To be brutally honest, I miss the days of Rare's bond franchise. Yes, their one-hit wonder was the godlike, ever-revered GoldenEye for Nintendo 64, but it seems like the harder they try, EA only manages to bury the game license deeper in the ground. I was less than impressed with The World is Not Enough, and was hoping that with an original plot and new characters, this game might help lift poor 007's spirits. My prayers weren't answered.

Agent Under Fire is, in theory, an original story with original characters. In reality, the plot was probably not the best idea of its time (it quietly whispers of a certain George Lucas film released in 2002, to not give away too much). The Bond character is an amalgam of previous Bond actors, most prominently resembling a combination of Brosnan and Lazenby, and with an original voice. This might sound nice and new and almost refreshing even, but it grates on the nerves after about half an hour of gameplay. The supporting characters are mostly the same way: they almost, but not quite, appear to be the characters seen in the recent installments of the film franchise. Others, such as Agent Nightshade, are simple clones of the stereotypical Bond Girls of the past. It appears that EA, despite being the industry titan it is, was unable to leverage anything against MGM/UA or EON Productions for their game franchise.

The game's visual construction is, to put it simply, less than stunning. Agent Under Fire was built on the already-then-aging Unreal Engine, and its age definitely shows here. Character models show many flat planes and lack of detail; far more detailed games were released around the same time this was made, even on the GameCube. To its credit, Unreal at least manages to avoid the pitfalls of collision errors and hitbox glitches that a lot more modern engines seem to suffer from, though it doesn't rescue the game from its bland look.

Enemy AI lacks as much as the graphics do. It's fairly easy to sneak up on a willingly-oblivious guard and dispatch him without alerting his comrades, and it's just as easy to outflank a group of enemy soldiers by running around them in plain sight. For the most part, the computer gives its all, but it just can't make sense of more complex tactics that might be employed by the player.

Every subject in this game seems to fall in the "decent" category, or even border on "mediocre." The game is playable, sure, but it won't leave any memories burned into your brain or any experiences that stand out over any others. The bosses are vanilla and far from original; about the only section of the game I felt any compelling urge to replay were the driving/destruction derby stages. There is some motive to go back and replay other stages--namely, to gain a higher score and thereby unlock weapons and other play modes--but these are thin motives. Ultimately, it's a forgettable chapter in the book of Bond and could easily be ignored without fear of missing anything of note.