Enter the world of classic James Bond.
The One With… Sean Connery reprising his role from the film, for the last time.
007: From Russia with Love is a 2005 Third-Person Shooter adaptation of the second James Bond film From Russia with Love for The Sixth Generation of Console Video Games, featuring Sean Connery reprising the role of James Bond for the first time since Never Say Never Again (and for the last time as well). It's also the last Bond video game to be made by Electronic Arts before they lost the license to Activision.
It made several expansions and changes to the source material, arguably the biggest being the replacement of SPECTRE with OCTOPUS due to a long-running legal dispute regarding Thunderball's film rights. The resulting game had mixed reviews with the best being for the GameCube version.
Preceded by GoldenEye: Rogue Agent and followed by Quantum of Solace.
Tropes present in this game include:
- Action Prologue: James Bond is undercover protecting the Prime Minister's daughter at a cocktail party when OCTOPUS tries to snatch her. The level doubles as a Justified Tutorial explaining the key mechanics.
- Adaptation Expansion: The game follows the same basic plot as the film but adds a lot more action scenes. For starters, instead of covertly murdering and replacing the Soviet operative tailing Bond and Kerim Bey, Grant blows up their car with a rocket launcher.
- Adaptational Badass: The mook impersonating Bond during Grant's training manages to slaughter several soldiers before Grant strangles him to death compared to the film where he died in only a minute or two.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Many of Bond's gadgets turn up far earlier than they did in the films. Bond gets the Aston Martin DB-5 from Goldfinger on the third level, for instance, and he uses the Jet Pack from Thunderball in the prologue. Most notably, both the rappelling belt and laser watch from GoldenEye, more than 30 years after Connery's Bond films, are used in this game.
- Goldfinger's laser appears as part of the final boss battle (an early prototype, probably).
- Adaptational Name Change: Due of lack of copyright on SPECTRE, it's calling OCTOPUS here.
- Adapted Out: Kronsteen doesn't appear anywhere in the single player game, yet appears as playable in multiplayer. Accordingly, Rosa Klebb gets his lines during the expanded Hedgemaze set-piece.
- Airstrike Impossible: In the Action Prologue Bond flies his Jet Pack through the cabin of a helicopter he just mortally wounded, effortlessly scooping the Damsel in Distress into his arms as he goes.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Played with, as following the film the first half of the Hedgemaze level has the player controlling a Bond impersonator in a mask rather than the real deal. After Grant kills him like in the film's prologue, the action then switches over to the real Bond over at MI6 being briefed on his mission and undergoing some basic training, incorporating yet another Justified Tutorial.
- And This Is for...: No Bond One-Liner after James deals with Red Grant, but one of these after shooting him.Grant: [wounded after the final battle] You're going to kill me in cold blood, old man? You don't have the guts! It's not the English way. It's like having red wine with f-
[James shoots him with a revolver]
Bond: That was for Kerim. - Anti-Armor: Bond's solution to the Heavily Armored Mooks? Shoot the straps on his armor to make it fall off.
- A.K.A.-47: The Kalashnikov is just called an assault rifle.
- Canon Foreigner: The Prime Minister's daughter and Eva of OCTOPUS.
- Cool Car: The Aston Martin DB-5.
- Covers Always Lie: At no point does Bond carry a Luger. This carries over from the original film as well.
- Didn't Think This Through: Eva meets her end attempting to ram 007 with a fighter jet and slamming into the runway's blast door, with a surprised look on her face. Given the door was always closed, she'd have died anyway even if she had managed to hit Bond, so one wonders what her plan was.
- Dragon Their Feet: Rosa Klebb died like she did in the film, but Red Grant survives the train encounter and you encounter him infiltrating the Octopus Base.
- Heavily Armored Mook: The occasional 7-foot tall Giant Mook, with bulletproof armor plating protecting his front and head and armed with a heavy machine gun. You can use heavy weapons if you can get them, but the more efficient solution is to shoot their armor off by aiming at the straps, and even then, it still takes a few dozen pistol shots to the chest to kill them.
- Hollywood Silencer: Following the example of the films, Bond also carries a silenced version of his trademark Walther PPK.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: Bond can carry one of every weapon in the game.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: The Bond Focus mechanic allows Bond to aim shots from behind cover at particular areas on opponents' bodies, granting extra level ranking. He can pull off such crazy shots as shooting rappelling lines to make the Mook using it fall to his death, shooting hand grenades off peoples' web gear, shooting walkie-talkies out of radiomens' hands, and the aforementioned trick with the Heavily Armored Mook and the armor straps.
- It Will Never Catch On: After M's briefing in the second level, Bond can overhear two scientists scoffing at a colleague's idea about everyone owning computers on desktops and being able to communicate on them.
- Jet Pack: Both Bond and Grant can use one to fly.
- Made of Iron: Krelincu, the assassin who attacks Bond at the Gypsy camp, and the first boss fight against Red Grant are now full old school video game boss fights who can soak multiple rockets or mags of assault rifle fire before being defeated. In-story, Grant survives being shot multiple times by 007, being run over by a train (he presumably lay down between the tracks to dodge the wheels), and having the Octopus defense system he was piloting blow up with him inside it. 007 has to personally shoot him in the head to make sure he's dead.
- Nerf: The Serum Gun only stuns guards instead of making them attack their allies in the PSP version.
- Optional Stealth: Bond is by no means invincible and it's easier to watch Mooks' patrol patterns so you can take them down silently than trying to run-and-gun your way through the foot levels. You also get more points towards your level ranking for hand-to-hand kills and Bond Focus shots than for run-and-gun. The latter is possible, though, and the vehicle levels are more of a "blast everything in sight" type deal.
- Pineapple Surprise: It's possible to use Bond Focus to shoot grenades (and bazooka missiles!) off mooks' web gear and detonate them.
- Reformulated Game: The PSP version cuts out most of the game's missions, adds ragdoll physics and multiplayer bots as well as changing some mechanics.
- Schizo Tech: The Q-Copter—a miniature, TV-camera equipped helicopter drone that's small enough for Bond to discreetly carry on his person—stands out among the more plausible tech. Ditto the Laser Watch, which didn't appear until much later in the film series, but became an iconic gadget all the same.
- Sequel: The Original Title: Adaptation: The Original Title, to be more accurate.
- Shoot the Rope: One of the trick shots possible with Bond Focus is to shoot rappelling lines, causing mooks to plummet to their deaths.
- Shout-Out: The effects of Bond's serum gun recall Scarecrow's fear toxin.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Subverted. Red Grant survives the fight with Bond on the train, and turns up on the last level for one last showdown. Bond gets him that time.
- Spy Catsuit: Red Grant's Canon Foreigner sidekick Eva wears a tight black leather catsuit, which while not wholely anachronistic for the 60's does stand out among everyone else's period-piece clothing.
- Standard FPS Guns: Silenced pistol, Revolver, Short-Range Shotgun, submachine gun, assault rifle, rocket launcher, and mounted heavy machine guns.
- Take Cover!: The game was doing Gears of War-style one-button-to-use-cover before Gears of War was. Most cover is also destructible if hit with enough gunfire.
- Vocal Dissonance: Ever since leaving the series, Sean Connery's Scottish accent had become thicker, which can be jarring hearing his younger self use.
