EA Games bring me both tears of joy and tears of anguish every year. Tiger Woods 06 made me smile like no other golf game made me smile before, while Marvel Nemesis trampled on all of my superhero dreams in one fell swoop. But that's the thing about EA; with so many of their games on the release radar, bad ones are bound to slip through - but the good ones will always outshine the bad. Once again, I've come face to face with the latest Bond game from EA. James Bond: From Russia With Love, a game incarnation of arguably the best Bond film ever made. Done in that Everything or Nothing third person style, with voice talent from Sean Connery himself, this one is bound to be good. Right?

Unfortunately, not exactly. For some reason, this game seems to take a nosedive down from Everything or Nothing, taking a plunge that it could have avoided with some careful thinking. If things had been done right, From Russia With Love could have been the best Bond game yet. However, the game is just too linear and often quite tedious, which, as you'd imagine, ruins the game ever so slightly.

Let's talk about what I love about this game first, though. When you target an enemy with your gun in third person, you can focus on them with a push of a button, which brings the camera up closer to the target. This focus shows various circles on the enemy's body, to outline special shots. One circle might point out that enemy's grenade; I'm sure you can guess what happens if you shoot that. If enemies are hanging from the ceiling on a rope, focus and shoot the rope - not only for extra points, but for a nice, varied kill. Surprisingly, you can run, focus, and aim once focused, all at the same time without any problems. Once you're focused, a yellow dot crosshair appears, which you can freely move around the enemy's body. You can actually use the crosshair to shoot parts that aren't circled too, such as the head. You won't get any brownie points, but you can take people down quicker if you know what you're doing, so the whole killing system is a lot of fun.

The weapons found in this game are superb. My favourite weapon, surprisingly, is the default PP handgun that you get at the start. You see, by searching levels you can find schematics that allow you points to upgrade your weapons and gadgets. Once I upgraded my handgun fully, I had a weapon that was capable of doing large amounts of damage quickly and effectively, because I expanded the ammo capacity. Plus, there's nothing more badass than sneaking around with a silenced pistol pretending to be Bond, is there?

Another strong point with this game is the story and Connery's voice talent. The story at first glance looks like a rehash of the film, but actually the game compliments the film and occasionally goes off on its own accord, which ties in with the film beautifully. Sean adds a level of sophistication to Bond in this game, and with the photo-realistic Sean facial, you really feel like that old livewire Bond back in the day. Not only are we treated to Sean, but beautiful Natasha Bedingfield lends her chest and voice to the game, to play the damsel in distress. Everything works perfectly here; I have no complaints at all.

However, from this point on, From Russia with Love seems to go downhill. Firstly, the gadgets are nothing to write home about. The good old common grapple, which allows you to climb walls in certain places, can only be used in areas that are marked out (leaving you with no sense of freedom or credited intelligence). Then there is the ten-a-penny Laser Watch, which is bound to impress your friends as you cunningly shoot through bulletproof glass to destroy nothing but door switches. The best gadget on offer is the Q-Copter, which is just like the spider in the old game - it lets you scout ahead and then detonate when the time is right. All of the gadgets on offer seemingly allow you to progress, in the sense that you have to use them. I would have preferred to have had a dozen gadgets given to me and then work everything out for myself, and use them all by choice rather than by design.

The level design is mostly good; the hedge maze is one of the very first levels you'll play and that level will stick with you, because sneaking around a maze is, well, amazing. Level objectives are, for the most part, well thought out - although you will occasionally get the odd repetitive objective, such as 'disarm a bomb'. Unfortunately there's not much level interaction; you can only vault (jump) over certain objects and you can only press your back against certain surfaces. Like I mentioned earlier, you can only use certain gadgets in certain places and suddenly you have a very linear game based on certainties, with little in the way of being able to use your surroundings to your advantage and executing your own method of traversing a level.

Other than mission-based shooting levels, just like the other Bond games there are a large host of other genres mixed in here. One of them sees you take to the skies using a machinegun-equipped jetpack, but for the most part you'll be driving a rather old car. Driving missions in previous Bond games have always been good - I suppose the driving missions here are okay, but I can't help thinking that even these types of mission lack something. The car controls are generally sloppy and the car chases don't really stand out from other Bond games as anything new. Car chases used to be fun, especially in high tech futuristic cars. From Russia With Love lets you ride in old scrappers, with old concepts.

Putting aside the superb voice acting from the superb Sean, and the sublime Natasha, the music in this game is bordering on terrible. It sounds good on the first loop, hell - it sounds okay on the second, but let's say that a level lasts more than six minutes. That's twice you've heard it. You're hearing the same piece of music over and over, and it becomes more tiring that looking at your Laser Watch as a force of habit, to see what time it is! Sound effects luckily make things a little bit better, with all the usual gun noises and explosions. Also, the other voices in the game add to the overall sound package.

The graphics are what I've come to expect from a third person Bond game. Bond himself looks fantastic, but then again, why shouldn't he? Other characters don't look just as good, but this could be described as satire, because after all, nobody looks as good as Bond does. Some of the level objects look a little rough around the edges and you'll get the occasional bit of slowdown when lots of things are happening on screen. Thankfully, the whole targeting system and focus system is a joy to use, because it's so simple and easy to play around with. So you have to award credit there. EA has also managed to make most things look like the Sixties too, which can only be a good thing. Yeah baby!

To complete the whole package come rather shabby multiplayer modes, which consist of the usual deathmatch and capture the flag games, as well as a jetpack free for all - like a dogfight. Nothing to shout about here, unfortunately, but multiplayer third person rarely works anyway.

James Bond: From Russia With Love isn't the loving title I would have hoped for - nor is it from Russia. I don't think you should completely write off this game, because it could make a decent rental - at the end of the day, it has quite a compelling story and where else are you going to hear Sean Connery in a videogame? You should seriously think twice before going out and buying From Russia With Love though, as I can't see anybody going through this game more than once, unless you really are a die-hard Bond fan. It's certainly not worth owning for the multiplayer side of things either. Now, where did I save those TATU pictures? They really are from Russia with love!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).