Sean Connery agreed to do this game because he saw an opportunity. He said in an interview: "I hate nothing more than being tied to only James Bond. But when they came to make the game and they asked me to do it I said yes. Regardless of anything, James Bond was good to me and made me a respected actor. I wanted a one last thing. And I didn't want someone else taking on MY Bond film."
+Derrik wRIGHT I think it was his way of doing a tribute to his older films. It was his film and it's not like he actually came back on-screen. It was a perfect way of acknowledging his run.
Anyone else find it interesting that both Connery and Brosnan's final performances as James Bond were for video games? Says a lot about how far the medium has come, at the very least.
Connery agreed to come back because From Russia With Love was his favourite bond film to film and his grandkids played a lot of video games . So basically the grandkids would be playing as their grandfather that's cool
I would have love EA to have made a video game adaptation of "The Spy Who Loved Me". I can imagine ski levels, fights with Jaws in Egypt, submarine car levels, and a raid on giant Stromberg Tanker and underwater base. So many possibilities for cool games with the Roger Moore era in general.
A video game return for Dalton or Brosnan would make far more sense than another film given both are in there 70's and it would be very much 'for the fans' but saddly it won't happen.
Awesome video Sir!!! Choosing From Russia with Love from the Connery era was always a head scratcher for me too! Goldfinger or You Only Live Twice would make far better game adaptations, hell, YOLT entire plot plays out like a game! But I couldn't get over Connery's old man voice coming out of his young man face too. Same with the 2008 Ghostbusters game. I think EA noticed this and scrapped the idea after they hired Marlon Brando to voice The Godfather game (around the same time as From Russia with Love), Brando sounded so old and mumbly, they scrapped all his audio and hired a sound-a-like instead.
This will never happen but imagine if the Bond games became the 'What If?' series for Bond. So we got a Lazenby game that is all about revenge for the death of Tracy now they have the Blofeld rights back. Then we got another game for what would have been Dalton's 3rd film done in game form. There is no way either actor could play Bond now but in video game form they can be eternally young.....we can dream
when you talked about being able to walk around the Q lab, I realised that Goldfinger is the only 60s film to actually feature Q lab(the rest of the Q scenes take place in M's office or they fly Q out to whereever Bond is)! There wouldn't be another proper Q lab scene until Man With The Golden Gun.
I was hoping EA would continue getting former Bond actors to reprise the role in games based on stories from the films and on original stories, like in Everything Or Nothing. It would be great to see George Lazenby and Roger Moore in their own Bond games. There are also lots of elements from the films that would make for excellent gameplay, like Little Nellie battle from YOLT, the ski chases from OHMSS, the boat chase from LALD, the parachute fight from Moonraker, the safari hunt from Octopussy, etc., etc.
Roger Moore was my favourite Bond so I too was hopeful that they'd give him a similar opportunity; IMO the logical choices would've been either TSWLM or Moonraker due to the scale of the action sequences, but then they could've just added stuff to any of the other movies like they did with FRWL. Just sucks that it can never happen now :(
@@jameskennedy4377 Not entirely. There is a group of Goldeneye Modders making TSWLM for the N64. Obviously not the third person extravaganza that could have been had with Sir Roger Moore (Rest in Peace), but it's looking great so far.
Two shockingly underrated, under-recognized games for Playstation 2 that were based on movies: Scarface and From Russia with Love. Both were kinda masterpieces in their right.
Absolutely loved this game to death. For what they had to work with in terms of using the From Russia With Love story, they did a fantastic job. They easily could have made a new story line (which in all honesty i would have preferred) but they put a nice twist on a classic bond film. Hopefully EA get the license back since no one currently owns the Bond video game license right now. Great Review Calvin!
Good work Calvin, I like to see that I'm not the only one who think it's great to walk around in MI6, I always thought that it was just me haha. Keep up the good work!
@@calvindyson great review Man to Me other than the Obvious N64 GoldenEye, This By Far is the Greatest Bond Game Ever!!!! I wished they remade it in PS3 I would buy it for sure!!!!! Yeah the Driving sequence could be a Little bit Hard, but come on you literally can drive the DB5 like what!!!!! Awesome Game!!!
haha, connery's voice just doesn't match this young connery. I always see Indiana Jone's dad. It funny watching this but it is cool that they got Connery
I loved this game, and this is the best review I've seen of it. I feel you when you talked about wanting a Roger Moore movie game like this. I remember I fantasized about a Live and Let Die, or A View To a Kill game done with this engine. I even wrote out a summary for fun on how the levels would play out as they followed the movies' pots. What a dork I was even in my late twenties.
