favorable compared to what I had to endure during my brief flirtation with 007 Legends. Much like GoldenEye: Rogue Agent (still a better game than this) plot elements are taken from several Bond movies combined into one. Here we treated to Goldfinger, OHMSS, Moonraker, Licence to Kill, Die Another Day, and Skyfall. I couldn't even make it past OHMSS, no matter how much I like the movie or want to be a part of it in a video game world.

Presented as a first person shooter the game unashamedly rip-offs more successful games in the genre, most notably Deus Ex: Human Revolution and will make you long to be playing them instead. The whole shebang is lazy, uninspiring, generic-as-hell, conveyor belt stuff. And what is up with those load times? I've had Commodore 64 tapes load faster than this. It's utterly disgraceful that a game can take that long to load in this era. I don't even understand why this is so since the sound and graphics are very far from the state- of-art. I'm not kidding, this thing looks like it came from 2002, not 2012.

I bought this game because I wanted to play Licence to Kill as a video game, but it's so poor I couldn't make it that far. Besides, LTK is Dalton, not Craig. It would be like casting Val Kilmer in The Dark Knight. Craig himself sounds completely bored and is apparently phoning it in during toilet breaks. The only thing we're missing is the sound of a big brown splash as he catatonically huffs through his dialogue.

This is a new low for the franchise when it comes to video games. Check out Everything or Nothing, Nightfire, or even Agent Under Fire instead. They are all over a decade old by this point but they're still better games than this one.

007: Legends is low-rent throwaway trash that is not worth your time and money.