Pros: Steadily playable framerates, impressive array of weapons, impressive production values
Cons: Short solo-player game, mediocre multiplayer, ammo shortages, unpolished visuals
The bottom line: Although TWINE is at no fair juxtapose with the masterful Goldeneye, it stands alone at being something different, meriting the purchase of this worthy but rough-edged Bond title
Although The World Is Not Enough was a somewhat deeply flawed Bond movie, Electronic Arts the current proprietor of the James Bond license, has sprung it upon most hopeless Nintendo 64 owners to release a movie-based game following the success of Rare’s masterful 1997 standard-setting hit, Goldeneye. Just because the movie was flooded in mediocrity doesn’t completely rule out the chance for EA to make an almost perfection rendition into a video game. Developed by Eurocom, who had currently made Cruis’n World nearly perfect of it’s three-year old arcade brethren, was signed on develop The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64: exclusively. Although their attempts didn’t quite match that of Rare’s perfection with Goldeneye, Eurocom made The World Is Not Enough a title that stood on it’s own, only being juxtaopsed to Goldeneye which is natural for the license’s status.

One thing you don’t want to do when coming into EA’s The World Is Not Enough is foolishly comparing it to Rare’s Goldeneye. The World Is Not Enough is built on an entirely different engine, with all new ideas, and differences that are not to be compared with Goldeneye. In actuality, EA does a far better job of setting a standard for how Bond titles should be; chocked full of gadgets, impressive one-liners, and shaken but not stirred martinis. Sadly, Goldeneye was focused sorely on the gameplay aspect, which is not a downer, in fact they marked the formula for a perfect console shooter but the game wasn’t very Bond-esque. The World Is Not Enough delievers it all, and most importantly, the guys at Eurocom did a fine job of setting an incredible standard that follows the course of the movie whilst adding plenty of originality like Goldeneye did. Although The World Is Not Enough doesn’t play with the finesse Goldeneye set, the game sets an impressive standard on it’s own, being the first Bond title with some truly Bond-related elements. The World Is Not Enough gives all that a 00-agent wants, from high-octane skiing missions, to stealth, to fight-for-your-life style levels everyone absolutely admires in a first-person shooter. Still, The World Is Not Enough often gets a little carried away in being what it is, and that it strays from being a well-rounded first-person shooter.

What The World Is Not Enough sort of fails at is delievering the enduring gameplay that made Goldeneye such a hit. Instead, the game succeeds at more mind-involving objectivity-based missions in the style of Goldeneye. You have ten missions total, all inspired by events that took place in the movie. You’ll start in the Bank in Spain, where you’ll have to retrieve the money and obtain information on a murdered agent. Impressively, the game does a fine job of introduction where you start of having to retrieve your items and then checking in to meet Mr. LaChase. After a familiar cutscene excerpted but still changed a bit from the movie, guns will be blazing. Most of the missions are in the style where you won’t start off killing everyone in sight, but instead doing a more platform-styled approach where you’ll be forced to communicate with people to get things done, unlike Goldeneye. Some other missions such as the Night Watch mission is one where you’ll have to go about the level without slaying but one casualty. Missions like this one, especially, are unreplayable since most of the elements of a first-person shooter is shooting. Instead you’ll be forced to use electric-stunning attacks, and darts instead of silenced pistols and automatic rifles. Other missions blend both stealth, and action, where you choose which path to go down, whether it be blazing gunfire or sneaking surely behind unsuspecting foes. Of course, there are the occasional save-the-world missions where you’ll need to defuse bombs or free hostages in the hands of terrorists. Overall, the game definitely completes the goal of being varietous and action-driven, but overall fails to capture a sense of replay as Goldeneye did. Not to say Goldeneye didn’t have some snoozer missions, but when compared to Goldeneye’s almost doubled selectable mission levels (even those you revisit like the Bunker, and Surface) it still manages to be satisfying than The World Is Not Enough’s good one-time-around gameplay. Simply saying, The World Is Not Enough does an excellent job of emulating the play of the movie which is both a good and bad thing. I find that in the game, there was a few mishaps in some of the levels designed for the game. In the Cold Reception mission, you'll be forced to go on-rails on a pair of skis without the liberation to control the direction of where you'll be going but instead you'll have to fire while the game controls your every move. Another missing-in-action level I found odd in TWINE is that you won't find the infamous Thames Chase like in the beginning of the movie between Bond and the Cigar Girl in the boats but instead you'll have to chase her on foot through a well-designed English town. It's just some little things here and there, but some intrical elements in the movie were missed out on.