I'd love to see a Bond game with Moore's likeness. Perhaps a game of The Spy Who Loved Me, or an original story. They'd best act fast, though, as he's not getting any younger. I feel EA mostly did a better job with the Bond licence than Activision did. Blood Stone was good, and Goldeneye Reloaded was good, but 007 Legends was dire, and QoS the game was OK but too short
TheAdam159 Yeah, a Roger Moore game would be fantastic, but only if it had his humor in it. Like, I don't want to see Roger Moore Mowing Enemies Down With An Automatic: The Game.
+DarthRushy Press B to quip! Press Y to raise an eyebrow! Press A to use the awkwardly contrived watch gadgets that you were never told about! Press X to knock small Thai boys into the canal!
@@DarthRushy I think a Roger Moore Bond game would have been more of a point and click type game, like solve this SPECTRE puzzle to save Moneypenny or something similar.
Here's an interesting thought: what if they kept the Pheonix Fire storyline, kept it in the modern time period, but still had Connery doing the voice and likeness. Would certainly had been an interesting experience. Then again, setting it in the 60s could have been an interesting prequel. Maybe bridging the gap between Goldfinger and Thunderball. I always found Goldfinger to be the black sheep of the Connery films because it was the only one not to include S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
Some of the unlockables in the game were behind-the-scenes videos.....in one of them the developers discuss how they knew a lot of the things they put in the game broke continuity of the movies (Bond having a jetpack and Aston Martin before the films they first appear in) but they wanted to give the player a definitive Connery Era experience. So anything that was in the Connery movies had potential to be added.
I like this game. Although Sean Connery's voice has aged considerably since Never Say Never Again, I do love his performance. He did seem to be having a blast here and there is quite a swashbuckling energy in his delivery. I also like the replacement voice performers. Peter Renaday as M is awesome (though I always got a Patrick Macnee vibe out of his voice rather than Bernard Lee, but he works really well) and I particularly love Kari Wahlgren as Tatiana, Karly Rothenberg as Moneypenny and Klebb, Phil Proctor as Q and J.B. Blanc as Kerim Bey. However, Brian McCole as Red Grant is quite possibly the weakest one here. He is not bad, but I just don't get the sense of dread from him as I do with Robert Shaw. But yeah, I think this game is a bit clearer than the movie (I love the movie, but it's just seventh favorite, sixth if you only count official flicks) and it is better paced, making for an enjoyable experience. 😁
@@lukedaley17 Originally, some early game cinematics did show the Walther PPK without the silencer present. I am guessing it was later in the games development cycle that EA choose to keep it present at all times. Only in the multiplayer campaign can use fire it without the silencer.
I was just the same thinking they were going to continue! i thought the next game would be 'The Spy Who Loved Me' with Moore, he'd definitely return! we could have even had Lazenby back for OHMSS and Dalton for LTK or do original stories, then we would have a great Bond game for each Bond as we already had EON for Brosnan. When 007 Legends came out i thought that's what was going to happen, but then we got a Craig stand in and updates of classic Bond films.....shame
I like this game more because it kindled my curiosity for Bond in general in 2008-09. Now I really enjoy the film series. It has so many films that if you're in a certain mood there's probably a Bond movie for you. & it was all thanks to this game for introducing me to the series & I give it a lot of love for that.
Screwed by the Lawyers: EA wasn't allowed to use the name SPECTRE for the antagonists due to a legal dispute over the film rights to Thunderball between MGM/UA/Eon Productions and now-deceased screenwriter Kevin McClory (which wasn't settled until 2013 when Eon's producers bought the last remaining rights to McClory's estate, Spectre resulted from that). They had to replace them with the Suspiciously Similar Substitute OCTOPUS.
As a serious pre-teen fan I hated this game because of all the shlocky stuff they added to the movie's storyline. But as an adult I loved this game! It's really underrated. If they had tropped the pretences and made this an original story it would have been THE best Bond game.
Glad to see you back, Mr. Dyson. Even more so with a new game review, as I've really enjoyed this series of videos. Good to know that I'm not the only one who longs for the thought of playing Phoenix Rising, as I was a kid in a candy shop when I first got my hands on Everything or Nothing. Fortunately, I was never teased with production stills from that game like I was with the Blood Stone follow-up Risico. Blood Stone is easily the most underrated Bond game, and the thought of a sequel that would have borrowed heavily from Fleming is mouth-watering to say the least.
