The world needs a hero and there is only one man for the job.
James Bond: One thing troubles me. How can I be sure you're the genuine article?
Zoe Nightshade: I intend to prove it to you.
Zoe Nightshade: I intend to prove it to you.
James Bond: It seems we're going down.
The One With… Andrew Bicknell as Bond.
James Bond 007 in... Agent Under Fire is a First-Person Shooter developed by Visceral Games (then EA Redwood Shores) and EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts in 2001.
Bond is sent to rescue CIA agent Zoe Nightshade which leads him onto the trail of a cloning plot headed by Adrian Malprave and Nigel Bloch.
Originally just one of the multiple versions of The World Is Not Enough, it became a new game retaining the same gameplay and id Tech 3 engine while also serving as the introduction of driving levels being featured alongside shooter levels. It is notable for being the first Bond game for 6th generation consoles.
Preceded by 007 Racing and followed by NightFire.
This game has the examples of:
- Action Bomb: Super Thugs on their last inch of health will throw away their weapon and pull out a grenade then advance towards Bond in a last ditch effort.
- Advertised Extra: Bebe and Bella; Malprave's assistants, only appear once in the game even though they are in the back of the box.
- A.K.A.-47: Almost every weapon in the game. A few examples:
- Wolfram P2K — Smith & Wesson SW99
- IAC Defender — Desert Eagle
- Koffler & Stock KS7 — Heckler & Koch MP5
- Munitions Belgique PS100 — FN Herstal P90
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: There's a scene in which you sneak into a bathroom and can see a womannote showering. If one uses a gun with a scope, you can zoom in from far enough away that you don't activate the cutscene trigger (she's a projection, to create a disguised door) and you can see that she fits this trope, having no nipples.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Adrian Malprave and Nigel Bloch. Malprave is the senior partner but takes little part in the action while Bloch is the Final Boss, mirroring Renard and Elektra's relationship in The World Is Not Enough; Bloch even looks like Renard. Given that Agent Under Fire was originally supposed to be a PS2 adaptation of The World Is Not Enough...
- Bond One-Liner: If you choose to push The Jackal off instead of shooting her to death, M calls asking what happened. Bond's response? "She's fallen for me." That's just one of many.
- In Mediterranean Crisis, using your Q-Remote to activate a harrier's engines to fry helpless mooks has Bond comment with "Safety first, lads!"
- Car Skiing: Possible by hitting a sign in Streets of Bucharest which gives the player a Bond Move.
- Chair Reveal: The original Reginald Griffin's corpse is revealed this way.
- Clone Angst: The world leaders and Zoe Nightshade are subject to this
- Convection, Schmonvection: Averted in the underground rail shooter level. Bloch opens the floor to reveal a lava pit, and the player slowly loses health to the heat.
- Coordinated Clothes: Bella and Bebe, the twins, both wears midriff-revealing outfits.
- Crosshair Aware: The snipers have some very conspicuous laser sights. You get shot if you happen to cross them.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: This game came out just before "left stick to move and right stick to look" became standardized in all console FPS games. As such it uses a goofy control scheme of left stick to turn left and right or move forward and backward, and right stick to strafe left and right or look up and down. The controls also can't be rebound, though thankfully the control sticks can at least be toggled to more modern controls.
- Developer's Foresight: None of the guards in Bad Diplomacy can be killed normally since you're stuck with a tranquilizer gun but should you exploit glitches or hack in a lethal firearm, you will get a unique mission failure for harming them complete with an otherwise unused jingle.
- The Dragon: Nigel Bloch is this to Malprave, and as such is the one doing most of her dirty work. Carla the Jackal would be another contender.
- Dropped a Bridge on Her: Malprave's death. No close-up, no one liner, just blows up with the factory.
- Elite Mook:
- The clone of Griffin, who takes 3 shots from the dart gun before going down, as opposed to the 1 every one of the soldiers took.
