There's been a few things that have raised the eyebrows of gamers worldwide over the past 6 months. We've had the release date for Halo 2 slipping ever later into 2004, the theft of the Half Life 2 code, the deafening silence of new Duke Nukem news and for Bond fans especially, the news that the new game would make the change from a first to a third person perspective!

In our forums here it would be safe to say that the news met with a fair bit of skepticism but the more patient of us have been prepared to wait it out and see for ourselves before passing judgment and writing it off. Many people still regard Goldeneye as the last great Bond game (with many people considering it the last decent movie as well) and ever since EA took over the rights from Rare some would say that the ‘magic' of Goldeneye has never been recaptured. Does Everything or Nothing capture that ‘special something' that Goldeneye did? The answer is that if you purchase Everything or Nothing (from now on EON) expecting to be blown away like you were 7 years ago you're probably going to be let down. While we all drooled over Goldeneye, marveling at how close to the movie it was, EON is a completely new and unique experience that is without a doubt the best Bond game yet produced by EA.

With the Bond cast having no movie to shoot this year it's great to see that in EON they have thrown themselves into their roles with just as much exuberance that they would for a film. That's right, in EON we have no ‘sound alike' actors being used for the characters, every actor from the movie has been used to fantastic effect. The whole Bond cast, Judy Dench, John Cleese, Pierce Brosnan as well as Willem Dafoe, Shannon Elizabeth, Heidi Klum, Richard Kiel as ‘Jaws' and many others lend their likenesses and voices to each of the characters. It's a first rate production that really gives the game a boost that just can't be easily matched by alot of other action games. After reviewing Night Fire, my one wish was that Pierce Brosnan would finally be convinced to take part in the next game and it's finally happened, and not only that, the script for EON was penned by veteran Bond screenwriter Bruce Feirstein.

Now while Goldeneye was a game based on a movie, EON leaves you with the impression that here we have a game that really wants to be a movie. From the very start everything is laid out like a Bond film. A brief intro (that you play, not simply watch) starts off the game with an excellent action scene involving a mountain chateau and a Harrier jet, that when completed leads to the normal Bond title and theme song. It's all ultra cool and the animation and production of the intro credits are worthy of any cinema release.

Without giving too much away, Willem Dafoe's character, Nikolai Diavolo is the prodigy of Max Zorin, the baddie that Bond faced and defeated in the film, ‘A View to a Kill'. Diavolo is disillusioned by the ‘Westernization' of his beloved Russia and seeks to take it over. The game takes place through a large number of different exotic locations, and best of all, different mission types. Bond gets to cruise around in his Aston Martin, a Porsche Cayenne, a Triumph Daytona and even a cool little helicopter. A healthy number of the missions involve using the vehicles and it breaks up the gameplay nicely. The controls are great and each vehicle naturally comes equipped with your typical ‘Bond extras' such as flamethrowers, rockets, machine guns and acid spray.

The rest of the missions see Bond on foot and the all new third person perspective does work surprisingly well. Any first person game these days runs the risk of just being another ‘bog standard first person shooter' and EON's shift to the third person is a great attempt to make gamers feel more like Bond than ever before. Does it work? Yep, it does. My biggest complaint, even with Goldeneye, is that the first person perspective limits how much you can interact with your surroundings. In EON you can now see Bond, check out what he's wearing as well as grab and fight baddies, pick up objects to use as weapons and it gives the game a much needed blast of fresh air. The third person camera does a pretty good job and you can rotate the view with the right stick at anytime. Targeting the baddies is handled with the left trigger which then lets you move a small ‘pipper' with the right stick to take more accurate shots if time permits. The camera unfortunately gives the occasional bit of grief here as it doesn't move based on your target, but rather you need to manually move the camera to allow Bond to target some baddies but it generally has few major issues.

A neat touch is that when you use the D-pad to switch weapons, the games switches into a cool 'pause effect' that allows you to zoom in on objects that you have targeted as well as other interactive objects. These might be spanners or bottles that you can pick up or fuel drums that you can target to then shoot and blow up. Pressing the D-pad left and right lets you do all this and also switch through the wide range of weapons and Bond toys such as some cool little spider robots, heat vision, a personal cloaking system and one of the coolest new additions, the rappelling gun. With this you can target ledges above you and then climb up walls, you can also spin around and shoot your weapons while doing this and there are a couple of cool scenes in the game where this happens. Overall the new third person perspective creates loads more variety in the game and I'm happy to report that it works extremely well, what many people might find annoying though is the length of some of the missions.

Now while there is plenty of variety in the missions many of the levels are short and don't take long to get through and because of this a fair amount of the game gets a bit repetitive. The levels are pretty linear that don't allow much exploration and you end up running, shooting, using gadget (if you remember), running, shooting and then running and shooting some more in between the driving levels. Sure, that's what all shooters generally end up being but I recommend not playing EON on the easiest setting as it cuts down the number of objectives that have to be completed in each mission. While parts of it get a bit repetitive, for the majority, EON is a fun game and easily the best Bond one EA has released. The character and level graphics are all highly detailed with some great texture work and lighting. To be honest I wasn't expecting the characters in the game to look as good as they do and they are all extremelly good representations of their real life versions that draws you into the experience even further. There is an occasional bit of slowdown but its minimal.

During the missions there are a number of special ‘Bond moments' that you can complete for extra points. These might entail simply giving a woman a backrub to launching your Triumph over the roofs of some buildings or taking some baddies out stealthily. At the end of each mission you get to check out your stats and they are pretty in depth. You can check out your kills and the methods that you used to defeat the baddies as well as see photos of the ‘Bond moments' that you completed during the mission. At this point you can also save your game but unfortunately you can't save during the missions.

The sound effects in the game are handled as well as the voice acting. You can hear the baddies talking between themselves, there are loads of ambient sounds and the weapons all sound pretty good. A few of the rifles, notably the AK47 sound pretty tame and could have been done a bit better and given a bit more ‘ooomph' but the majority of the game features awesome sound. The in game music is suitably atmospheric and EA used a full orchestra to create the score.

Unfortunately EON does not support Xbox Live for its multiplayer side but comes with a split screen co-op mode that's a first for a Bond game. It's great to see it included and it really is fun to play games like this with a mate and there are a number of unlockable features that are only accessed through the co-op mode, but really, would it kill EA to bite the bullet and support Xbox Live? Just about every publisher on the planet is supporting it now yet EA continue to short change their own Xbox owning customers. There are a few multiplayer modes and it's also a shame that none of them support the vehicles used in the game but the 4 modes that are included are good fun.