There's a lot of public discussion whenever the James Bond franchise rotates in a new actor to take on the world-saving tuxedo-and-fancy-gadgets adventures. Can Bond be blonde? How about Australian? But here's the real question: Will he even come close to living up to Sean Connery? And for all the entertaining-to-acceptable attempts that others have made to fill Connery's well-polished shoes, no one's quite done it. Now Connery's back as Bond, kind of, in James Bond 007: From Russia With Love, an adaptation of Connery's second Bond adventure. (Quick point of reference: It's the one with the bellydancing and the endless fight aboard the Orient Express.) Through four decades of accumulated phlegm, Connery doesn't quite sound like his old self in From Russia's cutscenes, but the spry delivery proves that, as a later title song asserted, nobody does it better.
But what about the game? A third-person shooter with some light puzzle-solving and the occasional side trip in a fast-moving vehicle, it's an awfully familiar but ultimately satisfying combination of proven elements, kind of like the Bond series itself. As Bond, you dispatch evil Russians with a variety of weapons while uncovering a sinister scheme for world domination.