With Daniel Craig's final outing as 007 in theaters, Bond's cinematic swan song (at least, for the near future) is ending the tenure of one of the greatest cinema depictions of the iconic British spy. No Time to Die is a bittersweet departure for James Bond fans, who may be waiting several years until a new actor takes over the titular Ian Fleming character. Gaming fans at least have some hope with the upcoming Project 007, a new James Bond video game adaptation in development at IO Interactive, the same developers behind the Hitman games. Given the studio's development history, this means Project 007 will likely be a third-person action adventure game.
Nowadays that's not an unusual thing, and considering the resurgence in popularity of Hitman with its reboot, it makes sense that Project 007 will follow a similar gameplay style. However, some of the best and most popular James Bond games were originally FPS titles, with the iconic GoldenEye often pointed to as a revolutionary first-person shooter for the whole genre. While GoldenEye was a very formative title for games in general, one occassionally overlooked title that's arguably one of the best Bond games of all time is 007: Nightfire on GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. Not very many games since have captured the James Bond experience to similar success.
007: Nightfire Was The Last Good James Bond FPS
Unlike GoldenEye before it, 007: Nightfire sought to be an extension of Pierce Brosnan's 007, rather than a licensed video game adaptation loosely based on an existing film. There were plenty of original James Bond games both before and after Nightfire that focused on original 007 stories, but Nightfire was particularly exceptional as a Bond game. It may have been a FPS that heavily borrowed from GoldenEye's foundation, but Nightfire for the most part iterated on and perfected its predecessor's gameplay, visual design, and narrative. Despite being developed by Eurocom instead, Nightfire's gameplay was heavily reminiscent of Rare's interpretation of a Bond FPS.
YouTuber Raycevick has a fantastic video that highlights a lot of the strengths of Nightfire, and why fans who did play it back in 2002 still hold reverence for it today. Even though Eurocom is long gone after several other middling licensed games (including additional James Bond titles), Nightfire still stands out as one of the best and highest-rated games in the studio's history. Even though Nightfire released alongside Pierce Brosnan's 007 film Die Another Day in the same year, Nightfire's Metacritic scores (the console releases, specifically) far outpace Die Another Day's Rotten Tomatoes score, which is genuinely a testament to a licensed game's quality and reception.
The only caveat is the PC version of 007: Nightfire is nowhere near the same as the console release of the same game. Development of the PC version was outsourced to Gearbox Software, which means the game was drastically different from its console release, and not in a positive way. Multiple missions were left out entirely, and the PC version utilized a completely different game engine that was far less refined.
Future 007 FPS Games Should Borrow Inspiration From Nightfire
While several subsequent James Bond games took on a more third-person action-adventure design influence, none quite matched Nightfire's gameplay design. Even its FPS successors like GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, 007: Quantum of Solace, or 007 Legends either didn't receive nearly the same critical or commercial reception, or sought inspiration from other popular FPS titles like Call of Duty. None of these James Bond FPS games quite nailed the delicate balance of open-ended/sandbox mission design, alongside the intelligent usage of gadgets and unique equipment, among other criticisms. There's a reason why there hasn't been a proper Bond game in almost a decade.
The upcoming Project 007 from IO Interactive is perfectly valid and frankly encouraged to borrow inspiration from the latest Hitman reboot. Hitman's "World of Assassination" trilogy ended up reinvigorating the iconic Agent 47's franchise with a modernized interpretation on the classic video game character that fans enjoyed. In that same vein, Hitman's developer seems like the perfect fit for a James Bond game, especially considering the similarities between the Agent 47 and James Bond. At least from a gameplay perspective, the potential in an exciting IO Interactive-developed 007 game is certainly there, even if that means no more Bond FPS games.
It'd be interesting to see another James Bond game take on the FPS genre once again, but it'd be hard to pinpoint what studio might be ideal for that role, especially given the so-so history of James Bond first-person shooters. A greater criticism of the more recent Bond FPS games was that they were often too reminiscent of Call of Duty's brand of FPS, which has subsequnetly influenced many popular shooters in the last decade. The Initiative is potentially running into similar concerns developing the Perfect Dark reboot, which is ironic considering Microsoft's studio is partnering with Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider reboot) to assist with development.
While most still recognize GoldenEye as the only great James Bond FPS game, Nightfire was easily just as memorable and exciting, even if it wasn't nearly as formative for console first-person shooters. Perhaps after Project 007, the right studio may be willing to take a crack at bringing back the 007 FPS game.
007: Nightfire released on November 18, 2002, for Nintendo GameCube, PS2, and Xbox.