007 Racing

007 Racing

released on Nov 20, 2000

007 Racing

released on Nov 20, 2000

In 007 Racing you can get behind the wheel of James Bond's car. You must complete missions which range from collecting an object and getting out alive, to much harder and more complicated things. Your car is armed with many weapons including mines, rockets, lasers, smokescreens, and more. Then, if you get bored playing alone, you can eliminate your opponent in multiplayer missions where you have to destroy the other car, or a game mode called "Pass the Bomb", where you must pass the bomb to the other car by touching it before you blow up.


Also in series

James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
James Bond 007: Nightfire
James Bond 007: Nightfire
James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire
James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire
James Bond 007: The World Is Not Enough
James Bond 007: The World Is Not Enough
James Bond 007: Tomorrow Never Dies
James Bond 007: Tomorrow Never Dies

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Reviews View More

A driving game more than a racing game that only reminds me of the worst missions from The Simpsons Hit And Run

Eu não finalizei na epoca esse jogo, agora depois de veio pude finalizar e entender a mecanica, e não é la essas coisas, e um jogo pra finalizar uma vez mesmo e já era, ele é mais nostalgia que qualidade de fato

Mixed feelings about this one. The levels were very interesting and the cars were cool but the controls were hard.

Cool game!
Not a good 'Bond' game, but a cool 'driving-shooting' game.

The must surprising thing about 007 Racing is the complete lack of one thing: Racing. This is a vehicle combat game with missions you need to complete. With the game utilising multiple famous Bond cars, you might then expect to be a “greatest hits” of Bond car movements, but this is a new story (a very dull one, mostly in told via walls of texts in briefings) that doesn’t even attempt to justify why these cars are being used.

Developed by Eutechnyx, who are now best known for the infamous Ride to Hell: Retribution, this takes an interesting concept (a vehicle-based Bond game) and butchers it in every way possible.

Starting off with a mission where you have to cancel the Bond Girl from a courtyard and escape, I was able to adapt the controls – as this lets you use the right analogue stick for acceleration/breaking, I was able to map it to the analogue triggers.

You start the level off with a machine gun, all the other weapons and gadgets (mainly health and shields) are scattered across the map. Your main weapons for stronger targets (like tanks) are hellfire missiles, but these damage your car whenever you fire them, and aiming them is a pain (they alternate what side of your car they fire from, which changes their aiming). Special missiles are required to take down a helicopter – use it wrong and you need to restart.

Next, Bond is in New York and there’s a bomb on his car! You can’t to too slow or else it will blow up, you need to rush around following the Crazy Taxi arrow to collect…things to increase your time, then drive the car into a river. Incidentally, the simplicity of this mission makes it the most enjoyable in the game. The handling isn’t atrocious, but it doesn’t feel very natural or reliable.

This BMW also seems to handle exactly the same as the Austin Martin from the first, and as all weapons are pickups, none of the cars have any identity or special abilities, so the one thing this game might have going for it – the Bond cars – just strips away what makes them Bond cars.

The next level is one where you get ambushed and is in three parts. The first is simple: kill all enemies in a small arena. One thing to note is that foot soldiers never count as important targets, they just whittle down your health. You also can’t run them over, removing another potentially satisfying element from the game.

The second part of this level has forklifts driving at high speed and ramming into you. R (played by John Cleese) tells you to look for a weak point in their armour to exploit – this is a lie. This game has immensely unclear instructions, and you’ll fail many objectives simply because the game never makes it clear what you are supposed to do. The third part has you using an EMP to destroy “computers”. This is a weapon that shoots a little bit our of the right side of your car. I’ll be honest: this mission was so frustrating that I just started using cheats.

The next level has you shooting tires on a truck using lasers that fire out of the sides of the car.

The next three levels are set in the Mexican jungle. The first is fine, trying to keep ahead of a helicopter then hiding the car in a truck. The second has Bond taking on an enemy compound from within, using a device to blow up mines (which the enemy has oddly placed right next to all their artillery – the device to blow them up is just lying around), setting up a laser and escaping (although you have 10 seconds and no direction).

The third is almost a race – Xenia pops up out of nowhere. You need to race her while collecting objects, although the game doesn’t make this clear, so you’ll probably be fighting and then get a cutscene of Xenia escaping with a British parachute attached to her car. If you do beat her, make sure to pick up and use the parachute, or else you’ll just die. When you succeed, Xenia falls to the bottom of the pit and explodes, but obviously is fine by the time of GoldenEye.

The most annoying level is up next: you control a car remotely from warehouse cameras, planting mines. To make it more annoying, the cameras are low quality and fizz every now and then, and there are some tiny thing driving around.

Then you have to collect missiles and destroy a boat driven by Jaws, go close to limos in New York to collect data. The next mission sounds intriguing: take out an underwater base in the Lotus Esprit.

But then the level starts with Bond driving out of water. Using it is the same as all of the rest, and we have another tedious level that doesn’t utilise the car’s unique abilities in any way. R even clumsily explains that many of the underwater features were removed for weapons – but then the weapons are on the map, not on the car, so it still makes no sense.

The final mission is then horrendously designed. It sounds simple: destroy a plane’s engines, destroy the plane and escape off a cliff. The execution, however, is atrocious. You can’t use the car’s gun at this point (no idea why), so you have to ram the engines.

The engines are only vulnerable when they flash (there’s no shielding or reasoning for this), and there’s no consistency when you ram them. If it doesn’t work first time, the plane flies off and you have to start again. You have to do this with all four engines. After this, the plane turns around (very quickly) and rams you. This is where you use the car’s gun, except that instead of the usual method, you have a first person view to manually aim.

Where you start aiming seems completely random, it’s not ahead of you so you have a 50/50 chance of turning to the right direction. You have a few seconds to aim and shoot a little box hovering under the plane, and then very quickly dodge the plane and drive off a cliff (thankfully, you get an arrow for this). It’s by far the worst designed level in the game, and it’s the climax!

There’s also a multiplayer mode for two players. There ate two modes: shoot each other or ram into each other to pass a bomb over. These take place in small areas and aren’t much fun at all. Again, I’m completely baffled by the complete lack of racing.

A vehicle combat James Bond game isn’t a bad idea, even a racing game with classic Bond cars can be done well. This game, however, is just a complete mess that throws away everything unique about Bond’s cars.