everything or nothing |

Publisher: EA

Developer: EA Redwood

Release Date: 2/17/2004

Available On

I’m not really a James Bond fan, but I can’t help but pass up a good action game, no matter what the license is. Everything or Nothing is based on the film when Pierce Brosnan was still a famous spy, and Everything or Nothing is pretty solid. The story is pretty nonsensical and is your typical Bond plot with a bad guy (Willam Defoe) hell-bent on ruling the world. Diavolo has nano-mites that can eat through metal and plans on attaching payloads of this stuff to nukes. Bond runs into a henchman (Jaws) and a beautiful woman to stop the evil madman.

The best part is the vehicle sections, and the shooting sections are hard as hell and mundane. I’m going to throw that out there right now. The vehicle sections have Bond driving real-world vehicles with missiles, machine guns, flame throwers, and oil slicks attached to them. What makes the driving sections so grand is the sense of speed. Driving across a bridge, jumping through signs, and finding shortcuts to trigger “Bond Moments”. While these are hard to find (even in on-foot sections), they can be satisfying. Every driving section is different, from escorts to flying over rooftops to races. All vehicles handle very well, even at high speeds, and this is what truly matters.

The on-foot sections are mundane and extremely frustrating. Even in the easiest setting, the game throws dozens of bad guys at you, and ammo is a loot and hunt type thing. You start out with a puny P99 pistol, and the game throws about 10 bad guys at you. The lock-on feature is clumsy since you can’t lock on unless the camera is facing an enemy. If you get close enough to someone, Bond will put his gun away and start meleeing while other guys around him are shooting. This can make you die in very tight spots. The melee is pretty basic, with heavy and light punches along with counters. You can hide behind the cover, but this tends to be a problem if the cover is taller than Bond can shoot.

You can use a lot of gadgets, but they tend to be useless unless the level requires them. You get Q spiders, which are remotely operated spiders that can blow things up and go inside little nooks. The coin grenades are pretty straightforward but have crappy physics and bounce around like rubber balls. There’s the nanosuit that makes you invisible, but I never even had to use it since stealth in this game is very hard and almost not an option. The rappel gun is what I used most. Being a Bond game, I wish the gadgets would have come in handy, but they are if you really want to use them. The shooting sections are just so frustrating due to the unbalanced difficulty. I died over 10 times on certain missions, and there are no checkpoints. Some of the longer levels have one, but most levels have none, and this can make you throw your controller across the room.

The graphics are pretty decent for a 2004 PS2 game. The textures are solid, the audio is nice, and there are only slight framerate problems due to the PS2’s limitations. There is an online co-op, but this will never be tested since the servers were shut down. There are a lot of missions in this game, and it will keep you busy for a good 8–10 hours, depending on how many times you die. The game is pretty solid, and you won’t be disappointed. Even people who don’t like Bond can enjoy this game, and that’s the beauty of it.