At the graphical standpoint, The World Is Not Enough doesn't set the standard for how an N64 title should look in the year 2001. Four years prior, Rare pulled some amazing strings to make Goldeneye look ages ahead of it's time. Although The World Is Not Enough is not visually stunning, Eurcom went to extra lengths to make sure the framerate is always playable, as in previous Rare attempts, gameplay was often bogged down because of an inconsistancey in the framerate. Most notably, Perfect Dark suffered the worst as did Goldeneye before it at times. The World Is Not Enough succeeds at never falling below the low 20s, staying mostly at a high or at 30 most of the time which makes the game all the more playable. Visually, The World Is Not Enough staggers graphically because of it's unpolished, sandy-textured look. Even though the game supports Expansion Pak, which is an option, Eurocom forced it upon the player to compensate with a choppier framerate or more sleek visuals. With the Expansion Pak in TWINE on is a lot like playing a typical hectic level in Perfect Dark without the Hi-Res on, playing well with sharper more condensed pixels, and advanced lighting, but a framerate that will always appear choppy but not particularly unplayable at that. Overall, It's a relief Eurocom took the playability and framerate into consideration, balancing them both, so no particularly area shows flaw like Perfect Dark did. Even in multiplayer, TWINE seems to maintain a plausable framerate, which for frantic multiplayer games is essential and intrical to the gameplay and overall fun of it all.

Most of the level designs in TWINE are another impressive feature, while you'll be in nearly all kinds of scenarios from the M-I6 Building, to the courtyards of a castle, to snow-clad mountains, to submarines, TWINE does it all well full of impressive attention-to-detail with occassional alarms on walls, explosive fire-extinguishers, even informative text and directions. On of the most impressive traits about this is that you'll occasionally want to be submerged in the universe, and a few levels in particular do just that, especially when using stealth tactics. Most of the multiplayer levels, which must be earned through Goldeneye-style time-quotas, are at best mediocre and somewhat boring overall. The maps are often drab, wide-open but small, and just not very well thought out nor memorable as Goldeneye's maps were. This puts a slight damper on the game's multiplayer aspects, as it doesn't really stand up to comparable N64 shooters out there.

The character models and animation are another flaw Eurocom couldn't quite pull off successfully, at least not at the levels of it's day and age. The player models are shrowded with a low-polygonal, blocky, and rather chunky looking models that plagues all of the characters in the game. Although they don't animate very poorly, they look very mediocre, especially with a higher standard that Perfect Dark had set even Goldeneye at that. Well, Eurocom is no Rare, but it still would have been nice to see slimer, and nicer animated models. What succeeds at being nice is the excellent gun models and reload animations that surpass even Perfect Dark. One in particular to mention is when Bond reloads the Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle, his hand opens the shaft, places a bullet in the pipe and shuts the shaft only to make the reaction worth saying something praising. Another impressive reload which tops them all is when Bond reloads the Magnum, he flips out the wheel, dropping all the empty bullets (which makes the "ting" sound when they drop to the floor) sets a new crown of rounds in and and flips the wheel back in. Eurocom did a fine job with creating the weapons based on their real-life counterparts like the Magnum which is cleverly equipped with an impressive zoomable scope, the Mustang, based off the popular M-16, equipped fully with a grenade launcher and sometimes a tactical scope. Some of the weapons in TWINE are gracefully done, and very intricate which pays homage to the Bond films. Even the P90, which was actually used in the movie, is here and even in the same level as the movie's setting... impressive job.

One of the most digrading features about the fun gunplay in TWINE is merely the shallow amounts of ammo the game (doesn't) give to you. As in Goldeneye, you always had plenty of ammo to blow away on guards, but in this game, you often have to switch weapons almost constantly because you'll be running out. For instance, you can obtain a gun, get the full clip or magazine but then additional cartridges of ammo only allow you to pick up 5 or even 10 meager additional rounds. For some weapons, each pick-up warrants only one or two extra bullets or ammo which is most notably one of the game's biggest flaws that is not mentioned by most critics. Another thing is that if you have a few more rounds left in the gun, you'd be better off wasting the rest since every new weapon pick-up you get an entirely replenished supply. Unlike Goldeneye, you wont have the liberty of using a favored weapon, and to top it all off, some guns you'll never see in the solo game. The Meyer Bullpup (modeled after the Steyr AUG) is one you'll find in one mission and use very seldomly at that. This really puts a damper on the fun factor when just playing around for fun. And to ultimately top it off, TWINE supports no cheats in Goldeneye's respect, so no infinite ammo or all gun codes unless you have yourself a Gameshark. Bah! No fun!