Maria Menounos (Eva Adara) is an entertainment reporter on American TV which might explain why she's not familiar to Calvin. I frequently see her in the movie theater ads so it was oddly amusing to see her before my showing of No Time to Die. I wondered how many people remembered her appearance in a Bond game.
I loved this game growing up. I remember you could get this magnum that had like three bullets but had like a 1 shot kill. Great review Calvin, see you next month
@ Quinn C, not to nitpick but the Wright Magnum has six shots not three. It is one of my favorites along side the Walther PPK and the AK 47. Also the Armor Piercing Rifle is another great weapon, especially how it useful it is in the later stages.
The developers were also very accommodating with Sean on this game. All his dialogue was recorded at a studio in Nassau so there was no need to fly him out of the Bahamas.
My best friend Christian and I loved the multiplayer mode in From Russia With Love. I was the more experienced player and was winning a string of deathmatches against him one day and remarked that I was using the Bond focus mode to achieve this. Instead of thanking me for this good advice, he proceeded to mock me by putting on an upper-crust voice and saying 'Ooooh, my name's Pushon and I use Bond focus!'.
Great review as always! This was one of my most favourite bond games, I remember having a lot of fun on the multiplayer with my brother, launching the missile was so much fun. Keep it up
Calvin, this just popped up in my side-bar of videos to watch after I watched the M ranking video. After a few minutes in, I realized I HAD seen this particular YT video around 2015 or so! So I did discover you back then, but never knew it! :D As for the level trailers, there was a gaming magazine that would put out a disk each month with games on the disk for the subscriber to test out. Sometimes it'd be a trailer, other times you could actually play the brief part of the game--like Assassin's Creed. I remember geeking out when I saw this pop in the mag and seeing the graphics I was like, OMG! They look amazing! My estranged husband played the hell out of Goldeneye (N64) before we dated and were just friends and I enjoyed the brief times I got to see that. Then again my fav Bond film was/is Goldeneye. :) I am so enjoying wandering around your playlist as YT offers me "Go here!" "Try this one!" in my downtime. I sit down to rest to feel physically better and your videos bring a smile to my face and make the pain decrease as I enjoy your banter and your performance. I can tell the older ones weren't as polished as your current ones, but even this one is well done and a pleasure to watch. Thank you. :)
Perhaps they should do more Bond games based on previous Bonds. I’d like to see a video game based on the original plans for Bond 17 when Timothy Dalton was still attached.
Never got past the tunnel scene with the boat, course that was years ago, might've actually done better if I tried playing this game today. lol So anyways after the first 12 minutes was spoilers for me but this is one of the few times I welcome the spoils. ;D
Fantastic video as always Calvin! This and Nigthfire are my favourite Bond videogames. Maybe they choose FRWL because it is Connery's favourite Bond film. This way, the producers of the game could convince Connery to play Bond again, in the videogame of his favourite film.
Honestly, I think EA should have made more games in the mold of this game. A game called Live and Let Die/The Spy who Loved Me adapting the Moore years, and maybe combine Dalton and Brosnan into a game called The World is Not Enough or something along those lines. It would have been great, but it's a shame we didn't get more games like this, and I think this stands great as it is.
It would be so amazing if out of no where we get a teaser for a new bond game adaptation of a classic film like the man with the golden gun or living daylights. I think I'd be more hyped for that instead of the project 007 that is most likely put on hold indefinitely.
It seems EA went from producing movie tie-ins with Brosnan's Bond, then switched over to making original stories in the Brosnan era, then switched back to a movie tie-in albeit based on a film from 42 years prior. Activision on the other hand seemed most focused on retroactively working the events of the previous Bond series into the Craig universe.
Great review Calvin! Can't wait for the quantum of solace review! It's so ironic how I was literally just playing the game and still am playing the game for xbox now. So I'll probably understand everything In the review, and just so you know I do like the "first person call of duty shooter layout" in quantum of solace game. Just in case you were wondering if there was any bond fans out there that liked it.
When Kerim Bey brings the Aston Martin to Istanbul it always puzzled me why Bond reacts with 'interesting car,' as if this is the first time he's seen it, when he's already used it in the pre-title sequence. Anyway, great review - looking forward to the Quantum of Solace review, which platform are you reviewing? You know the PS2 version was developed by Nightfire's Eurocom right?
