YMMV / NightFire

• Awesome Music: The game itself has a very impressive and memorable soundtrack.
  • Equinox and the Missile Silo multiplayer map’s BGM is nothing short of amazing as it wonderfully displays how Bond is in a huge hurry to save the world.
    • Fridge Brilliance: Eagle eyed Bond fans can hear a bit of the music for Her Majesty’s Secret Service played.
  • The BGM for Island Infiltration. An amazing electric guitar rendition of the James Bond theme.
  • The Phoenix Fire BGM fits the mood that Bond needs to find a way to escape to safety.
  • Night Shift’s BGM perfectly captures the stealthy mood of this level.
    • Followed by the Phoenix Ambush theme in the third part of the mission, where Bond has to escape the building via parachute off the helipad.
  • The Skyrail multiplayer map’s BGM. Very nostalgic for those who played NightFire growing up.
  • The battle theme that plays in Chain Reaction and Countdown is a breathtaking rendition of the classic 007 theme. It perfectly captures the chaos and stress Bond endures as he fights his way through dozens of Phoenix guards.
  • And the Theme song for the game itself. Very much like an opening of your average Bond movie.
• Best Level Ever: Every level where you are on foot shooting is very well done, but The Exchange, Double Cross Night Shift, Phoenix Fire, Countdown, and Equinox are the most memorable.
• Common Knowledge:
  • That the game's plot is from Moonraker. Aside from any superficial similarities besides the trip to space and a reused death trap, NightFire's plot is actually original.
  • Console NightFire's action engine often gets misattributed to either id Tech 3 (Agent Under Fire's action engine) or GoldSrc (PC NightFire's engine) when in reality it's actually just an in-house engine built by Eurocom.
• Complete Monster: Rafael/Raphael Drake is a beloved philanthropist who secretly plots to remake the world into a corporate dystopia answerable only to himself. The CEO of the environmentally-friendly corporation Phoenix International, Drake poses as a respected anti-nuclear weapons activist who uses his company's wealth and resources to decommission nukes; in reality, he takes these weapons for himself to be used in a private arsenal against anyone who resists his takeover. Key to his plan is a new space weapons platform developed by the US; James Bond is put on Drake's case after it is discovered the latter has stolen the weapons guidance chip for the satellite. When one of his subordinates tries to turn informant for MI6, he orders not just the man's death, but those of his innocent household servants as well; he later murders his mistress by defenestration, forcing Bond to watch, after she is exposed as a deep-cover French agent. As his plan commences, he rockets into space to commandeer the weapons platform personally, the platform and his private arsenal giving him enough power to wipe any dissenters off the face of the Earth.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The snipers in Chain Reaction. They can take you down from full health and armor in three or four hits, often have Improbable Aiming Skills (hitting you from across the level while blindfiring from cover for instance), and are very difficult to find and kill without memorizing the level or using the upgraded camera. When climbing across wires, especially the long one leading to the final building, be sure to have killed all the snipers.
  • The Phoenix Elite Squads aka the Commandos that are introduced in Countdown are the toughest regular enemies you'll face in the whole game. They are armed with AIMS-20s of their own and can easily survive multiple grenade rounds from a AIMS-20 on 00 Agent. To escape Alpha Sector, you have to face waves of them, leading up to an encounter with a vengeance-seeking Rook, armed with a Phoenix Samurai. They appear throughout the mission from then on, so don't get cozy when you reach Delta Sector.
  • The ninjas in Countdown. While the solo one at the end of Double Cross was already That One Boss, here there are multiple, and all the while you're having to deal with the normal soldiers and the aforementioned Phoenix Commandos, all while on a time limit. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right? Fortunately, you have better weapons at your disposal this time, including the AIMS-20 and the Samurai, and the privilege of setting up a crapload of remote mines or laser tripbombs in advance.
  • The astronauts in Equinox, and not just because they are armed with Samurais that can cause heavy damage. What really causes them to cross the line to Demonic Spiders is the fact that you have to survive their damage and the space station's even more damaging main laser with a single set of armor. All while on a Timed Mission with very unforgiving timeframes and an unexpected change in controls.
