Quick: what’s the best part of being James Bond? Is it the glamor, the high life, and the beautiful women? Or is it the fact that you wear a tuxedo as your work uniform? Or, perhaps it’s the fact that you’re contractually obligated to introduce yourself in the most pedantic fashion possible at every meeting?
A half century in fiction and film will weigh down any serialized character with shackles of clichés, but 007 Racing (2000) is betting that your favorite trope about M16’s most famous spy is the cars he drives. And, as this game would have it, nothing else as 007 Racing abandons all facets of spycraft like a how the BBC would abandon a cashcow, even one as fat as lucrative as those named Clarkson.
And much like shows about gears that always put on top, 007 Racing is complete car-centric. Like a trucker making his way across the country on just a handful of uppers and one Allman Brothers cassette tape, James Bond gets the entire job done sitting behind the wheel of his equally famous roster of cars, insinuating there must be one of those beaded mats adorned over the driver’s seat just as there be a huge drink holder for the Big Gulp housed there.
Of course these are ridiculous expectations of James Bond, but if he’s going to love his cars the way that we love our cars, which is to the point where we’ll play a car-exclusive James Bond videogame, then James Bond the driver is going to meet the harsh reality of stop and go traffic, price gouging at the pump, and squeegee kids trying to fish a dollar at a red light. But no, the idealized world of James Bond has him speeding along country road with great traffic conditions so that he can fight international spies without slowing down for construction or rubbernecking old people.
With the popularity of kart racers at this time on the Playstation One, I was fully expecting a game that featured oversized heads of the various incarnations of Bond and his many enemies throughout the ages. But unlike what the title may suggest, this isn’t a kart racer, nor is there any racing to be had. Instead of a high-stakes drag contest in which the fate of the world is determined a quarter-mile at a time, this is just a series of missions the player performs while behind the wheel of an Aston Martin or something.
Such a niche market makes the mind boggle at other James Bond merchandizing opportunities using tropes from other parts of the James Bond mythos. Coming next summer: James Bond Bartending Academy! James Bond Undercover Baccarat! James Bond Quip Generator!
Making only one facet of James Bond into an entire game is just as shallow, and cheapens the whole mythos of the franchise. As a fictional character, James Bond is a number of traits that can be boiled down to clichés, but he’s still a device to tell a story. If a car is all that represents him, this becomes an (albeit violent) episode of Thomas the Tank Engine. Sure, it’s possible to tell a story this way (although it will end with a quip instead of a moral), but a character isn’t a character trait. Sure, try telling that to Dead or Alive and yet they’ll still come out with more personality-enhansing breast physics in the next sequel.
This isn’t a story so much as it is a series of missions, or “races” as the title of 007 Racing insists upon. James Bond deserves more, but he’s still taking the lion’s share of the licensing profits.
How far I got in 15 minutes: almost completed the first mission, but didn’t know where to go.
The good: Spy Hunter was a good action game, wasn’t it? It was free to tell the recurring story of “get back to the red weapons van” without the need to tell a story.
The bad: Don’t think there’s any auto-erotic scenes
Would I play this game once the year is over: No. Double-oh-oh-negative.
Days so far in the year of the Play-a-DayStation: 49
Play-a-Daystation 