007 Legends Video Game Review

If I was to base Jame Bond’s career on 007 Legends, I would advise him to hung up his tux, put away his gun and retire, cause he shouldn’t be allowed to have a licence to kill…

Short nitty-gritty plot description from IGN is as follows: 007 Legends features an original, overarching storyline tying together six classic Bond movies for an original James Bond experience, and equips players with state-of-the-art spy gadgets, an arsenal of weapons and more.


007 Legends, is by far the most wasted opportunity based on James Bond. In theory, the idea behind the game is brilliant, showcase several different films from the vast supply of awesome material in the 50 years that James Bond has been on the silver screen. The problem however with 007 Legends, is they decided to modernize each film, which includes Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Moonraker, Licence to Kill and Skyfall. They also replaced the actor playing James Bond in said films (minus Skyfall of course), with a model of Daniel Craig (sans voice, instead we get an impersonator who sometimes sounds like Daniel Craig, with cotton in his mouth).

If you read my review of GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, you’ll know I wasn’t a fan of them removing the cheesiness, so colour me not surprised when each film that was being recreated, had any sort of humor or resemblance surgically removed from it. They decided to take bits and pieces from the movie and craft a shoot-em up, with some nonsense QTE (quick time event) boss fights. Even more strange, is that some of the characters from the films are modelled after the actors, but others are not. Blofeld in O.H.M.S.S looks nothing like Telly Savalas, instead looks pretty much like Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, which doesn’t make since, seeing how the point behind the story is Blofeld changing his appearance and Bond trying to figure out if it’s actually him. Also, if this universe is supposed to take place in Daniel Craig’s time line, why does Felix Leiter (Bond’s CIA agent friend) look 100% different, skin tone and all? Also, don’t get me started on the awful ending, which removes a great cheesy line from the recreated film and just cuts to the credits, with some text that says Skyfall DLC will be released in November. What kind of bull crap is that?

As for the rest of the game, gadgets are pretty much nonexistent,with a smartphone (made by Sony of course) that can take photos, hack computers and detect finger prints, a wrist watch that detects enemies and finally a dart gun, all of which, you’ll barely use minus the phone. The Skyfall DLC boils down to chasing a side character in the movie, with some laughable graphics being thrown at you. However, I did enjoy the actual boss fight, which didn’t just result in QTE’s, a first in this game. Multiplayer, I didn’t have the desire to look into it, as my hopes and expectations were crushed by the awful single player. What little I saw of the features, it does look like a lot of variety and modes, but I can’t say one way or the other if it’s good or not.

As I mentioned above, the graphics in 007 Legends are overall poor. The textures are low res, the environments are tired, with the same ol’ same hallway or box factory coming at you. There are occasionally moments where it can look nice and actually be fun, such as the helicopter battle around Blofeld’s lair in the O.H.M.S.S level, or the zero gravity sequence in Moonraker. Overall though, the graphics are poor. Also, I’m not sure if this is just a PS3 issue, but the load times are extremely long, average around 40 seconds. So, expect to wait a while if you happen to die, which will happen often, thanks to some instant mission fail parts of the game.

You would think that a 007 game that celebrates 50 years of Bond, would actually include the Bond theme at least once throughout the game, but sadly it doesn’t. We do get a couple neat remixes of the Goldfinger and O.H.M.S.S themes, which made the action much better, but only by a little bit. The only memorable voice actors in the game, would be Judi Dench and Rory Kinnear, who lend their voices to the roles of M and Bill Tanner respectively. Everyone else seemed to be cashing in a paycheck, which I can only assume was pennies, given the passion behind the performance.

007 Legends could’ve been great. Rework the original stories and place the original Bond actors in the role and set it to the appropriate time period and you got yourself a sure fire winner on your hands. Instead, they decided to go the opposite path and shit out a turd. It might be a golden turd, but it’s still a turd nonetheless.

Story – 1/5 – Here’s an idea, lets remove any sort of resemblance to the movies we’re trying to recreate and make it bland and generic instead. Great thinking!

Gameplay – 2/5 – Wave after wave of bad guys, lined up like ducks. Shoot them down and win a prize, a prize which would be the eventual end credits.

Graphics – 2/5 –  The game looks pretty awful, with only a few saving graces. 

Sound – 2/5 – Daniel Craig is missing and in his place, is someone who kinda sounds like him, but not. A few notable voice actors are present, but nothing to write home about.


Overall (not an average) – 1.5/5 – Bland, stale, generic and a slap in the face of Bond fans. Need I say more?

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