007: Tomorrow Never Dies

Honest and Unpopular Reviews No. 35 007 Tomorrow Never Dies (PS1) The best Bond game I played this year came out in 1999, GoldenEye excluded. Two years after GoldenEye, this one showed up to a fight it had no chance in. People had two complaints in 1999: Third person view. No four player split screen. Those are the only two complaints anyone brings up and they're both fair. I've never thought either one of those was a good reason to skip it. This was one of the first five games I bought for my PlayStation, along with Mega Man Legends, Final Fantasy VII, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and Gran Turismo. It's the movie. Not the whole thing, but the stuff you remember from it is in there and you're playing it instead of watching it. That sounds like the bare minimum until you go look at what licensed games in 1999 actually were. There's a stretch where you're Wai Lin instead of Bond, and no Bond game had done that before. The aiming is bad and the campaign is short. You're done with it in an afternoon. Tomorrow Never Dies ranks 4th on my Bond list and eight Bond games I own came out after it that still can't beat it. 007 First Light came out this year with a massive budget behind it. The game has incredibly slow pacing, a ridiculous 45 minute training montage that you can't skip, and some of the most boring cutscenes ever used in gaming. I'd rather play the one from 1999 with the broken aiming. I rate Tomorrow Never Dies a solid 4 out of 5.