It's better than GoldenEye 2! Not that that's saying much...
That sucked.
A lot.
Fortunately for me, From Russia With Love doesn't suck! Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. When I first heard about EA going back and making games based on the original Bond series (and only Bond series if you're a purist like me), I was more than a little skeptical. When I found out they'd gotten Sean Connery on board, I started to think that maybe, just maybe, the curse of poop Bond games was about to be broken.
From Russia With Love (FRWL from here on out) is mostly a fast-paced 3rd-person action game (try saying that 10 times fast. I SAID TRY!). By pulling the left trigger, you can lock on to the nearest enemy and blast away to your heart's content. For the folks with more refined tastes, you can hit the X button after you lock-on and enter "Bond Focus" mode. Bond Focus lets you target individual parts of the enemy, and there's some fun gameplay tweaks thrown in to make it worth the effort. For example, you can shoot a grenade off a baddie's belt and it'll explode, killing everything around him.. As an added bonus, by performing enough trick shots and other special moves, you can earn awards to unlock bonus levels, and points to unlock various extra content (most of which is pretty yawn inducing, but I guess it's better than nothing). To add a little variety, every couple levels you'll have a driving mission (pretty dull), a rail-shooter segment (meh. okay) or a jetpack segment (surprisingly fun, but very easy).
The real shock I got playing the game was the (relative) depth of the enemy A.I. I've gotten used to playing games where the baddies just charge you like enraged sheep. In FRWL, they're surprisingly intelligent. No, I'm not saying they're MENSA material, but they actually do crazy things like taking cover behind objects, waiting until you're reloading before they attack and trying to flank you when you're behind cover. Maybe I just approached this game with lowered expectations, so they only SEEM smarter, but I'm gonna stick to my guns on this one. Again, they're not going to win the Nobel Prize, but they're a hell of a lot smarter than most digital henchmen.
Yeah, I know I used a LOT of qualifiers in that last segment. It's not my fault that A.I. is so crap in 98% of games. Trying to compliment it in a game where it's NOT complete crap is like trying to compliment an ugly baby. It's a baby, so it's a miracle of life and all that... but it's so damn UGLY...
This is how so many people end up having "great personalities". Yeah, I'm a shallow jerk, I know.
The rest of the production values for the game are decent. It's not the best looking game on the xbox, but it's respectable, and there's almost no framerate issues. The characters are very well modeled and that, added to actually decent voice acting, makes the whole game seem very true to the original movie. The sfx for the vehicles and guns are also well done, but the real finishing touch is the great orchestral score. Nothing makes you feel more like James Bond than having the theme music playing when you crash through a window with guns blazing. God bless you, Prague, and god bless your Symphony Orchestra. If it wasn't for you, who knows what developers would be using as a soundtrack for games. Probably Linkin Park... *shudder*
Overall, I really don't have anything that bad to say about FRWL. The only complaint I can think of is that the game is too easy and too short. Even on the hardest difficulty setting, a decent player should be able to plow through this game in about 6-8 hours. It'd probably take twice that to get all the awards and 100% completion, but I honestly can't think of any reason why you'd want to do that.
From Russia With Love is a perfect rental. It's an easy, fun game to kill some time on a boring weekend and, with it's lack of replay value and no real groundbreaking gameplay elements, there's no reason you should shell out 50+ bucks for it.
Oh, all that said, it's not even 1/10th as good as the original GoldenEye.