A mission-based driving game which never rises above mediocrity
For those of you who never got to see one of the James Bond movies, suffice to say that they are about a british secret agent who has a love for cars, as well as women. These "traits" of the character are usually brought to life, one way or another, in every Bond game, but usually they're more of an after thought. In 007 Racing, however, the typical Action/Stealth gameplay that you'd expect from most 007 games is totally replaced with a mission-based driving game - pretty much like Driver, a title which was released a year earlier.
Things start off on the wrong foot as soon as you look at the game in motion. The grainy look of the backgrounds combined with the poorly animated character models, makes you feel uneasy about the whole thing. As for the car you drive, which is the main focus of the game, it turns out to be a big disappointment too. The cars look ok when you first start a mission but, as soon as you hit something, and your car starts to take damage, it also starts to bend in different places. The problem here is that this "bending" looks distorted and it moves all over the place, depending on what angle you're looking from. Try to understand that, while it's true this is just a PSX game, it was released in 2000, about 3 years after games like Gran Turismo, or even a year from the above mentioned Driver, both of which had far superior graphics in terms of car models and background detail. The only thing even remotely good-looking in 007 Racing are the FMVs which greet you twice throughout the whole game, but that's it. You also get a somewhat impressive intro which combines several moments from past Bond movies, all related to car sequences, naturally.
In the audio department, things aren't so bad, but that's not saying much. The music is pretty generic but, fortunately, not intrusive, and the voice overs are reasonably good. Not all goes as smoothly, though, when it comes to below average sound effects. Yes, you do get to hear explosions, gunshots, and the banging of your car against another vehicle, but all of them sound low and muffled, like someone had a cloth over the microphone when they recorded it. In fact, in some situations you won't hear gunshots at all because their sound is so weak that it gets drowned easily when other sounds are playing at the same time.
Getting into the meat of the game, if you played Driver, then you have a general idea of what to expect. Still, 007 Racing offers a few differences, some of which sound good on paper, but really didn't turn out very well. Being a mission-based driving game, every level of the game will give you a few objectives to complete, and you need to go through all of them to complete the level.
For instance, in the first level, you have to drive into an area where a girl is waiting, pick her up by stopping the car close to her, while guards shoot against you, and then drive through a linear path (think Crash Bandicoot) capturing Health Packs, Stinger Missiles and other items, only to finish it off by jumping over the border. On your way there, you have to use a missile to take out a helicopter, as this is one of the objectives and you'll fail the mission if you don't. There are several problems with this formula and I'll go in-depth with just a few.
First of all, the car handles poorly. At first, I thought it might be because you're at the wheel of an old Aston Martin DB5, but later I found out that all cars in the game have poor handling. Unlike Driver, where you can skid your car even at low speed, here you have to use the handbrake. Realistic, yes, but very annoying because if you're too slow, the car will have a terrible time turning at all. At high speeds, it's the opposite, the car just loses all grip and everytime you try and turn the car, you feel like you're almost losing it. There's also no difference whether you're on a dirt track, or on asphalt, and if you hit a wall, object or vehicle, you'll just stop dead on the spot, which pretty much throws the realistic part out the window.
Second, the whole idea of picking up items, including "Health Packs", give the game a very Arcade feel. It's not necessarily a bad thing, if you like that kind of game, but Arcade games demand faster and tighter controls, which simply don't exist here. Third, you're much better running away from your opponents than fighting them because the aiming system is the most ignorant thing you'll ever find in a shooting game. You see, everytime you shoot a missile, the exit point shifts from left to right of your car, literally throwing off your aiming. Wouldn't it be easier if the L1 and R1 buttons fired a missile from the left or right, respectively? Apparently, this was too hard to implement into the game.
As the game progresses, a clear attempt to be original is noticeable but, as usual, too much originality tends to create more problems then they're worth. An example of this is the level where you have to drive your BMW remotely by looking through the surveillance cameras of the building you're in. Not only the view is in green (think nightvision) but everytime you drive away from one camera, the view will "jump" to another camera, which can be confusing. All of this with a time limit, something which is common throughout most of the missions.
In terms of Value, it really depends on how much you can endure the flaws of this game. There's a Cheat menu that can be accessed from the start, but shows only a few girls "willing" to show you a cheat if you fulfill some sort of requirement. For instance, the first cheat will be given to you (unlocked) if you beat the first level of the game under 90 seconds. This may sound interesting at first, but once you unlock the cheats you realize that most of them are pretty pointless, like Purple Explosions, Slippery Track or Funky Missile Trail. Considering how short the whole game is, and how linear, it's really disappointing that you can't get something more appealing for your efforts.
Other than this, if you have a friend willing to play with you, you can play in Two-Player mode where you have two games to choose from. The first is called Challenge and is sort of a Deathmatch game where the winner is the last car standing. The second is called Pass the Bomb and it's a simple game of tag where one of you holds a bomb and there's a timer so, obviously, the one holding the bomb when the time expires is the loser.
All in all, it's an average game for Bond fans who can't wait to grab their hero's trademark vehicle and take it out for a spin. You may get used to the poor controls and even the "Crash Bandicoot" level design, however, most gamers will see this for what it is - a mediocre attempt at a mission-based driving game.