James Bond 007: Goldfinger

The Good
The game puts you right in the action, with the famous Aston Martin car chase, and only the briefest of explanations why you are there. Then the game diverges, ending up on a laser bed is the failure, not success of this (it took quite a few attempts to realise this).

From here on in the gameplay is similar to the company's previous effort (A View to A Kill) in that there are about 3 locations to explore, and whilst the story has the same characters as the film, the actual plot is severely altered.

That said, it hangs together a lot more clearly then View to A Kill, and it's clear why you are travelling to different places this time, the writing is a explicit in the details, making it clearer what to do next.

The Bad
The game suffers from a classic problem. The only way to find out certain pieces of information is to die trying out different courses of action, such as searching a desk, if you look at every document you are found out, but if you don't then you miss important plot details. This means that essentially the game cannot be completed in a realistic fashion, without James Bond possessing a sixth sense. There is also an issue at the start, as stated the player is placed in the action at the start, but anyone who's seen the film would expect the James Bond to be caught and strapped to a table, not to successfully destroy all the pursuers! Again another case of trying every different approach until it succeeds.

The text parser is also identical to the previous Bond game and shares its problems, in having to use the correct verb to carry out an action, making some things difficult.

Bizarrely, but unrelated to the plot, Bond doesn't carry a gun in this game at all!

The Bottom Line
An improvement in game plotting this time, though the actually descriptions remain as good as in James Bond 007: A View to A Kill. The story has been truncated and altered from the film in such a way that it makes sense on its own and doesn't require a half knowledge of the film to get through it. All in all another enjoyable slice of Bond action.