• Even Better Sequel: Where Agent Under Fire is a fun and goofy Bond pastiche, NightFire expands its gameplay elements and creates a story more akin to a Bond film. With its difficulty and aiming system being much more reasonable than Agent Under Fire and being easier than the later Everything or Nothing, many players consider it one of their favorite Bond games. The multiplayer has even been compared to that of GoldenEye in terms of fun, although most of the skins and game modes must be unlocked in single player.
• Funny Moments: Quite a few moments in the game that would make some players chuckle.
  • In The Exchange level where Drake’s men finds Zoe, which leads to this exchange...
    Henchman: We caught her in the hallway sir.
    Zoe: I was looking for the powder room.
    Drake: With lock picks and a 9mm?
    Zoe: Hey, it's a tough neighbourhood!
  • And Q's Innocent Innuendo when he's talking about one of the gadgets he supplied Bond with, which he has named the Q-Worm.
    Bond: Q! There's a lady present!
• Game-Breaker:
  • Getting two of the three pistol upgrades in single player replaces the PP7 with the P2K. This gun is a beast; it can be fired as fast as you can pull its trigger, its magazine can hold more than twice as much ammo as its predecessor, and it comes with a laser sight. Topping it all off, it uses more readily available 9mm rounds, which will make life a lot easier, especially on harder difficulties. Even better, getting the third and final pistol upgrade will turn it into a golden version, that doubles its damage output.
  • The AT-420 Sentinel and its remote-controlled rockets. If you're good with the controls, you can easily camp in a tucked away corner and own your opponents in multiplayer. Unfortunately, it only appears in one level in single player where you use it to shoot down Rook's helicopter; later missions instead give you the comparatively less useful AT-600 Scorpion.
  • The AIMS-20 is a two-in-one assault rifle and grenade launcher with an infrared scope. The rifle's burst-fire mode does a lot of damage even for an automatic, and the grenades travel in a straight line, similarly to rockets. If you pick this up in multiplayer, you're pretty much all set for anything. The only real drawbacks are that the grenades don't deal as much damage as other explosive weapons, and its reload time is a little on the slow side, particularly for said grenades. Sadly, it only appears once in single player, in the penultimate level, Countdown.
  • The Deutsche M9K could very well be the best 9mm weapon not called the Wolfram P2K. This Heckler & Koch MP5K clone packs a pretty good punch for a weapon of its size, is very accurate compared to most other automatics and even some pistols, and reloads fairly quickly (with an added HK Slap for good measure). It even comes with a suppressor just in case, which is handy early in its third appearance if you don't already have the P2K or its gold counterpart unlocked yet. Even the ninja uses it when he cannot reach you with his katana. The only real drawback to it is the relatively small 21-round clip, but the quick reload makes up for it. Sadly, it only appears in three levels, only two of which it can actually be used in, and one of those two levels also gives you access both to the stronger AIMS-20, and of course...
  • ...the Phoenix Samurai, which is a laser assault rifle that can kill most enemies in 2-3 hits, even on 00 Agent difficulty. Even better, its secondary function overcharges the gun, causing it to fire a MASSIVE laser blast that destroys multiple enemies - including the ninja! And of course, since it runs off of a heat system rather than using ammo, you don't ever have to worry about running out of ammo, though it does take some time to recharge to balance it out. By the time you collect yours from Rook, even the AIMS-20 will start feeling a bit obsolete. Too bad it's only available in the last two missions.
  • Nick Nack is broken in NightFire multiplayer for the same reasons that Oddjob was broken in GoldenEye — his very small hitbox makes him incredibly hard to hit, and on top of this, he moves very quickly compared to other characters, making it even harder to hit him. The only caveat is that you can't unlock him until near the end of the game, by completing Deep Descent with at least a Silver medal.