- Through the game you'll fight about 13 to 17 "Super Thugs"; bald goons wearing black tactical gear and bandoliers, who can take a few dozen rounds of automatic fire to put down. They're also a lot more aggressive than regular enemies, constantly charging your position instead of seeking cover, and firing their weapon continuously instead of only from a firing position. Apparently they're augmented clones, accounting for their toughness and rarity (generally only 2 or 3 appear in the few levels that have them).
- Energy Ball: The multiplayer-exclusive Photon Cannon uses these as projectiles. Primary fire is a homing projectile while alternate fire involves shooting out five projectiles at once.
- Evil Laugh: You know it's the clone of Bloch if half of his dialogue consists of going "Mwahahahahaha!"
- Evil Plan: The bad guys are going to kill world leaders and replace them with clones that answer to them.
- Faux Action Girl: Zoe Nightshade. She spends half the game captured, and in one level, it is entirely possible for her to be taken hostage by the bad guys twice.
- Got the Whole World in My Hand: When Bond infiltrates the lair of suspected villain Adrian Malprave, he is greeted by a massive stained glass window depicting her holding the Earth in her hand.
- Guide Dang It!: The CH-6 Rocket Launcher is obtainable in Forbidden Depths by shooting the screens in the arch columns on each stop.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Malprave detonates the warheads within her Alpine base to self-destruct in a last attempt to kill Bond. She instead is blown up in her own office after failing to evacuate while Bond jumps to safety. Truly a case of Death by Irony.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The mooks are like this, due in part to every automatic weapon having horrendous accuracy past five meters or so. They can usually hit reliably with most handguns... after a few shots... assuming they live that long. Some may even spread fire wildly around you while you're right in front of them.
- A more egregious instance occurs when Carla the Jackal fires off a freaking rocket at Bond's car, with Zoe's double still beside it. Not only does she not succeed in killing Bond as intended, but she ended up killing Zoe's clone instead, inadvertently spoiling their later plans for her.
- Ink-Suit Actor:
- Andrew Bicknell provided both voice and likeness for Bond.
- Ditto for R and his voice actor, Miles Anderson.
- Jetpack: Bond uses a really bizarre jetpack. At first, it seems to act like a typical jetpack, capable of decelerating a fall, but it only lifts him up a few feet in standard gameplay. What's more, it seems to run on nothing more than compressed air—it can be refilled at any refill station. Later on, Nigel Bloch gets one of his own, and it works on a similar principle to Bond's.
- Jiggle Physics:
- Zoe in a brief shot while tied up.
- Bella and Bebe when shown together.
- Malprave in her introductory scene.
- Made of Iron: During the transit chase, you'll likely pump a couple hundred rounds from your KA-57 into Bloch, who just keeps fleeing from you. Ultimately it takes dropping him into lava to finally kill him. The real Bloch likewise can take a few hundred rounds of assault rifle fire in his boss fight before retreating.
- Malevolent Mugshot: Adrian Malprave, a CEO with a penchant for figure-hugging outfits, glares down at Bond from a stained glass window hanging over her desk. How malevolent is the window? Adrian is clutching the Earth in her hand.
- MegaCorp: Malprave Industries.
- The Mole: Zoe Nightshade. Or at least, her clone was meant to be this, before she was accidentally killed in the Jackal's attempt to kill Bond. Her next mission would've been to infiltrate the CIA.
- Mundane Made Awesome: R finishes listing the (impressive) combat upgrades to Bond's car with "and of course, a refrigerated beverage holder."
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Enemies don't need to reload, which is most apparent with the Super Thugs, who can fire their automatic weapons constantly while chasing you in circles around a pillar.
- No-Gear Level: You can actually prevent this from happening, if you find a keycard before you enter the submarine in the Poseidon level.
- Oil Slick: One of the gadgets in the driving missions.
- Player-Guided Missile: The RCH-1 rocket launcher, which uses flight-style controls to allow Bond to hit his target.
- See-Thru Specs: They allow Bond to see hidden panels.
