Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Disastrous"

It's so stupid and generic that makes Duty Calls look like a serious full-fledged game. In fact, 007 Legends is far for being fully developed. It's nothing but advertisement and not only for the upcoming Skyfall movie, but for other brands. I'm not saying the previous games had a lack of advertisements, but this is one of the worst product placements in gaming history.
In the movies and every 007 game before this one, gadgets had a very important role to play, even if a brief one. This time around, gadgets are a nuisance, useless garbage that can only be used on a specific point in the game. You get your Sony Xperia smartphone and the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean 600 M Skyfall Limited Edition wrist watch, of course. The thing is, James Bond has a Sony Xperia T in the Skyfall movie, an Omega Seamaster watch and a great self-esteem as always, but what kind of an egocentristical f**k has it's own code name branded on the his watch?
There's a checkpoint marker every few meters. They couldn't just make a damn smartphone map that shows the objective and let you decide your own way to get there. It's always "hold [button] to [action]".
Once you get to your destination, there's a big chance you'll have to use a minigame on your smartphone or on the watch to get the job done. Those minigames are as stupid as they can get and I won't even bother describing them.
The game goes to great lenghts to teach players the new stuff, like crouching behind crates to hide from enemies and pushing buttons at specific times. Is this what over 30 years of video gaming is supposed to look like?
There are only a few moments in the entire game that demand total discretion and only last for a couple of minutes. Also, these mandatory "stealth" sections are incredibly dumb, like the guards positioning themselves as far away from each other and in strategic view-obstructioned places to make it as convenient as it can for you to take them out.
The story starts with a falling James Bond after a friendly sniper accidentaly shoots him. That scene alone is reason to doubt the quality of this game. I will jump over the fact that it looked rushed and low quality and straight to the shortness of the prelude.
Never have I seen a Bond story start off so abrupt and easy. The Bond theme is one other iconic element of the franchise, good or bad. The fact that they decided to give a larger interest to Goldfinger over the other chapters makes sense and being the first chapter in the campaign is a good reason to use the Goldfinger theme. But what the hell? I guess it's an okay modern instrumental take on one of the greatest themes of the series.... NO! It's an abomination! It's a minute and ten seconds of a goat begging to die. How awesome was "I'll take it all" compared to this crap? But it just goes to show how limited was the budget and the team that worked on this game.
Every whole movie that's supposed to be featured here was crunched into a linear shooting gallery with average to bad voice overs and the most brief and boring dialogues I've ever seen in a game. Don't even ask about boss fights. Every encounter is just a brawl quick-timed event that gives you enough time to punch-out Oddjob or Jaws in the most pathetic recreations of those respective scenes. Just awful!
Sometimes we get to witness from first person perspective some of the iconic scenes from the frachise, like the famous Goldfinger's one-liner response "No, mister Bond... I expect you to die!" as we are strapped to a longchair with a laser between our crotches. The setting isn't very familiar for James Bond movie buffs, the scene looks obviously constrained and hurried, but it works. There's that and the characters look good, but Eurocom most certainly worked on the same engine as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded and imported most stuff from that game. It makes sense, because that was a much better game than this one. The graphics aren't that great either, but that would be a stretch by now, to hammer on the graphics. Some might even complain over the presence of Daniel Craig's mug in Goldfinger or Moonraker, instead of Sean Connery and respectively Roger Moore, or the other actors in the other movies/chapters. Well, nothing against dedication and nostalgia, but would you really want the guys that came up with this game's story to explain the 6 different faces of one Bond? I thought so.
I know this game is supposed to celebrate the 50 years anniversary of James Bond's movies, but I only feel that it's anything but respectfull and doesn't do justice to Bond as a character or his story.
My final verdict is 4 and it pains me to give this score to such a promising game, but they chose to butcher this game just because they can and there's no other excuse for that.