  • Speaking of Oddjob, he's almost as broken here as in GoldenEye, but for different reasons. Sure, his hitbox might not be as small as Nick Nack's or as it was in GoldenEye (though it's still smaller than most characters), but he does have something else to make up for it — his hat. It instantly kills any player it hits, has surprisingly good accuracy, and it respawns in your inventory, essentially making it a free Golden Gun with unlimited uses, albeit a fairly long recharge time. As an added bonus, Oddjob can be unlocked as early as The Exchange, far earlier than Nick Nack.
• Gameplay Derailment:
  • Used up all your tranquilizer darts in Night Shift (or just don't feel like using them)? The old stealth level trick from The World Is Not Enough and Agent Under Fire works here too — just run up to the guards and punch them out, and it'll permanently eliminate them. No penalties. Unfortunately, this doesn't work in the PC or GBA version.
  • Having trouble with the Ninjas in Countdown? Just lay a lot of remote mines or laser tripbombs in the center of the room ahead of the safety bunker. Or just blast them with the Samurai's overcharge mode. Either way kills them instantly.
  • A more conventional example is the task of getting the 007 tokens, some of which force Bond to go to insanely precarious areas. An almost necessary example is in the final mission; the missiles won't start to launch until the first two enemies are killed, so this is the only time where Bond can collect the tokens scattered around the level safely.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In Multiplayer's Ski Lodge map bots will occasionally climb the sheer cliff face by running at the walls.
  • There's a bug in the PS2 version that allows hackers to breach the copy protection and run homebrew software on the console, including pirated games. The game is sought-after by those who want to exploit this bug.
• Moral Event Horizon: Kiko crosses it when she betrays Bond and sends Dominique falling to her death.
• Narm: The office workers in the Phoenix building during "Phoenix Fire". Their constant screaming and pleading for help is actually rather humorous regardless of language.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The ninjas, especially the first one ambushing Bond and assassinating Mayhew from out of nowhere.
  • Imagine the horrific consequences that could follow if the player fails the mission, especially from "Deep Descent", "Countdown" and "Equinox", especially with the lines from people like M and Alura.
  Alura: It’s too late James, we’ve lost... (in "Equinox" if Bond fails to disarm the missiles).
  M: Now we may never be able to stop him. (From Deep Descent if Bond gets caught during the mission).
  • Dominique's death. Kiko kicks her off the top of the Phoenix building and we see her fall from her point of view. Luckily, players are spared the gory graphics of her hitting the floor.
  • Kiko's own death later on. Though you won't feel sorry for her considering what she did to Dominique, it can still be utterly horrifying to watch Kiko scream in terror as she gets incinerated alive by the shuttle's engines.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version of the game is nowhere near as smooth and refined as the console versions; there are no driving stages (though sometimes it's debatable whether that's a bad thing), stealth is harder, there's a lot of Fake Difficulty, the weapons aren't as satisfying to use, multiplayer's less fun, the soundtrack isn't as smooth, and no unlockables. At least the levels themselves are bigger, but that's not saying much.
• The Scrappy: Some people may find Alura to be a bland Replacement Goldfish whose role could have easily been filled by Dominique, Zoe, or Kiko. The fact that she appeared literally minutes right after Dominique's death makes her feel like she was put there simply to be Bond's next conquest after.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In console multiplayer, there's few characters in the roster of the MI6 team (Bond and Bond girls both in this game and throughout the franchise), and there can never be more than one Bond, or more than one MI6 character in free-for-all game modes. This may be due to the MI6 character personalities being based off of team modes (Team Player, Guardian, etc), while the Phoenix personalities work in all modes (Assassin, Berzerker, Vengeful). An unfortunate mechanic returning from N64 The World Is Not Enough but wasn't in Agent Under Fire, where all characters can be assigned various teams with the only limitation being that there can't be two Bonds. The PC version of the game has more variety (including Zoe and Q, and allowing multiple Bonds if using the fan patch), but suffers from slower gameplay and no music.