The things I want to happen for Bond games are way too many to list...But if I could just list 2, they would be... 1. Bring back Timothy Dalton and make his third proposed movie into a game...I don't know if you've seen the articles on Mi6-hq.com, but they had a proposed screenplay for what Bond 17 may have been had it been made in 1991 and with Dalton. 2. EA Gets the rights back, because I feel like they would care about the quality of their games unlike Activision who only cared about making COD Re-Skins.
I would be a little worried about giving the rights back to EA, what with there mishandling of games like BF4 and such. I agree that they had some solid bond titles in the past, but I'm not so sure what they would do with the rights nowadays.
+lbonini1gaming Wasn't his third movie supposed to be Goldeneye? I really wouldn't want to see another Goldeneye game, there's like 20 other movies to choose from. How about The Man With The Golden Gun: The Game?
Well, his third movie was supposed to be something else and then it just sort of vanished and then Goldeneye got written. Something to do with Hong Kong or some other exotic location and arms dealers, I don't really remember for sure. The title was probably going to be "The Property of a Lady"...
A brilliant video once again and worth the wait. I wish I could play FRWL again, and you do have a point that the game does a good job sorting out the films slightly convoluted plot
Yay! I'm so glad that you'll be reviewing the Quantum of Solace game, as that was what made me curious about the movies! Even though it wasn't a great game (at least not as good as Goldeneye for Wii in 2010, cause I had a wii), it was what made me watch Quantum of Solace and then all 23 films. Now I'm a Bond film nerd!
Hey calvin. Great vid. I have the psp version which took a few things out from the console version, but over all i liled it. I have a question. Are you gonna review the other version of nightfire? since its different than the console versions. It has different parts, new cutsceenes and different boss fights
Just found your channel yesterday been Benj watching all your James Bond stuff 😊 fantastic. I’ve been thinking about getting this game since I’m a big bond fan as well but not sure which is the best port of this game , what would you recommend the PlayStation 2 version or the GameCube version.
I haven't played my Bond games for over a year, and thanks to your videos, it's given me the sudden urge to play them again. Have you played Quantum of Solace yet?
Great review as usual and agree with mainly everything you said, this is probably one of my favourite 007 games, as I loved the idea of having a video game set on a much older Bond adventure. Plus seeing a return of Connery to the almost franchise. However as you said I was always asked the question on why they choose From Russia With Love, its a great movie and i think Connery's strongest performance but action wise there's just not enough for a video game but some how the producers managed to find some action for this game (though using mainly gadgets or cars) from other Connery bond films. If they had chosen Connery based Bond you would have thought they would have for something like Thunderball or You Only Live Twice, but not I'm not complaining too much From Russia is so good and it's just a shame this probably the only Connery bond adventure well see in a video game format, that was until we got the 007 legends game which uses the adventures from alot of bond films though it uses Daniel Craig's likeness! though less said about 007 legends is the better. Its such a shame we'll never see a Roger Moore type james bond game. Next i see is Quantum Of Solace which in my opinion probably along side Goldeneye Rogue Agent & 007 legends as being the worst james bond game.
I remember watching the advertisements for this game on TV, wanting to play it so badly. I never had a GameCube or even a console, so I never got to play it. I'm sure I would have loved it!
Idk if youd read this but the reason they used FRWL is because it was the condition set by Connery for returning. His grandkids loved gaming and its his favourite movie of the bunch. Thats why they had to use this one
What makes From Russia With Love Connerys greatest film is that the plot is complicated. It´s a damn good thriller. Noone wants a Bond movie where you know the villain and his plan within the first 15 minutes. It makes perfect sense, that they´ve made a game out of what many will say is the best film in the franchise and even Connery´s own favourite. The last level is ridiculous. The problem with this game is that the technology is often too advanced for the time in which the game is supposed to take place. They should only have focused on Connery movies to fill out gabs and not call something "Octopus". That´s just silly.
are you going to do a review of 007 blood stone. I am playing it currently and it would be interesting to know what you think about it great video by the way as always.
I played the first mission and it was missing the cover and micro aiming from EON, does that come back or is it just general cover targeting the whole time? If so, I think I'll get bored really fast.
Awesome review. Just curious; Do you also plan on reviewing The World is Not Enough (N64) and Blood Stone? Both are relatively unknown but extremely underrated Bond games.
Don't forget James Bond 007 for Game Boy or, as I like to call it, The Legend of Bond - it shares a similar gameplay style to Zelda, except with more guns and less Gorons. It has an annoyingly addictive (and strangely, mandatory) Blackjack mini game.