- Sexy Silhouette: When James Bond infiltrates an embassy in Romania, he enters a room with a changing screen, and can make out the silhouette of Adrian Malprave changing behind it.
- Shoe Phone: The game has a cell phone that also comes with a laser, a password cracker, a switch activator, and a grappling hook that can somehow extend for 10 meters or more.
- Shout-Out: Carla, known as the Jackal, is one to the professional assassin who goes by the same code name in The Day of the Jackal. The mission in which she's confronted is even called Night of the Jackal. For bonus points, both Jackals are known by their Cool Shades. Better still, her name owes something to Karla, George Smiley's Russian nemesis in a trilogy of books by John le Carré.
- Shower Scene: There's one in the sixth mission when you enter the safehouse. Turns out, it was actually R behind a projection.
- Sniping the Cockpit: When facing an attack helicopter, you can use a sniper rifle to snipe the pilot in the head, saving yourself the time and effort of not having to shoot it down with small arms if you're not lucky enough to have a rocket launcher on standby. This also counts as a Bond Moment for the level score.
- The Starscream: Dr. Natalya Damescu betrays Malprave by leaking her cloning operations to MI6, and would almost certainly have been killed for it if not for Bond's timely intervention.
- Zoe's clone would be another, secretly aiding Malprave in her plans before she would've eventually moved on to infiltrate the CIA.
- Stealth-Based Mission: Bad Diplomacy and Cold Reception, which are coincidentally back to back.
- Super Drowning Skills: The oil rig level, Bond can fall into the ocean if he's not careful, leading to a lost life. This would be justifiable to an extent if it was averting the Soft Water trope, but since he starts the level on some pipes just feet above the surface, and ends the level falling into a pool of water, there is no excuse.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: Nigel Bloch, both times. If he didn't drop his rocket launcher in the final battle, all he'd have to do is float there with his jetpack until the withdrawing floor beneath you finally collapses and drops Bond into the pit. Earlier, he'd have been invulnerable if he hadn't called in the mooks that helpfully provide you with the rocket launcher when killed, nor would there have been a problem if he had chosen not to stop the fans protecting the air vents above the geothermal power station. On top of this, Bond never would have been able to locate and destroy the cloning facility had Bloch not shoved him into the pool that leads to it and instead shot Bond in the head while he was Distracted by the Sexy.
- Unexpected SHMUP Level:
- The second mission. The first mission is standard FPS controls. The second? Rail shooter. Then it's a driving mission.
Bond: (to Zoe's clone) Keep a firm grip on the wheel, I'll hold them off! - Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Randomly shooting missiles and rockets everywhere and at civilians in the driving missions will cause an automatic mission failure."R": Goodness, 007! Such wanton destruction...
- Video-Game Lives: You only have a few lives per mission (2 on Operative, 1 on Agent/00 Agent). Die too many times and you have to start the mission all over from the beginning. The game also only checkpoints during level transitions, so dying can set you back a considerable distance. However, the earlier missions tend to be fairly short, so it's hard to notice.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Despite featuring prominently in the marketing as the game's Bond girl, Zoe Nightshade gets blown up by an RPG just one mission after you first meet her early in the game. Turns out it was a clone intended to be a double agent, and the real Zoe joins up with you about halfway through the game.
- Wham Shot: The sudden appearance of Griffin's clone is most definitely this. Then once again when the real Zoe and then the real Nigel Bloch both turn up alive and well.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: How the world leaders escaped is never revealed, as we last saw them being sealed inside the silos after Bond has killed their captors. However we are clearly left to assume that all of them did in fact escape.
- Would Hit a Girl: Bloch does this to the tied up clone Zoe Nightshade when we first see them.
- Yodel Land: An Alpine base holding the original world leaders is the last level.
- You Don't Look Like You: For some reason, despite having her own model in the briefing before the mission she appears in, Dr. Natalya Damescu in the level proper is just a Palette Swap of Zoe.