  • In the GBA version, you can still fail the mission even if you complete it if you don't have a high enough score to attain a bronze medal.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Storm M32, despite being one of only three full-auto weapons and having the largest magazine of any weapon in the game, is horribly weak and extremely inaccurate, even at close range, and has subsequently often drawn comparisons to the infamous Klobb from GoldenEye. The only good thing that can be said about this submachine gun is that it uses 9mm rounds, which the P2K uses, which comes in handy on repeat playthroughs of Double Cross and on Chain Reaction, provided the P2K is unlocked by then.
  • The default PP7 is a weak handgun with a tiny magazine, fitting for Bond's starting Emergency Weapon. The golden upgrade makes it more viable, but due to the general dearth of 7.65mm ammo for it, it's still better to unlock the P2K when possible.
  • The P2K may be a Game-Breaker in the console version, but the same cannot be said of its PC counterpart. The PC version's P2K has pathetic firepower and a slow firing rate that make even the above mentioned PP7 look amazing by comparison. The only thing it has going for it is its tolerable accuracy.
  • Completing the game in the console version upgrades the semi/burst-fire Kowloon Type 40 pistol to the fully automatic Kowloon Type 80. Problem is, the K-40 isn't that great of a weapon to begin with — especially compared to weapons like the Golden P2K and the Deutsche M9K — and the K-80 upgrade simply turns the K-40 into an ineffective ammo guzzler with horrendous accuracy that makes even the above mentioned Storm M32 look decent by comparison. There isn't even a semi or burst option on the K-80, only the incredibly inaccurate full-auto. Not to mention, this upgrade doesn't affect multiplayer mode, meaning the only way you can get the K-80 in multiplayer is by using the "random" weapon set, and hoping it shows up... not that you'd really want to, anyway.
  • Speaking of the K-40, it's possible to get a Guns Akimbo variant in multiplayer when playing on the Phoenix team by picking up a second K-40, doubling the weapon's effective clip size. Sounds pretty cool at first, but then you realize that this "upgrade" is not only just as weak as the single K-40, but the burst-fire mode is inexplicably disabled and the weapon's already fairly slow reload time is more than doubled, making running out of ammo in a firefight a near death sentence if no cover is nearby. At least picking up a second K-40 won't prevent you from wielding only one if you prefer it that way.
  • The Ronin is a briefcase that deploys into a turret, in which you can one of in your storage space. It's an effective weapon against enemies in both single player and multiplayer (especially since the bots in the latter don't register its presence). However, it cannot tell friend from foe in multiplayer, meaning that it will indiscriminately shoot at anyone who isn't its owner, including teammates. Even with friendly fire off, it's simply content to waste its ammo shooting at non-enemies.
  • The remote tank in multiplayer is an awkward vehicle to drive with, and on certain maps, is flat-out unusable because it cannot drive over stairs. Not helped by the fact that its machine gun is weak and its grenades are difficult to aim. The remote helicopter is far more versatile and useful.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Thanks to the much better manual aiming system and weapons, getting platinum medals on most missions and beating the game in general is much easier than doing so in Agent Under Fire. That being said, on a first-time playthrough NightFire has noticeably more GoldenEye-style "what the fuck am I supposed to be doing here?" moments compared to Agent Under Fire, which was generally more straightforward in its mission objectives and level design. "Deep Descent" alone is much more frustrating than any level in Agent Under Fire.
• Tear Jerker: Bond's response to McCall's query on his silence after Dominique's death.
  Bond: Sorry, it's been a difficult evening, Miss McCall. I lost a friend.
• That One Level:
  • Night Shift can be this on the first run. The enemies here are technically classed as civilians, so you can't use lethal force. The dart gun puts them to sleep temporarily (though punching them can put them down permanently). The Phoenix Tower is a labyrinth, with many security traps for the unaware. There are a number of doors that can only be opened by a code hidden in the level, or via the Decryptor (remember that it works by holding the fire button and hacks the door automatically. Don't stop until the door opens!), one of them flat-out requiring the latter since there's no code for it whatsoever. The PC version's equivalent, given the general level expansion of all levels in that game and the greater clairvoyance and presence of the security cameras, is even worse, and that's compounded by the fact that punching out guards isn't a permanent solution.
