Bond, James Bond

As we revealed two months ago here on EuroGamer, The World Is Not Enough, a first person shooter based on the James Bond movie of the same name, has been cancelled in favour of a more generic 007 title for the PlayStation 2 only. Now known as Agent Under Fire, the game was officially unveiled yesterday and (as we had expected) includes not only first person shooter levels but also elements from what was going to be a PlayStation 2 version of 007 Racing, which has also now been cancelled.

Agent Under Fire comes with an original Bond storyline which is not based on any one particular movie, along with its own array of high tech gadgetry and weapons. Many of these will of course be provided by Q, and the game apparently features the vocal talents of John Cleese, who picked up the mantle of the late great Desmond Llewelyn in the last Bond movie. The game still uses the Quake III engine to push its polygons and the results look fairly impressive even at this very early stage in development, although it is our understanding that id's engine had to be essentially reprogrammed from the ground up by EA to make it work on Sony's console for games such as Quake 3 Revolution and the now defunct TWINE. We're also not entirely sure how the racing sections are going to work, although PS2.IGN reports that the Need For Speed team are now working on this part of the game.

EA are promising the game will be released by Christmas, but to be honest we're a little sceptical. The game design has been completely changed within the last few months, and the developers are creating a whole new adventure rather than simply bodging together bits of TWINE and 007 Racing. The engine and some of the artwork, gadgets and cars from these cancelled projects may have been salvaged, but the rest will have to be designed again from scratch. The chances of them finishing Agent Under Fire in under twelve months is rather slim in this writer's opinion...