The audio aspects of The World Is Not Enough have plenty of problems to mention. First off, Eurocom couldn't acquire the Bond theme music, so again, it's absent from yet another Bond game. Although it was there in Goldeneye, it was a horrendous rendition at that. Instead, Eurocom developed their own music, and some of it inspired by the movie itself. Overall, the music is too overused in too many missions and even at that, the soundtrack represented in the game is just too low-key and somber for the standards of a Bond title. One track in particular is dead-on from the movie, and that's the final mission, the music in that level is very intense and really fits the mission like a glove as it pumps the player to get amped during the mission. Not many levels really do this, but overall it's a area not complain about since it does it's job with a mediocre standpoint. The voice-acting in the game is somewhat of a let-down when compared to the Playstation iteration of the game in some areas. Although it was done by an entirely different publisher, the game actually supported the voice-over of John Cleese, who played Bond's gadgetry designer, R. In this version, for some unknown reason, it's non-existant. Although they did a fine job of obtaining actors who emulate the likenesses of those who acted in the movie, most all of the voices do an excellent job at portraying the roles of the real actors. Some of the scripting however has been skewered a bit, where EA selected a few key lines from the movie to trim it down a bit making some cutscenes with the movie-assisted script sound like it has a few holes in it. Some of the cutscenes will often not appear long enough, or sometimes even rush the production along. The most impressive features about TWINE's audio is that, impressively, EA acquired Factor 5 to do it, so most everything sounds excellent for the Nintendo 64's standards. In one particular level, you can hear howling wolves in the background, and if you have a surround sound system, you'll actually be miffed to believe they're real which was a mistake I've noticed numerous times playing. The sound sounds are also top-notch, especially the Mustang, and Shotguns sounding very authentic and awe-inspiring. which are actually some of the best I've ever heard in most shooters, even Turok. Disappointingly, the voice-overs in the game suffer from muffling, which is surprising knowing everything else has been done superbly. Overall, the inclusion of Factor 5's audio really sets this one ahead of most N64 audio.

Chances are pretty good that if you've played Goldeneye, you'll have the control down within seconds of picking the game up. Typical movements are initiated with the joystick in correspondence with the C-buttons, and then you have "R" shoulder manual aiming and "Z" to fire the weapon. The thing that confused me and will be foreign to newcomers is some of the other controls, especially when taking out items or switching to some weapons secondary functions. You'll have to do dual-button inputs just to take out an item, which makes it a little annoying especially when you may mistakenly pull out a gun instead of a document. Overall, it would of been nice to see EA make the control a little easier especially when it comes to dual-button layouts. If this is a problem at all, the controls can be altered in the menu to the player's preferences as are many of the advanced features like inverting the aim, and even disabling the rather annoying laser-dot in in the front of the middle of the screen.

FINAL COMMENTS
When I picked up The World Is Not Enough for the first time which was on the release date being a huge fan of first-person shooters and Bond himself, I accepted that the game wasn't suppose to emulate the incredible standard of Goldeneye. In actuality, I think that's what helped sell TWINE, and the developers knew this before the game even came out. If you look at TWINE as it is, it's a very well-done Bond title with plenty of the franchise's popular showmanship that Goldeneye didn't have. Although TWINE may be a let-down because it's too short and the multiplayer lacks, it's a good if not long-lived title as Perfect Dark and the original Goldeneye are. Without any further rambling, I'd say TWINE is worth picking up for many reasons, especially to tribute to the N64 since a lot of junk came out in 2001, TWINE stood out. And to top it all off, TWINE has a blue-cartridge and for no apparent reason!

FINAL DECISION
(on a basis of Epinions' stars ratings)

Visual
4 out of 5

Audio
4 out of 5

Gameplay
3 out of 5

Control
4 out of 5

Lasting Prowess
3 out of 5