  • The GBA version has by the far the hardest of the stealth missions known as Phoenix Tower. The rules have changed so that getting caught at all results in an immediate mission failure which is all too easy with what you have to deal with. The guards' line of sight is much harder to tell with Digitized Sprites but they can be stunned or hit with a sleep dart but they are only temporary measures. Alongside the patrolling guards, you have cameras that won't give you a grace period to run away from if they see you like the PC version and the only hint that they have seen you is the game-ending alarm. The only respite you get is that it's just the office floor you have to go through in this version and it's fairly short.
  • Deep Descent, and specifically the mine sections. Their movement patterns are highly erratic, and you have very little room to maneuver around them. If you accidentally hit one, either directly or with a torpedo, it causes a cave-in, trapping you and failing the mission on the spot. Oh, and you also have to chase an enemy vehicle through an area filled with them at one point. Then you have the submarine boss at the end, which practically needs to be killed from behind cover with the remote torpedoes, otherwise it will shred right through your health and armor in seconds. And because it's not a standard driving mission, you can't use any cheats to make this underwater mission any easier.
  • Island Infiltration is far from a cakewalk no matter what your approach; enemies are armed to the teeth with enough weapons to tear your armor to pieces in seconds, particularly the laser defense turrets that you have to destroy. That's not even getting into the two rail shooter sections. In the first one, you're on an Ultralight plane, and enemies will attack you from all angles, including ones where you can't even shoot back (the plane's turret faces forward and can only rotate 180 degrees). Not to mention if you don't start shooting the turrets in this section the moment they appear, you won't be able to destroy them and you'll fail the mission. In the second rail shooter, you commandeer a larger turret and have to hold off large amounts of Phoenix forces (including tanks) while Alura prepares explosives. At the very end, you encounter another submarine boss similar to the one from the previous mission; if you don't turn your attention to it the moment it surfaces, its missiles will drop you in just two or three hits from the damage you've almost certainly sustained by that point. Oh yes, you have to do each rail section on a single set of armor, by the way. The only consolation is that the cheats for the driving sections do work in this mission, most notably the explosive bullets cheat, which helps preserve missile ammo substantially.
  • Then there's Equinox, the game's final level. The entire stage is a Timed Mission that has you in outer space disabling eight nuclear missiles aimed at major cities on Earth. Doing so requires you to use the Phoenix Samurai laser rifle to shoot at tiny areas that are very hard to hit unless you're right next to them. The timeframe between a missile exposing its weak point and it launching is very unforgiving if you try to move right next to it - you better hope you're a good sniper if you want any chance of disarming it in time. The controls don't make it any easier. It also doesn't help that near the end, three missiles will prepare for launch at once, giving you even less room for error. Did we mention that you have Drake's astronauts and the station's main laser all pounding you for heavy damage while you're doing this? And even once you do take care of all the missiles and Drake's men, you're not out of the water yet - Drake himself will attack you with a Torpedo Launcher at the end, and his rockets are hard to dodge and can easily finish you off from all the damage you've more than likely taken. You're only given one set of armor for this level, by the way, which likely won't last you very long at all, especially on 00 Agent difficulty. Good luck.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The surrender mechanic. Point a weapon at an unaware enemy's back, and he'll surrender. You ought to punch him out cold to prevent him from pulling out a pistol. Only two missions require three instances of this for a score bonus, and the second one literally only has three enemies that are susceptible to this (all other enemies are on alert and are immune to this phenomenon). You might think you're inclined to do this in Countdown, where the enemies act unaware. They'll instead run for the alarm, radio for backup, or reward you with a roundhouse kick to the face. The PC version allows this with far more enemies in all of its levels, but the game itself locks any unlockables, so there isn't much point in doing this here to begin with.

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